Ukulele Tonya

As an attendee at 15 ukulele festivals and workshops in the past few years (from Rhode Island to the Big Island), I can guarantee that, if you play ukulele—no matter what level player you are—the Southern California Ukulele Festival should be a “don’t miss it” event on your lifetime list.What follows is a lengthy account (to make *you* want to attend an ukulele festival, too!); if you’d rather just skip to the album of photos, click HERE! Note: There are more photos in the album than I’ve included on this page so browse around—I can’t figure out how to get captions in the album so you’ll have to look at the name of the .jpg when you’ve opened it and read “who” is in the photo up in the URL bar.   (Read on …)

Who goes to Hayward (California) to play the ukulele? Thousands of us did on April 29—and if you weren’t there, you missed an event that’s as rich in Hawaiian culture as it is in four-string delights. Held at the Hayward Adult Learning Center, this year’s event was the 14th annual, making it the longest-running (and oldest!) ukulele festival on the mainland. This festival has a true ohana feel. While some of the out-of-the-auditorium jamming was definitely non-island oriented (Beatles, anyone? Petula Clark? John Denver?), the performers inside are members of the many Bay Area-based ukulele schools and clubs and their performance repertoire was almost entirely Hawaiian (including contemporary and hapa haole as well as some lovely old melodies that just made me sigh and want to collapse beneath a coconut palm). (Read on …)

I’ve been asked a couple questions about the way these incredible two guys play. Here’s what I saw at the workshop (and, at the end of the post I’ll explain their take on how to play the famous reggae-type strum IZ uses in “Wonderful World/Over the Rainbow”). Note: There’s a full account of these workshops on the earlier posting, just below this one.

Daniel said he is a classically-trained guitarist and I’d say his playing style reflects that. He used no pick, just his fingers. His right hand nails were not very long (just peeking over the top of his finger pads). He typically maintains a hand position for picking in which each finger is positioned over it’s “own” string. That way, he says, he doesn’t have to think about where to put the fingers, they’re already there, ready to play. He does not “brace” with his little finger on the soundboard. He uses a strap to hold his ukulele in place so he can roam up and down the fingerboard. (Read on …)