Ukulele Underground

It’s nightfall in Taipei, Taiwan. Several ukulele players have gathered in the midst of a party in Da’an Park following the monthly potluck. The first rule: be kind.

One member of the group that night was Dallas Waldo, an Ottawa-based hip-hop artist who recently moved to Taiwan.

“I just joined some other friends who were also first timers at the event,” he says. “We had no idea what we were getting into. We started by just chilling in the park hanging out and listening to the nearby music: bongo drummers and ukulele players.”

The event was created to promote environmentally friendly habits, but has recently become a gathering place for performance artists, drummers, musicians and (increasingly) ukulele players.

Bytown Ukulele Group is an Ottawa gathering designed for specifically for uke enthusiasts.

BUG meets twice a month at Clocktower Brew Pub on Bank Street, attracting young and old, new players and veterans alike.

One such veteran of the ukulele is Matt Laurent, of the Montreal band Lucky Uke. Laurent spoke with Glue magazine about the third wave of popularity that the ukulele is experiencing.

“I first was in contact with a ukulele when I was about 19 or 20. A friend of mine had one and I was doing some rock and blues licks on it,” he said. “I always thought it was just a toy and I never knew how to tune it. I remember playing it, but for just a couple of minutes at the time.”

The ukulele has long had a reputation as a child’s play thing. But these days the instrument is emerging from the toy chest, and making its way back into the hands of serious musicians and pop culture icons – from Eddie Vedder and Zooey Deschanel to Matt Laurent of Lucky Uke.

Lucky Uke’s music relies on what Laurent calls the “smile factor.” For the group’s first album they adapted heavy metal anthems that you wouldn’t typically expect to hear on such a sunny instrument.

The covers ranged from the Rush classic “Spirit of Radio” to harbingers of head banging like Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” and Iron Maiden’s “The Number of The Beast.”

“I think everything is ukulele-able,” says Laurent. “After that, it’s a question of taste. It needs a melody and that’s it.”

Laurent said he has noticed an increase, not only in the use of ukulele, but a rise in uke culture as well.

“I think it’s because it’s quite easy to play and extremely fun,” he says. “It can sound really good even if you just learned how to play.” In fact, Laurent thinks that if everybody played the ukulele, the world would be a better place.

Another uke ambassador is Arthur McGregor, the owner of the Ottawa Folklore Centre. “We’re selling hundreds of ukes a month, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “We’re selling so many that we actually dedicated a single room of our retail space to ukuleles.”

The ukulele has a long history, an ebb and flow of popularity, having fallen into the hands of Clash front-man Joe Strummer, country artist Hank Williams Jr. and even Warren Buffet, who Forbes has ranked among the top three richest individuals for the past ten years.

The ukulele has recently entered into its third wave of popularity in popular culture.

The uke began its life as an import to Hawaii, making its way with Portuguese immigrants in the late 19th century. Eventually it would become associated almost exclusively with Hawaiian music.

Later came the introduction of ukulele music to the rest of America via a man named George Formby, who in the ’30s and ’40s played a combination banjo/ukulele. His lyrics riffed on the army, blue collar life, and sexuality.

“The second wave started with Don Ho,” said McGregor of the Ottawa Folklore Centre. “[That] would have been late ’50s early ’60s and ended with a firm snap shut with Tiny Tim back in the early ’70s. [He] was a joke for most people and it pretty much killed the ukulele.”

But McGregor says the uke never truly died. “There has always been a ukulele underground.”

For many the ukulele was brought front and center once again by celebrities like Zooey Deschanel playing the instrument while hosting Saturday Night Live, and by musicians like Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder dedicating entire albums to uke covers and compositions.

“I think that a key point was the version of ‘Over the Rainbow’ by Iz Kamakawiwo’ole something like ten years ago,” says Laurent of Lucky Uke. “Jack Johnson with the relaxed vibe also probably has something to do with it.”

Most of the uke players who spoke to Glue magazine hesitated to mention anyone specific who turned them onto the instrument. Instead, love for the uke can be broken down into a few basic categories: simplicity, accessibility, variety and cost.

“It’s easy to play, portable, and cheap,” says Vanessa Alambo, an honours biology student at the University of Waterloo. “People want an instrument that they can play once in a while without having to put in much effort, and that’s what the uke provides.”

McGregor of the Ottawa Folklore Centre also defines the uke by means of its accessibility. “Four strings, short scale length, low tension, and enough strings to make it melodic, so anybody can, within ten minutes, be playing 50 per cent of the folk songs ever written,” he says. “The different [sizes] in the ukulele… they’re all tuned exactly the same, and the difference is primarily the voice that they give, so people can even personalize them without really personalizing them, and there’s not a lot of instruments that can do that.”

