- 1 week ago
Disclaimer: I do not have any legal rights about this documentary video. I only desire to share this wonderful gem that was buried deep in the internet. It's hard to find any website that has this one. I hope this could inspire more people to pickup the 'ukulele and play it more to bring happiness and peace to the world today and for the better
future as well...
~ Peace out! Keep strumming!
future as well...
~ Peace out! Keep strumming!
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00Aloha, my name is Jake Shimabukuro. I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii,
00:05and I've been playing the ukulele since I was four years old.
00:30It's the underdog of all instruments, and when people see it,
00:33they don't expect to hear all these sounds coming from this little sound box.
00:38It just kind of freaks them out, and because of that, you know,
01:04there's that element of surprise, and I think in music, you know,
01:08or in any kind of art form, people like to be surprised.
01:15To most people, the piano probably played is music,
01:18but music has no country and no particular medium.
01:21The early Greek instrument was the lyre.
01:23Can it be that such a noble instrument was the father of this one?
01:26We refuse to believe it.
01:28For many, the ukulele is a joke.
01:39It's a kitschy Hawaiian novelty.
01:45Or a relic from some bygone era.
01:51For baby boomers, it was a popular toy.
01:54But eventually, the rise of the rock and roll guitar
02:01pushed the nerdy ukulele into obscurity.
02:07That is, until now.
02:09The ukulele has returned.
02:29And it's the most curious comeback in music history.
02:35Show us your ukuleles!
02:37I feel it's an honest instrument.
02:41Anyone can learn how to play a couple chords,
02:44and then all of a sudden we could sit around a circle
02:47and sing songs together,
02:49and it's a people's instrument.
02:54People all over the world are unleashing their inner music.
03:00There's a lot of music in the ukulele.
03:02A lot of music in the ukulele.
03:03There's something about it that I think represents sort of a paradise lost.
03:07It's this time and this place that was innocent and at the same time kind of wild and crazy.
03:13I would never have dreamed that I'd be traveling all over the country,
03:16that I'd be playing ukulele festivals.
03:18I never had dreamed that.
03:20It seems that there is a movement now.
03:23There's a ukulele revolution going on.
03:26Welcome to an alternate musical universe.
03:29Wait a minute, this is all like messing with my head,
03:32because I really comfortably put the ukulele in this little shoe box,
03:35and it was tightly closed right here in my mind as this.
03:39Everybody asks, is it a violin or is that a gun?
03:44And I don't know, it's a ukulele.
03:46It makes people happy.
03:50Here's my first uke.
03:53Hey, I've actually never thanked this uke before.
03:55Thank you for everything you've given me.
03:57Tonight's our monthly meeting for the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz,
04:08and tonight's my favorite meeting.
04:12The sign-ups for open mic will start at 6.30.
04:15Twice a year, we do open mic amateur night, and tonight's the night.
04:22Okay, Art, you're one.
04:24Okay.
04:25Okay, Selina, you are 6.
04:29You're spot 6.
04:39Gee, how I'd love to be
04:42Stranded on a desert island with you
04:49The Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz
04:53began as a campy Hawaiian party.
04:56Today, it's a music community of thousands.
04:59We'd strum our ukuleles
05:04The ukulele has this wonderful way of keeping things accessible,
05:09and the fact that there's warble in the music,
05:12and warble in the voices,
05:13and even warble in the walk of a few of us,
05:16it's a, it's a, that's, that's a non-issue.
05:20With you
05:21It's so heartwarming to see the huge smiles on people's faces
05:37when they get up and do that first song for the first time.
05:40One, two, three, four
05:43There's a dark and a troubled side of life
05:52There's a bright and a sunny side too
05:57From a restaurant in California
06:03to a pub in England
06:04No DJ or jukebox,
06:07just voices and ukuleles
06:09The ukulele cuts through the commercialism of music.
06:22It allows you to be a musician
06:23on your street corner in your living room
06:25down your local pub.
06:36This musical revolution knows no borders.
06:40In Japan, Takatoshi Odojima and his friends
06:43have a ukulele afternoon.
06:45I wanted to play guitar or piano,
06:48but I was not a good player.
06:51But once I discovered this ukulele,
06:54it is the easiest instrument I've ever had.
