Ukelele (or how I was conned into joining a band)

 

I may have told you that I am in a book club that meets monthly at our library. Some months ago, while attending one of the book club meetings, I noticed a strange sound coming from the Community Room. On my way out I noticed the sign. Ukelele Club Meets Tonight. I peeked into the room. It was nearly full of people, each one bent over a ukelele and each oblivious to my presence in the doorway. I sneaked out unobserved.

Some days later, I told my music-loving spouse about the ukelele group encounter. She seemed interested so I offered to escort her to the group after my next book club meeting. It was a fateful decision. Exactly one week later, my fate was sealed when she and I slipped into the Community Room after my book club meeting. Neither of us had any idea of what was about to happen.

The strumming ukelele players didn’t seem to notice us as we quietly slipped in the large room. But the leader did. She wouldn’t accept the notion of us sitting in the back, instead, she insisted that we should join her in the front of the room better to hear the music. She asked if either of us had ever played a ukelele. Upon hearing our protestations of ignorance, she offered an unused instrument to Marjorie who was standing nearest her. I was about to take a seat in the corner when she turned to me. “We need singers,” she said as she ushered me to a seat facing the entire room full of ukelele players. Then she handed me a sheaf of papers that included the texts for the songs then being

played. It was impossible to sneak out, besides, the music was pleasant. I shuffled through the pages and found the appropriate music sheet. Soon I was singing at the top of my voice, hoping that was somehow in tune with the rest of the group.

Spouse Marjorie joined in with the twenty or so ukelele players. We pretended that we were long-time players, her strumming and me singing at the top of my voice. Sometime later the leader whispered to me. “You have a wonderful voice and you’re just what we need.” Then she and went back to her job of leading the group into the next song. A little later she told me that she could hear my voice above the others and that I had a good voice for the songs that the group was rehearsing. I thought she might have been kidding. The best I could manage was, “Well, may be. I might be a little better as I learn the music.”

We were hooked. Perhaps one reason for our pleasure at the sound of the music was because many years earlier my father gave a banjo/uke to Marjorie. The instrument was old and had no strings, but we decided to keep it as a memorial to my dad.

At the first several ukelele sessions in the library we played and sang a mixture of old tunes that had become standards and newer tunes made popular by Elton John, John Denver and other world- wide pop stars. That was at the beginning of summer. By the second meeting of the group Marjorie had her own newly, purchased ukelele. My voice was just the same, although I recognized some of the songs that we had played at the first rehearsal, and I had slightly fewer embarrassing moments when I found myself singing alone while everyone else was observing a rest. [more about that below]

We decided to attend a few more of the weekly, not monthly, rehearsals since we both found that we were enjoying the music. Over those first weeks I learned a little about the ukelele group and a lot about ukeleles and the music we played. It turned out that the band had a name, had been playing together for about a year, and was led by a charismatic leader who had formed a similar group in Florida where she and her husband spent their winters.

After a half dozen rehearsals in as many weeks, Marjorie and I participated in our first public performance. It was held at the Roscommon Senior Center where we entertained a group of seniors who numbered approximately the same as the number of performers in our ukelele group. The performance went off without a hitch and both the audience and the performers seemed to enjoy themselves – including me. It didn’t hurt that the Senior Center gave us a nice lunch.

[This is time for a little education who about ukeleles and the singers who perform using the instrument.] The lightweight instrument is a four string, wooden box in the approximate shape as a small guitar. There are actually five different sized ukes, each of which has a slightly different sound. During the 1920’s an instrument called a banjo uke was developed. Here is the text from Wikipedia: The banjo ukelele, also known as the banjolele or banjo uke, is a four-stringed musical instrument with a small banjo-type body and a fretted ukelele neck. The earliest known banjoleles were built by John A. Bolander and by Alvin D. Keech, both in 1917.

 

The instrument achieved its greatest popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, and combines the small scale, tuning, and playing style of a ukulele with the construction and distinctive tone of a banjo, hence the name. Its development was pushed by the need for vaudeville performers to have an instrument that could be played with the ease of the ukulele, but with more volume.

Many think the instrument comes from Hawaii because of famous Hawaiian singers like Do Ho and more recently, Bruno Mars. By the way, the ukelele is known in Hawaii as an OOO-key lay lee, although most of us know it as a You ca lay lee.

Hawaiian Singer Israel Kamakawiwoole

 

Hawaiian Singer Don Ho

The players in our group are a diverse group of amateurs. The group is known as the Roscommon Ukers or for short, the Rosco Ukers. There are now six singers [like me] and 40-some uke players. The group diversity is a hoot. We have members ranging in age from seven to ninety-four and not all play a uke exclusively, as we have several banjo-ukes (aka known as banjo-leles) and different sizes of ukeleles that affect the sound delivered from the instrument. A half dozen of our players are children, but most are seniors who have the time for such foolishness as this.

I have now participated in several of our public performances. Many are held outdoors, some indoors if the venue has a space large enough of accommodate a group of 40 performers. I missed one of our first outdoor performance where the group performed on the lawn of a new business in town. The Village Manger was called during this performance since an irate citizen complained about a public disturbance coming from the downtown area. We all had a good laugh about this, including the Village Manager.

One of the problems in learning the music is that most of the music play sheets are NOT typical music compositions with base clefs, treble clefs, measures, notes, rests, and other directions given to performers. Instead, ukelele players are given play sheets with the texts of the music written out as poetry with chords noted above the texts (in the approximate location where they are to be played) and instructions for strumming. Missing are time signatures, rests, pitch and volume controls. These details are to be learned by listening to professionals who have recorded their songs and made them available, many times at no cost for use by amateurs like us.

Those shortcomings don’t seem to be all that important since enough of our singers and ukelele players have learned the music well enough to produce a harmonious tune. The size of the group is large enough that my errors of pitch and timing are subsumed by the large group. At least, that’s what I tell myself. At our performances, the singers set apart from those strumming their instruments. We singers are generally positioned in pairs facing the strummers. Since we are close together with the music sheets between us, each of the partners must be able to hear each other. Since I can hear my partner perfectly well, I assume she can hear me just as well. Fortunately, she is a better singer than me so I can follow her lead and stay only a note or two behind.

I am trying to learn from her and I have discovered that she keeps time by tapping her foot to the beat established by the strummers. I decided I should do the same to improve my timing. At our last performance I learned that this practice has some problems. Both she and I are seniors, and we find that some of the poetry is in small type requiring us to bring the music closer to our noses to accommodate our aging eyes. I generously picked up the music from the stand and held it for her. It took several measures before I realized that I was shaking the paper to the beat of the song. “Aha!” I said aloud, that’s why the music is hard to read. I’ll need to work on fixing that problem at our next performance which is tomorrow and I’ll need to make another report to you.

 

Bill