By Ben Burgess
Tune up those strings and get ready to strum!
The Uke New Jersey festival is coming to Morris Township for a sprawling celebration of all things ukulele, on Aug. 30 and 31 at the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship.
Festival organizer Scooter Ferguson promises plenty of good vibrations.
“You listen to the music that comes out of these little boxes, and it makes you smile. And like everyone else who loves the ukulele, I’m trying to spread it around,” said Ferguson, chairman of special concerts for the Folk Project, northern New Jersey’s volunteer folk music and dance organization.
Festivities will kick off at 8 pm on Aug. 30 with a screening of Tony Coleman and Margaret Meager’s documentary, Mighty Uke: The Amazing Comeback of a Musical Underdog.
After the film, Jim and Liz Beloff, co-founders of Flea Market Music Inc., will take to the stage with a set of original and classic ukulele tunes, followed by a performance from up-and-coming singer-songwriter and ukulele star Victoria Vox, who will close out the day with pop-infused pizazz.
The event will roar back into action at 10 am on Aug. 31 with workshops on ukulele history and songwriting, and a series of ukulele master classes. In addition, attendees may participate in an eight-hour-long open mic, starting at 10 am. Impromptu jam sessions are strongly encouraged.
At 7:30 pm, the event’s focus shifts back to the stage. Jim and Liz Beloff will open the concert, which will include performances from acclaimed ukulele and cello duo James Hill and Anne Janelle (featuring a movement from Hill’s composition One Small Suite for Ukulele), and the band Celtic Spirit, performing a smorgasbord of traditional Celtic music featuring a truly eclectic instrument: The tiple.
“Basically, the tiple is a 10-stringed, steel-stringed ukulele,” explained Ferguson. “It’s kind of like a ukulele on steroids.”
But for Ferguson, the tiple is more than just that; it’s living (or rather, non-living) proof that the ukulele can really do just about anything.
“One of the things that I’m trying to do with this festival is to show people the versatility of the instrument,” he said.
DID YOU KNOW…? FUN FACTS ABOUT THE UKULELE, BELOW
Indeed, with the help of artists such as the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, better known as “Iz,” and ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabokuro, the ukulele has become increasingly popular.
According to Ferguson, between Iz’s famous (and oft-played) medley of Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World, and Shimabukuro’s astounding rise to fame through a viral YouTube ukulele cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, it seems as if people around the globe are taking the little instrument more seriously than ever before.
“Something really interesting that’s going on now, and that didn’t really happen in the past, is ukulele clubs,” he said. “They’re all over the world now, and these clubs have monthly get-togethers where everyone comes together and plays ukulele.”
And these ukulele clubs have one more key feature that makes them all the more enticing, and certainly makes the ukulele all the more fun to circulate.
Said Ferguson: “It’s different than folk music, because people usually take turns [when they perform]. Ukulele clubs don’t do that. They’ll pick a song, and everybody will play at the same time.”
The festival will celebrate the uke’s versatility with a wide variety of ukulele-based merchandise, ranging from Bob McNally’s three-stringed “Strumsticks” to author Tom Walsh’s book entitled, The Martin Ukulele: The Little Instrument That Helped Create the Guitar Giant. Two on-site food vendors will make sure festival-goers don’t go hungry.
Ferguson insists the festival is not just about the ukulele, however.
“A big part of my purpose behind this is to introduce the ukulele community to the folk community and vice versa,” he said. “I think that they’ll get along very nicely together.”
Why?
“Ukulele music is folk music,” said Ferguson. “To me, the definition of folk music is music that is accessible enough that you can sit down and play it yourself, and that is so much of what the ukulele community does. To me, it’s just a natural match.”
Uke New Jersey tickets may be purchased online or at the door. If you buy by Aug. 9, prices are $15 for Friday, $65 for Saturday and $75 for both days. After that, tickets are $20/$75/$85. The Morristown Unitarian Fellowship is at 21 Normandy Heights Road in Morris Township.
MG Correspondent Ben Burgess, a 2012 graduate of Morristown High School, plays bass with Timeless Jazz and was a finalist in last year’s MorristownGreen.com Film Festival. He attends Carnegie Mellon University.
UKU-LOIDS: FUN FACTS ABOUT THE UKULELE
1. “Ukulele” roughly translates to “jumping flea.”2. The ukulele was originally called the braginha by the Portuguese.3. The ukulele was first developed and introduced to Hawaii in the 1880s by Portuguese immigrants.4. The ukulele is based on small, guitar-like instruments that are native to Portugal, including the machete, the rajao, and the cavaquinho.5. Ukuleles usually come in one of four sizes. They are, from biggest to smallest, baritone, tenor, concert, and soprano.6. The baritone ukulele weighs around 1.72 pounds, more than an average-sized guinea pig.7. Bob McNally, creator of the McNally Strumstick, created the “Space Guitar,” a backpacker guitar that became the first American guitar to go to space on a 1994 Space Shuttle flight.8. Early TV star Arthur Godfrey gave lessons on the air, selling millions of plastic ukuleles in the 1950s.9. Jake Shimabokuro rocketed to international fame thanks to his uke version of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps, one of YouTube’s first “viral” videos.10. George Harrison was hooked on ukes; he gave one to Tom Petty and strummed a ukulele on his final album, for the song Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. In concert, Paul McCartney does a ukulele version of Something as a tribute to George.11. Pete Kennedy of The Kennedys performs an astonishing ukulele version of George Gershwin’sRhapsody in Blue.12. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole‘s uke video of Over the Rainbow has been viewed nearly 86 million times on YouTube, making the late Hawaiian the Big Kahuna of ukulelians. –compiled by Ben Burgess and Kevin Coughlin