07:03And in Israel...
07:04People are amazed from both sides
07:13that Arabic Jewish people can get along,
07:16but we kind of felt that we have the same language.
07:19You know, that we have our own language.
07:23Politics fall away,
07:24ethnicity falls away,
07:26the gender falls away,
07:27all of those things.
07:28Better than really anything I've ever seen in my life.
07:31It's a unifying force.
07:36The whole thing was an accident.
07:38I mean, you know,
07:39we didn't go to college
07:40to go into the ukulele business.
07:47Once upon a time,
07:49Jim and Liz Bieloff
07:50had established careers
07:51in the entertainment industry.
07:53Liz and I are big-time flea market nuts.
07:57And one day, about 15 years ago,
07:59we walked by a whole bunch of stuff on a blanket,
08:02and there was a ukulele on it,
08:04and it jumped up and said,
08:05take me home.
08:06Here was this instrument
08:16with two fewer strings than a guitar,
08:19and yet the sophistication of the chords
08:22was all there,
08:24and I had no idea
08:25that you could get that kind of pretty sound
08:27out of what I thought
08:28was sort of a novelty instrument.
08:30So the next thing I did
08:32was I tried to track down
08:33old ukulele songbooks.
08:35As I recall,
08:37nobody had them.
08:38Why?
08:39Because the ukulele had fallen
08:40completely off the pop culture radar.
08:42You know, if you went into a music store
08:44and you looked in the ukulele section,
08:45there was nothing there,
08:46and that was when the light bulb went off.
08:48This is the first book we did
08:50with a goofy head.
08:53Then we did the How to Play book,
08:54Jumpin' Jim's Ukulele Tips and Tunes.
08:56How to Do a Christmas Book.
08:59Kids' songs.
09:01And then we started to fall in love
09:02with sort of spirituals.
09:04This was maybe one of the most fun to work on.
09:09We've sold almost 300,000 songbooks.
09:15It is scratching some kind of deep itch
09:18that may not have even been experienced
09:20in a lot of us.
09:21You could take your first finger
09:24and do the bar there
09:26and then take your middle finger.
09:29And then the question becomes,
09:30well, why this and not pianos
09:31or harps or violas?
09:33And I'm not entirely sure,
09:35except that when you think of the ukulele,
09:38you bring along all of your associations
09:40with Hawaii.
09:41In Waikiki, Chris and Daniel do what Hawaiians have done
10:09for generations. They're making music together with their ukuleles.
10:31I've been playing ukulele ever since I was six. Whenever I can pick this thing up, I just
10:35jam, jam until my fingers hurt and I have to go to bed.
10:39When I was young growing up, there was, at least my experience was, there was an ukulele
10:44in every house in Hawaii. It wasn't as if it was like an instrument that you learn to play.
10:56You just pick it up and just start strumming away.
11:12In Honolulu, the ukulele is everywhere. It's a universal symbol of this tropical getaway,
11:34and a cheap souvenir for the millions who vacation here.
11:43But an hour outside of town, on the dry side of the island, the ukulele is much more than
11:49that. It's a connection to the past, to what was once the great kingdom of Hawaii.
11:58Jarrett, Antilemomi, and Honey Boy have been at jams like this since they were kids. It's
12:22something they call Kanikapila.
12:36Kanikapila is when a bunch of your buddies get together, your friends, family, and we
12:41just have a jam session. And everyone takes turns. You sing one, you sing one, you sing one,
12:47and it goes right around it. And we just enjoy the pain. The love of Hawaiian music has kept us close.
12:56It's like Kanikapila that's really jibby. You don't have to worry about the crowd, or if you're doing good work, you just do what you can do.
13:17Just do what you can do, that's it.
13:32In Kanikopile, it wasn't even necessary that you play an instrument.
13:35The only thing somewhat necessary is that you respect the people who are there
13:40and not get in their way and have a love and respect for the music.
13:47The ukulele first appeared in Hawaii in the late 1800s,
13:56about a half century after missionaries first brought Christian hymns to the islands.
14:08Before then, Hawaiian music didn't have familiar conventions like harmony and melody.
14:17Chanting, percussion and dance told the stories of the gods and the kings.
