A Brief History of Uke

Since a good portion of Don Ho's show on Sunday night was dedicated to advertising for his restaurant at Aloha Tower, I decided to get a drink there before dinner last night, which was a few steps away from Don's at Chai's, a popular dining plus music venue. There I saw Jerry Santos play some beautiful Hawaiian music while I ate mahi mahi. Unfortunately, his frequent guest Bryan Tolentino didn't play with him last night, so the performance was ukulele-free.

Today in class I made the soundhole for my uke, shaped the end of the fretboard, attached it, and designed and cut my headstock. The headstock is one of the few places on the instrument where those of us in the class have a little freedom to do what we want. I made about 20 sketches in my notebook, but--as is always the case with this kind of thing--I ended up going with the first one...well, not quite. When I showed Mike my first headstock template, he explained that I needed to taper it where the headstock meets the fretboard, instead of flaring it out, as I had intended. The way he put it was this: "If your headstock flares out like that, how are you going to play G7?" This is why Mike makes the big bucks. When you play a G7 chord your hand is butted up against the head, and you need a little room to get your hand in there. If you look at today's photos, I've included a drawing of what I originally intended and a picture of what my headstock ended up looking like. Notice the difference? It's a good example of how what looks good on paper isn't always great in practice.

There was also an endless amount of sanding and filing today as I shaped the back of the neck. Much of this work was done with the same Microplane zester I have at home. I use mine on food. Mike uses them on wood. Remind me not to eat at Mike's house.

After class Phil and I visited a few pawn shops around town, looking to see if there might be some uke treasures hidden away. There were indeed a few nice ukes at the shops we stopped at, but unfortunately the shop owners seemed to know what they were worth.

On my way to dinner at Kobe Steak House, I went through the Hilton Hawaiian Village--which might better be called the Hilton Tiki Megacomplex--just to see what was there. Not far from a statue of Alfred Apaka, sure enough there was a uke shop. I think building a uke has made me into a very annoying uke shop customer. I literally had the shopkeeper loan me a ruler so I could check the specs on the ukes I played. Truth is, the main reason I did this is because I am really starting to notice what feels good to play and what doesn't, and I want to take what I've learned about my own likes and dislikes back to Mike's shop tomorrow so I can make sure the uke I'm building is one I'm comfortable playing.

While I was plunking on an 8-string Kamaka, a woman came into the store and began to ask the shopkeeper and me about ukuleles. One of her questions was this: "How do you pronounce the name of that instrument?"

It's a good question, and it depends, I suppose, on where you are. Mainlanders call them "yookuleles," but Hawaiians--who are probably more knowledgeable than mainlanders in pronouncing Hawaiian words--call them "ookuleles." You may have noticed that the word "Hawaii" is sometimes (more acurately) spelled with what looks like a backward apostrophe: Hawai'i. That backward apostrophe represents a sound we don't really have in English, a glottal stop. I guess when your alphabet only has 12 letters, you've gotta add something. The point is that 'ukulele properly spelled (and pronounced) has a glottal stop at the front. The word means "jumping flea" in Hawaiian, and although there are a number of theories on the subject, no one really knows why, which is surprising when you learn how recently ukes (or 'ukes) came into existence.

In 1879, just four years before the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, a ship arrived in Honolulu carrying Portuguese immigrants. They had with them an instrument from home called a braguinha. The Hawaiians took a liking to the little thing and before long three of the Portuguese immigrants were making ukuleles full time.

The uke caught on in the mainland in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a sort of World's Fair intended to celebrate the completion of the Panama canal. As were the Hawaiians with the braguniha, so were mainlanders enamored of the ukulele, and the golden era of the uke was born, lasting through the '20s. Since then, it seems about right to say that the uke has gone though alternate waves of popularity and scorn, in approximately 20-year cycles, but I don't have any diagrams to prove it.

At any rate, I'm happy to say right now the uke is in a boom cycle.

[view today's photos]