That variety shows itself most clearly at the BUG jam sessions. Attendees range from young hipsters with $30, fluorescent coloured, maple bodied uke’s, to older men and women with ukes worth hundreds of dollars that are hand crafted from exotic tone woods like Hawaiian Koa and Brazilian Rosewood.

“For the free jam we get about one quarter to one third of the people being university age,” says Sue Rogers, who organizes BUG jam sessions with her husband Mark. “You’re getting a good mix of ages, my biggest thing is I want the young people to bring the songs like the Ingrid Michaelson, the more current songs. It’s a fun, non-judgemental instrument, it’s a little quirky, so it kind of appeals to bad-asses and people that want to be out of the mould a little bit. It’s fun, it’s just fun.”

Uke can be fun, can be whimsical, and as Laurent of Lucky Uke says, “makes you think that you’re not at work but on holidays somewhere where the sun is shining.”

There is, however, a dark side to the ukulele. Like any of its cousins the ukulele is hard to keep in tune until the strings adjust to the tension they are put under. This can make initial attempts at playing a new ukulele frustrating at best, and destructive at worst.

Even stranger, traditional strings are made of catgut, which is a natural fibre that is present in, as you might expect, the intestines of cows, pigs, horses and donkeys. Those of you who have vivid imaginations or squeamish fingers can rest easy knowing that most modern ukes use the more popular synthetic alternative.

Between the huge variety available, the range in prices from back-pack stuffers and high-end ukes, and the relative simplicity of the instrument, ukulele has once again come into its own.

Ukulele is, at once, a novelty, a hipster favourite, and a serious instrument. Best of all for players, it is what you make of it. There are no pre-packaged ukulele heroes. Play show tunes, play thrash metal, play what you like.

also probably has something to do with it.”

Most of the uke players who spoke to Glue magazine hesitated to mention anyone specific who turned them onto the instrument. Instead, love for the uke can be broken down into a few basic categories: simplicity, accessibility, variety and cost.

“It’s easy to play, portable, and cheap,” says Vanessa Alambo, an honours biology student at the University of Waterloo. “People want an instrument that they can play once in a while without having to put in much effort, and that’s what the uke provides.”

McGregor of the Ottawa Folklore Centre also defines the uke by means of its accessibility. “Four strings, short scale length, low tension, and enough strings to make it melodic, so anybody can, within ten minutes, be playing 50 per cent of the folk songs ever written,” he says. “The different [sizes] in the ukulele… they’re all tuned exactly the same, and the difference is primarily the voice that they give, so people can even personalize them without really personalizing them, and there’s not a lot of instruments that can do that.”

That variety shows itself most clearly at the BUG jam sessions. Attendees range from young hipsters with $30, fluorescent coloured, maple bodied ukes, to older men and women with ukes worth hundreds of dollars that are hand crafted from exotic tone woods like Hawaiian Koa and Brazilian Rosewood.

“For the free jam we get about one quarter to one third of the people being university age,” says Sue Rogers, who organizes BUG jam sessions with her husband Mark. “You’re getting a good mix of ages, my biggest thing is I want the young people to bring the songs like the Ingrid Michaelson, the more current songs. It’s a fun, non-judgemental instrument, it’s a little quirky, so it kind of appeals to bad-asses and people that want to be out of the mould a little bit. It’s fun, it’s just fun.”

Uke can be fun, can be whimsical, and as Laurent of Lucky Uke says, uke “makes you think that you’re not at work but on holidays somewhere where the sun is shining.”

There is, however, a dark side to the ukulele. Like any of its cousins the ukulele is hard to keep in tune until the strings adjust to the tension they are put under. This can make initial attempts at playing a new ukulele frustrating at best, and destructive at worst.

Even stranger, traditional strings are made of catgut, which is a natural fibre that is present in, as you might expect, the intestines of cows, pigs, horses and donkeys. Those of you who have vivid imaginations or squeamish fingers can rest easy knowing that most modern ukes use the more popular synthetic alternative.

Between the huge variety available, the range in prices from back-pack stuffers and high-end ukes, and the relative simplicity of the instrument, ukulele has once again come into its own.

Ukulele is, at once, a novelty, a hipster favourite, and a serious instrument. Best of all for players, it is what you make of it. There are no pre-packaged ukulele heroes. Play show tunes, play thrash metal, play what you like.

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