14:24But there was no ukulele.
14:26That's because the instrument, so symbolic of Hawaii, actually has its ancestry on the other side of the planet,
14:37on another tiny island, Portuguese Madeira.
14:40Natives on this winemaking island played the five-string Rijal and its tiny four-string cousin, the Bregina.
14:55In the 1870s, Madeira suffered a drought.
14:58Thousands were forced to emigrate.
15:03And wherever they went, they brought their instruments with them.
15:07With an invitation from the king of Hawaii, thousands of Portuguese braved the four-month trip around the tip of South America to their new home.
15:22And their odd musical instruments had an immediate impact.
15:29During the past week, a band of Portuguese musicians have been delighting the people with nightly street concerts.
15:36The musicians are true performers on their strange instruments.
15:39We confess to having enjoyed the music ourselves and look forward to hearing more of it.
15:47When word reached the royal palace, it caught the attention of Hawaii's king, David Kalakaua.
15:56Most of the things that we have here at the museum are not out on exhibit.
15:59And these ukuleles, these early ukulele that we have here, are a couple of those pieces that we keep in the back.
16:08Coming through.
16:09Hello.
16:10Coming through.
16:11Is Betty going to set up here in her office?
16:13Yes, she's in the office now.
16:14It's already set up.
16:16Okay.
16:18Here we have some of the earliest ukuleles on exhibit.
16:23This one, according to our records here at the museum, was presented by Kalakaua to a family as a gift here in 1890.
16:34So it has come from the king and how he got it, you know, we're not certain, but it is part of his collection.
16:41King Kalakaua was the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe.
16:57He was visiting world leaders, trying to discover a way to rejuvenate his ailing kingdom, ravaged by western disease.
17:04He was aware that there was this decline in population, there was a decline in morale.
17:11The base of that was the fact that we were losing some of our traditions.
17:15He had traveled the world and made these treaties to bring in labor, but he understood that those cultures would bring themselves whatever came with them.
17:27These finely crafted instruments caught the king's fancy.
17:31And when Portuguese luthiers applied the tuning of the five-string rajau to the body of the four-string briginha, a new instrument was born.
17:41And it ended up in the hands of the king.
17:45He was the merry monarch.
17:48Now, did he know other instruments?
17:50Oh, my God.
17:51They all did in Hawaii.
17:52They had grand pianos and guitars.
17:55They knew all that stuff.
17:56But he just loved that little ukulele because it was joyful.
18:01And that was part of his personality.
18:03He was a party giver and a party goer.
18:06In fact, he threw some parties that went on for several weeks, you know.
18:10Koniao, which is one of his, which is his famous drinking song, is a great song for playing ukulele on because the keys are very simple and it's easy enough to add that beat.
18:22The king encouraged its use in the revival of traditional music and dance and within a few years, the ukulele became part of the Hawaiian musical palette.
18:43Kalakaua died at the age of only 55 and just a few years later, Hawaii was annexed by the United States.
19:03But his passion for the ukulele had brought together two cultures.
19:13And the song Aloha Oi, written by his sister and played on the ukulele, would become the signature song of Hawaii.
19:33By the beginning of the 20th century, a small industry had started up. Hawaii had fallen in love with the ukulele.
19:42When I lived there as a young boy, I was known as a kid as the best ukulele player in the world.
20:00Of course, they say that. They know when you see the world, it's exacerbated.
20:05Somebody's gonna be better than you. But at that time, I played the hell out of this instrument.
20:11I really played better that time, I think, than I do now.
20:15Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bill Tapia.
20:24Bill Tapia picked up his first uke in 1915 and recently celebrated his 101st birthday.
20:32I wanna learn to speak Hawaiian, so I could say the British things to you.
20:43I wanna learn to sing Hawaiian, so I can do the mula hula tu.
20:53He taught Shirley Temple how to play, and Betty Grable, and Jimmy Durrani.
20:57And as a kid, he witnessed firsthand the growing infatuation with the ukulele.
21:06It's gonna throw me through and through.
21:11Every place I went, I had the ukulele with me.
21:14Even when I went to school, I used to distract the class.
21:19They'd follow me during recess, and I'd play outside of school.
