Let me start by saying I have no problem with people strumming chords on the ukulele, BUT there’s so much more potential with this brilliant instrument. I totally fell in love with the uke three years ago and to date have written and recorded 25 tracks using the ukulele with many more in the pipeline. Prior to picking up the uke I had the stereotypical idea of the uke as a bit of a gimmick and not really “a proper musical instrument” Now I realise how wrong I was. If I had only watched YouTube clips and attended a few uke festivals I would probably have never explored the potential for this instrument. A lot of what I see and hear is at best pretty average. Fortunately there are some conter examples to this and when I set up Original Ukulele Songs (OUS) almost two years ago, players like Victoria Vox, Alan Thornton, Paul Cameron, Phil Doleman and others gave me some hope that the mighty uke can be used infar more creative ways.
My good friend and longstanding brilliant international musician Martin Simpson makes some really useful and insightful comments 8.20 minutes into this clip
Martin is the most extraordinary player and this is a rare clip of him playing the uke. Last year I saw him play live with the uke leaving the audience amazed at a quite extraordinary performance. Of course Martin plays a wide range of instruments and over the years we have talked about how this develops new ways of musical exploration.
I appreciate that there is a place for people learning the ukulele and starting out with simple chords, everyone has to start somewhere. The tragedy in my view is that often that’s where exploration stops when there are so many more possibilities. Such explorations are of course not for everyone, but if players and event hosts want to capture the public imagination in a far bigger way then its important to showcase the uke in a much more expanded way. A crucial part of this exploration is creating new music and not just recycling previous material and the OUS platform is a small but mighty group of artists who are helping with this task.
