Interviews and Performances “When I played my first chord, I was hooked. I fell in love.” Jake Shimabukuro, Ukulele Virtuoso Honolulu, Hawaii Jake Shimabukuro BIOGRAPHY: Jake Shimabukuro gets a lot of music out of a ukulele. That’s no accident, he’s been playing all his life. When he was four, his mother gave him a uke, showed him four chords and told him he could play two-hundred and fifty-three Hawaiian songs with those three chords. Even though no-one around him played, something kept him coming back to the uke and he taught himself to play the music around him. His parents listened to some Beatles, some Jazz, Jake listened to some Zeppelin, some Pearl Jam and when Jake took his playing out into local cafes, that’s the music he bought with him. As a teen working in a record store, he was asked by local uke legend, Byron Yasui, to audition as a substitute on a recording, and that audition began a friendship and opened Jake to a new world of classical style and technique. He toured a little, ended up in New York, recorded a video, playing While My Guitar Gently weeps in Central Park and posted it on YouTube. Before long, he started getting the calls: Tours, TV, radio, and he was on his way. That clip has been viewed over two million times. He has released an album every year for the last five years and all of them have won awards. “The uke is part of the rags to riches stories of songwriters who came with nothing, and contributed to the musical landscape of the world.” Lil’ Rev, Tin Pan Alley Historian and Performer Milwaukee, Wisconsin Lil Rev BIOGRAPHY: Born in Milwaukee, WI, Lil’ Rev grew up immersed in the culture of his garment-trade community. Family and friends told the stories and sang the songs, not only of the Old World, Eastern Europe, but also of the New World: New York City. Pogroms and prejudice forced wave after wave of immigration from the stetls of Eastern and Central Europe through the turn of the last century. Some settled in small industry towns, some in large ones. The largest industry town was New York, where writers and composers on Tin Pan Alley cranked out hundreds of songs a day to sell on Broadway, Vaudeville and sheet music. Songs that hit, hit huge and many still survive a hundred years later around campfires and on long car trips, at a cellular level in North American society: By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Five Foot Two, Ain’t She Sweet, Singing in the Rain. Many of these composers were Jewish, and the Jews of Lil’ Rev’s community sang and loved their songs as well as the songs of old. For Lil’ Rev, these songs contain and convey a part of his identity and he is passionate about passing that music on to others. He tours the US, playing schools, concert halls, festivals, weddings and bar mitzvas, and when he plays, he tells the stories of those who wrote the songs and those who sang them, he tells the stories of his people. Bard, Jester, Storyteller, Teacher, Lil’ Rev is serious about the fun and sad beauty of the music of Jewish-American culture. FOCUS: Tin Pan Alley’s heyday was the 1920’s, when uke stars were rich and respected, and ukes were selling in the millions. It was a time prosperous enough to support a large song-writing industry. In a time before recorded music made us all passive listeners, these artists got their money from the sale of sheet music. Fleets of salesmen flogged sheet music door to door, in stores and music halls all over North America and nearly every one of those sheets, along with lyrics and music, showed ukulele chords. Back then, if you wanted music, you had to make it. Ukuleles were cheap enough that nearly everyone could afford one, so the uke became the most popular instrument. Because of its connection with Tin Pan Alley, because of its place in the Rags to Riches stories he loves, because of its Old Tyme sound, Lil’ Rev chooses the uke to accompany his songs stories. The uke was at the centre of North American music back then, it was actually the voice of the people, and it still resonates to this day. QUOTE: The ukulele is part of this body of rags to riches stories, this music that I love. Tin Pan Alley was a place where dreams could come true with hard work and a good name, and these old world guys and new world kids carved out a place for themselves, and in the process, wrote the music that defined and connected America. The ukulele was what people were using to play that music, so, in many ways, the music of this period was written for the uke. “Who else is going to make peace here?” Paul Moore, Teacher, Conductor, One-Man Band Hod Hasheron, Israel Paul Moore BIOGRAPHY: Paul Moore was born on the wrong side of the wrong tracks in Southend, London. He quit school early and landed a job on the stock exchange where, despite resistance to his long hair and casual demeanor, he worked his way up to be the youngest manager in his firm, in charge of Mergers and Acquisitions. One day he sold a company, knowing that it would be dismantled, all its jobs lost and its town, ruined. He quit the next day and got on the beatnik trail, digging worms for money, sleeping in a squat or wherever, and always playing music. By then it was the Sixties and Paul was in London. He jammed with Pink Floyd, saw the Beatles in a club and was probably at Hyde Park with the Stones. A serious Hippie, Paul was always interested in communal living, so it was Kibbutz life that drew him to Israel. He spent a decade or so in a Kibbutz in Haifa, before settling in a suburb of Tel Aviv with his wife, Daphna, and son Alon. As the conflict in Israel heated up year after year, Paul found himself drawn into the conflict, beginning to blame and realized he wanted to be part of a solution, not part of the problem. By then he was making a living as a musician, so his time was somewhat flexible, and he had plenty of musical experience. Once he saw that the best way to unite communities is through children, the idea for a ukulele orchestra wasn’t far behind. The instrument is small, inexpensive and many songs can be played with a few very simple chords. Paul made the contacts, found the parents and kids and started the twenty-piece Ukuleles for Peace Orchestra. And four years later, Arab and Jewish children play together, picnic together with their parents, and make peace with their historic enemy. It’s a small thing, but it’s working to bring segregated communities together to better understand each other. It’s making peace. FOCUS: Paul Moore does a little bit of everything. Everything in his home is cobbled together from something else, much of it hand-painted with elaborate designs. He is a jack-of-all-trades musically as well, playing washboard, ukulele and every imaginable kind of percussion, sometimes all at once. He is a dedicated recycler and junk-collector, playing only reclaimed objects in his one-man band. Paul Moore is a doer, a creator, a dreamer, constantly reshaping the world. This story will focus on his dynamism, following him on bike and road as he runs from gig to class to rehearsal to show, teaching the healing power of music to another generation. QUOTE: I found myself saying “it’s time to leave, or I’ve got to do something.” And now, four years later, we’ve got an orchestra. “The uke has a powerful draw that I still can’t explain.” Jim Beloff, Ukulele Revivialist Clinton, Connecticut Jim and Liz Beloff BIOGRAPHY: Jim and Liz Beloff live in a sunny house in rural Connecticut, the hub of a massive ukulele network centred around Jumpin’ Jim’s website at Flea Market Music, where all your ukulele needs can be met. Jim was once a writer for Billboard, and Liz, a graphic designer for film, until Jim, always musical and in search of an instrument that truly spoke to him, found a ukulele. Smitten immediately, Jim went searching for music to play on the uke and found that the old music, with the uke chords on it, was out of print and new music had no uke chords. There was no sheet music for the uke. So Jim made his own. Jim transposed the music and Liz did the graphics and they managed a message board through which uke players everywhere could find each other and trade tales. It could be coincidence, but it was right around then, the late ninties, that festivals started getting organized and the first uke clubs met, many of them with Jim and Liz present. They are often credited with the revival of the uke, running workshops, writing and distributing how-to books and music, networking with ukers everywhere and generally embodying that sense of genuine charm that is the spirit of the ukulele. FOCUS: Jim loves the uke and he has organized his life around making the uke and uke music available to the world. In addition to their publishing, Jim and Liz make their own brand of uke, the sturdy, colourful, plastic Fluke.