21:24And we'd go back in class late.
21:28Every place I went, I'd ride on streetcars there, trolley cars.
21:32I had the ukulele with me. The conductor said, go in the back.
21:36I'd go in the back seat and I'd play, and everybody started singing and every damn thing in the streetcar.
21:42When I was 16, I worked on ships going from Honolulu to L.A.
22:00I played ukulele for Hawaiian music.
22:03They used Hawaiian music on the ship for dinner.
22:07That was my first big break.
22:10It was also the ukulele's big break.
22:13As more and more mainlanders discovered their new American paradise,
22:17a thirst for the exotic sounds of Hawaii was growing.
22:21In 1915, it hit critical mass.
22:30We've got to hand it to you.
22:34San Francisco has been a trend-setting city for decades.
22:51And it was here that the ukulele first found a spotlight on the world stage.
22:57For Dan Scanlon, this place is something of a shrine.
23:06Well, we're standing in the marina district of San Francisco,
23:10in the very spot where the Pan-Pacific International Exposition was held in 1915.
23:16From reclaimed ground on the Golden Gate shores, there arose like magic,
23:21a beautiful city of jewels.
23:23This was one of the world's great cultural exhibitions.
23:2724 countries and all 48 states had exhibits.
23:31And right in the center of it all was a pavilion for America's new Hawaiian territory.
23:4617 million people visited the exposition,
23:49and crowds were enthralled by the tones of the Hawaiian quintet.
23:55Their leader, Henry Kalimai, had just written a song,
23:58in English and Hawaiian,
24:00that was going to alter the course of American pop culture.
24:03That song sold more records and more sheet music than any other single in 1915 and 1916.
24:20Everybody wanted to experience the song, the exotic rhythms of Hawaii.
24:29And of course, On the Beach at Waikiki was a perfect song for that because it gave you the location.
24:37It was a big thing to see a little ankle, and here the Hawaiians are, beautiful brown-toned people playing ukuleles and doing hula dances and showing lots of skin.
24:54And it was quite acceptable. It was wonderful.
25:08The next year, RCA Victor's catalog of records, which were brand new at the time, the vast majority of them were Hawaiian-based, you know.
25:18The ukulele arrived in New York City at the same time that millions of immigrants were starting a new life in America.
25:35We're on 28th Street, the home of the Tin Pan Alley.
25:48And this is where it all began for the songwriting industry.
25:52A lot of the great classic Tin Pan Alley songs were written on piano, but it was marketed to the masses with this little instrument in mind.
26:18You would find the ukulele chord symbols on all the pieces of sheet music.
26:22And of course, this was the instrument of the people.
26:24This was something everybody could afford or within reach, you know.
26:28So even though the songs were written on piano, this was the vehicle by which folks could actually enjoy these songs.
26:35The ukulele, baby, of love I'm singing, but you keep ringing.
26:42You just got me crazy, the way you roll.
26:47The uke's tight rhythm was perfect for jazz, and a generation tossed off Victorian morals, launching a decade-long party.
26:55But you get cool, cool, cooler, you, ukulele baby.
27:01Ukuleles were selling by the millions.
27:04They could swing hard, get a laugh, and get the girl.
27:08He knew just what lovin' was invented for.
27:13it was the music of the young and this little instrument went right along with the fashion
27:23it was as much a symbol of being collegiate as a raccoon coat now you couldn't always
27:29forward a raccoon coat but you can afford you can go to sears roebuck and get one for a few bucks
27:33the great ukulele craze put music in the hands of millions of amateur musicians
27:47the backlash was inevitable there's a guy i'd like to kill and if he doesn't stop i will
27:54got a ukulele and a voice that's loud and shrill and he lives next door to me and he keeps me up
28:02with his ukulele and his funny melody crazy words crazy tune all you'll ever hear him croon is
28:11by the early 30s the fad had faded jazz evolved into other rhythms that the ukulele couldn't follow
28:32now folks here's a real surprise for them or for me this is a surprise for everyone good for a
28:40minute i thought you were going to bring back tiny tim
28:41in 1968 the ukulele returned to the pop charts propelling the instrument into a very different
28:51realm of pop culture where do you see this tiny has added a bit of choreography to his usual
28:57presentation there is nothing usual about tiny tim's presentation
29:00tiny tim was this guy who started to appear on television like crazy and he was kind of
29:22considered a big cartoon and pretty much a joke to the world at large beneath the cartoon uh that that
29:29most people think of when they think of tiny tim uh was a guy who was just deeply in love with the
29:35material that he performed he was an absolute encyclopedia of american popular music from the
29:42early 1900s of the 30s or 40s the reason he got into the uke was that it was an instrument that he
29:48could audition with and then if they hated it he could escape fast he took he carried it not in a
29:54uke case but in a paper bag and so it came out of the paper bag fast he did his number and if the
30:00response was less than positive he could put it back in the paper bag and beat a hasty exit
30:05the uke became known as the instrument of wackos and weirdos and sales dropped off a cliff
30:17the instrument was once again consigned to the trash heap of history
30:23this time for about 30 years initially it was with the concept for george harrison
30:35where the baby boomer generation of rock stars came out as uke players i interview rock stars as a job
30:43and the people you would least likely expect to have ukes play ukes and love ukes had ukes
30:51somehow this tiny little instrument that nobody really took seriously was shown as something that
31:10the people you took seriously took seriously but in a not serious way there's so much ambiguity about uke
31:17in the 21st century the ukulele is finding its way back into the spotlight as musicians rediscover a unique musical voice
31:31as a kid i always was finding things in the trash and we saw someone i guess pick up this ukulele and put it down in the trash
31:46kind of out the window i watched it for a little while to see if anyone was going to come back for it and uh
31:53when they didn't i i went out and picked it up and uh i don't think it had all the strings on it but it had some cool stickers
32:01and uh i've been playing it ever since
32:08my buddy my man my partner my dude my homie my first compadre no kind of emotional reason no logic
32:16can't explain the way that we linked it we locked it my buddy my brother my brah
32:20never be lonely if i could call ya talk somewhere nonsensical shit that nobody else get to sizzle and i wanna say
32:27i remember when we first met it was maybe august
32:30sometimes i think if i heard like oh you want to come here some ukulele hip-hop i probably wouldn't be that interested in it
32:35but um with hip-hop i think it actually is really well suited because i was writing songs on the ukulele before but when i hit the hip-hop thing i really felt like i hit my stride
32:43you know a good song if you can play it on the ukulele and it sounds amazing you know that it's a good song there's no fluff there's no tracks to cover up
32:53if it's a good song it'll come through by playing it on the ukulele and singing
32:58tell me stars and moonbeams twinkle in the sky
33:02tell me that my world is pink not blue and i'll be alright
33:09i'll be just fine
33:12tell me dolphins sing starfish lullabies butterfly kisses dry my eyes i'll be alright
33:22i'll be just fine
33:26well i've been singing in bands since i was 15 and that really dates me i'll just leave it at that
33:32but i've been in a bunch of cover bands and i sang backups for about four years for johnny otis
33:39but until i started writing songs and playing the ukulele i didn't really find my voice because i was singing other people's music
33:50tell me mermaids know where buried treasure grows tell me that my world is pink and blue and i'll be alright
34:01i'll be just fine
34:05i'll be alright
34:09i'll be just fine
34:15and the key of c the people's key
34:22last summer i quit my job at the record store to follow a dream and in the last year i have been touring and playing music and that's how i've been making my living
34:34i'm on my way
34:41i'm on my way
34:47i'm on my way
34:53i'm on my way
34:57there's so many reasons why i love the ukulele but one is most people still don't take it seriously in the in the real world so i think i'm just bringing a toy i never have to explain myself when i go through customs i don't need special rigs or roadies take groupies but not roadies
35:26now we're south of los angeles canadian james hill is making a pilgrimage of sorts
35:33there's this community of people who are crazy enough to try to make their living doing this and you get to see them at like every gig
35:44tonight james is performing in carlsbad california
35:51the museum of making music is celebrating the ukulele with a concert and an exhibit dedicated to the instruments place in american culture
35:59the ukulele is always fighting the novelty factor it's so good at being a novelty you know but if it's going to really survive and become an instrument like any other instrument and not that i'm saying that would be a good thing but you know what i mean you know it will stick around and it will be part of the musical landscape for generations to come if we're going to do that we got to be creative
36:26uh...
36:33the driving force of some of my work is what is the ukulele in and of itself
36:41what can the ukulele do in its native tongue that maybe another instrument just couldn't do as well
36:48when he's at home in the nova scotia wilderness james hill composes music for the ukulele that he hopes will be taken seriously
36:56when he's at home in the Nova Scotia wilderness
37:03i wrote one small suite for ukulele because i had to
37:06the ukulele
37:07james hill composes music for the ukulele
37:10that he hopes will be taken seriously
37:12i wrote one small suite for ukulele because i had to i wrote it to prove to myself that this was possible and it also seemed slightly radical to make the ukulele the focus of an orchestra
37:33piece
37:40james and his partner and davison both classically trained musicians are taking the ukulele into unknown territory
37:48i just wanted to push it like pedal to the metal see how far can i go before this thing just explodes on me
38:03and in the process he's discovered something that sets it apart from other instruments
38:09the ukulele is a strumming machine
38:21that seems to be its native voice is the strum
38:25and there are all sorts of things you can do with the strum
38:28and the kind of the sonic boom moment is where you start making more sounds than moves
38:38that's a sort of a magic moment when the soundtrack and the visuals don't sync up
38:48that fries people's brains and they love it
38:54so why would a virtuoso pick the ukulele as his favorite instrument
39:10it actually wasn't so much how i came to the ukulele but how the ukulele came to me
39:24your turn
39:25in the community where i grew up langley british columbia they have a wonderful tradition of teaching elementary music education through the ukulele
39:41ukulele so in grade four i got a standard issue ukulele just like all of my other classmates and had to do two years mandatory service
39:48it's the best thing that ever happened to me
39:54just outside vancouver this sleepy bedroom community looks like any other
40:03you know what you handled that beautifully well done
40:07because the reality is we need the portable
40:11i'll see you sometime after my long principal's meeting tomorrow morning
40:15but there is one big difference
40:18one two one and
40:22let's start that again that's very good that's great playing you can hear it on my left hand side it's right on
40:27make it a little bit more intense a little bit more mysterious ready one two one and
40:32and that difference is peter luongo
40:42the very first time i stood in front of a group of students
40:46started to teach them to play it
40:48and saw that as i started adding harmony
40:51added a chordal accompaniment to it that i had kids making music
40:56i like it i grew up playing the accordion another really loved instrument and uh another one that's got a reputation and where you have to win people over uh as a young college student i attended university and they offered a course in classroom music and uh
41:03classroom music instruction that featured a ukulele
41:10and i just believe that this is among the most effective ways to teach music to children
41:17Canada has a long tradition of teaching
41:46kids music with the ukulele
41:52i was brought in as a first year teacher
41:55had very early success with a group of students who wanted to learn
41:59we probably have i'm going to say close to a thousand kids who are learning to play
42:12tonight is the annual ukulele recital
42:15my daughter started first with the recorder
42:18which was not something we really enjoyed that much
42:21but you know you don't like to discourage them
42:23but i was certainly happy when she brought home the ukulele
42:26because even at the beginning
42:28you can play something that sounds like music
42:32the best players form the senior a orchestra
42:39ladies and gentlemen the lengthy ukulele ensemble will now perform
42:42my brother was going to play
42:48and let them just say close to a few years
42:53i don't have to say close to a few years
42:56wait i want to say close to a few years
42:58i will be an entire group of students
43:01i will be an entire group of students
43:05but then the group of students
43:08that is close to a few years
43:10I recognized that all of this was possible.
43:13It didn't take much.
43:14Once students could see what they could do with the instrument, it became about me making
43:19sure that I was confident enough to teach them to take their full potential to place.
43:24First, the first left hand, one, two, one.
43:30The ukulele is seen as something insignificant, it's seen as something that you can't be
43:39serious about.
43:40Part of the allure for me is that I get the opportunity to change that perception.
43:49Well, I've been in the ensemble for six years now.
44:01I've been playing since grade four though, so it's just always been in my life, ukulele.
44:07I know in elementary school, you say, you know, well, I play the ukulele, but you know,
44:12it's dumb.
44:13I know my mom's making me do it, but that's definitely changed as you get up through the
44:20groups.
44:21And as you realize, the type of music that you're making is really, really advanced.
44:25M8.
44:26Ooh.
44:27No!
44:28No!
44:29No!
44:30No!
44:31No!
45:02When you play the ukulele and you just let out all your emotions into your playing, it is magical in a way, I would say. You know, you can create really nice harmonies and melodies and rhythm at the same time and accompany that with your voice and it's really, really empowering too.
46:35So why would a bunch of teenagers give up their evenings and weekends for the ukulele?
46:43Because every summer they get to go to Hawaii.
46:51My teacher had told us eventually you could get into a group that goes to Hawaii.
46:55I just knew I needed to be in that group.
47:06All right!
47:17Every year the Langley Ukulele Ensemble has a two-week house gig at the Sheraton Waikiki.
47:36Hi everybody! How are you boy? Never mind that handshake.
48:02Yeah, yeah, brother's doing it. Shake-ass brother's health.
48:05Kaini Pelakai is an ukulele player, choral director, and a part-time firefighter.
48:13Yeah, let me see the words.
48:17Okay, how many of you have the words memorized?
48:19Nobody! Negative!
48:21And he teaches the kids traditional Hawaiian songs every time they come to the islands.
48:26Go!
48:31Okay, good. Listen to the words by itself.
48:33I definitely enjoy playing the Hawaiian music on the, you know, it's Hawaiian instrument, most popular in Hawaii, so you just get that feeling it's just meant for the ukulele.
48:59We have a fairly big Hawaiian repertoire, and you kind of get a hang or feel for like the Hawaiian words.
49:05After playing it for a while, you just kinda, you can feel it.
49:07After playing it for a while, you just kinda, you can feel it.
49:41The novelty of foreign kids performing on Hawaii's instrument isn't lost on the local media.
49:47Once again, Peter Longo, the director over here, putting in this rigorous schedule, just making them work so hard.
49:55Here, the ukulele is serious business.
49:58These kids will do two to five shows a day, give daily lessons to hotel guests, and study with the Hawaiian masters of the instrument.
50:13But the highlight of the trip is performing in the Hawaiian communities that have inspired so much of the music that the group plays.
50:29Welcome to the heat of Nanakuli, that's why we sing, that's why we have to sing, that's where the ukulele came from, we'd be very depressed if we didn't have an instrument to keep us occupied in the afternoon sun.
50:41Back in the 1800s, much like a lot of your First Nations people, Hawaiians were moved off of the prime land and put into land that was arid and dry.
50:53To your right is one of the original homestead properties that was created for a people of Hawaiian ancestry.
51:00Unfortunately, throughout time, being from this part of the community, you get stereotyped and you fit this picture.
51:07But a lot of the songs you play come out of this box, come out of this area of Hawai'i.
51:13The audience knows this as a song of praise written for their last king.
51:41But for the Langley's, it's an intimate cultural exchange they'll never forget.
51:48.
52:05.
52:10Teachers live for the aha moment when the lightbulb goes on.
52:20And really as a musical director, this is an offshoot of that.
52:24I'm not in a classroom, or maybe better stated, my classroom is different.
52:28My classroom is the stage.
52:31And when that audience responds as they do, you know you've hit it.
52:40Tonight is the last show of the trip.
52:59And for those graduating, it's the last time they'll play with the group they've been part
53:05of for nearly half their lives.
53:12It is sad knowing that you can't be a part of this forever, but continuing friendships
53:26like you see it all the time when people leave, their friendships just stay like that.
53:32You know, the friends I still keep in touch with from Langley are ukulele friends.
53:39And it's because that connection and the experiences were so much more profound and varied and rich.
53:45And that was all, you know, thanks to the instrument and what we were doing with it.
53:52This humble instrument, born in a wood shop in Honolulu, became a star on Broadway and in Hollywood.
54:17It's brought cultures together and put music in the hands of the many.
54:24Maybe it's time we showed the ukulele a little respect.
54:30Ukulele, pass it on.
54:36Ukulele, pass it on.
54:43Ukulele, pass it on.
55:02Ukulele, pass it on.
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