The guitar’s diminutive cousin, the ukulele has seen a huge surge in popularity in recent years. We’ve got some fascinating uke facts for you, along with some advice on picking up this most portable of instruments.
1. The ukulele is related to the violin
The ukulele forms part of the large lute family – instruments with plucked strings, also including (deep breath) the lute itself, plus the oud, pipa, guitar, banjo, bouzouki, theorbo, sitar and many others. Bowed instruments, including the viols and violins, are also members of the lute family.
Ukuleles commonly come in four sizes: soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone.
2. It can trace its ancestry back to Tudor times
The ukulele’s classical roots have been explored most recently in a collaboration between master uke players (and Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain members) Nick Browning and George Hinchliffe, together with lutenist Elizabeth Kenny’s ensemble Theatre of the Ayre. Called Lutes ‘n’ Ukes, the project unites the Renaissance guitar and 20th-century ukulele. ‘The Portuguese braguinha and lute would have been contemporary instruments and played together in Elizabethan times,’ says Browning.
‘One of our orchestra plays a Renaissance guitar that just happens to be a four-course instrument with re-entrant tuning, very much like the ukulele.’ And the project also links two homonymous composers from very different eras: Robert Johnson (1583-1633), the Tudor lute composer, and Robert Johnson (1911-38),the blues guitarist.
3. It found a dream audience in Hawaii
The ukulele first arrived on the shores of Hawaii in 1879 in the guise of the Portuguese braguinha, a small four-stringed instrument from the island of Madeira, closely related to the mainland cavaquinho.
The instrument pitched up on the Hawaiian islands with Portuguese immigrants from Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde. Three of these visitors – Manuel Nunes, José do Espírito Santo, and Augusto Dias, all of them cabinet makers from Madeira – are credited as the first ukulele producers.
Just a fortnight after the visitors arrived in August of 1879, the local newspaper carried a report that ‘Madeira Islanders recently arrived here, have been delighting the people with nightly street concerts’. Lovely stuff.
4. Why is it called a ukulele? Maybe because of this guy…
One man, João Fernandes, learnt to play on the four-month sea voyage to Hawaii and legend has it that islanders were so impressed with the speed of his finger work that they named the instrument ‘ukulele’, or ‘jumping flea’.
- The ukulele features in our list of the easiest instruments to play
5. For the Hawaiian royal family, it was love at first sight (or sound)
Another (possibly more credible) explanation for its name came from Hawaiian royalty. Princess Likelike was herself a ukulele player and explained that the name meant ‘the gift that came to here’.
Royal seal of approval also came from Hawaii’s King Kalākaua (who reigned from 1874 to 1891, and was splendidly also known as the Merrie Monarch) and Queen Lili‘uokalani, who both played and composed on the instrument. With their endorsement it soon became central to the sound of Hawaiian music.
‘It brings a bouncing counterpoint to the rhythm guitar and a gut or nylon string timbre to groups of steel instruments,’ guitarist and ethnomusicologist Bob Brozman explained to me back in 2006. ‘And of course it provides a rhythm for singing as well as slack and steel guitar.’
6. It hit the US big time during World War I
In 1915, the ukulele hit the US. A highly portable and inexpensive instrument, it sparked a craze and quickly became a staple of vaudeville, jazz and country music. Across the Pacific it was introduced to Japan in 1929 by Hawaiian-born Yukihiko Haida and its popularity has never diminished – in fact, the country is considered the ukulele’s second home.
The instrument is loved by young Japanese, best exemplified by the flash mob group Ukulele Afternoon, who descend on beaches and shopping malls to play as a group and describe their form of playing as ‘Punk rock combined with the sensitivity of a chamber orchestra’.
7. George Formby championed the uke in the, er, UK
Here in the UK, the ‘uke’ is most commonly associated with George Formby, the comedian and film star who played a banjolele – a ukulele hybrid with a banjo resonator body. Formby ignited a passion for the instrument in the Beatles’ guitarist George Harrison, who had a ukulele in every room of his house. Other celebrity players include Paul McCartney and comedian Peter Sellers.
Although Formby was an impressive player, it’s that jaunty ‘Leaning on a Lampost’ association that has sunk the instrument’s reputation in the eyes of many people. But for classical guitarist Nick Browning, the ukulele is a very serious proposition.
‘I came to the uke as a challenge,’ he explains. ‘As a classical guitar student, I was very pleased with myself when I’d cracked one of the fugues by J.S. Bach on classical guitar. Then I heard a violinist playing it on just four strings and I wanted to know how they were doing it. So when I discovered the uke I set out to challenge myself to do just the same.’
8. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain can play you almost anything
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain has become a national institution, with a repertoire that ranges from classical to punk, and spaghetti western to ’70s disco. And yes, all of this musical cornucopia is performed on instruments with just four strings (a solitary acoustic bass guitar gets in on this technicality).
The orchestra has played a major part in popularising the ukulele, with sales at music stores booming and the instrument becoming a mainstay of schools’ music curriculum. But it’s been far from an overnight sensation.
9. It has a small range – but huge potential
Adding to the restriction of a small fretboard is the ukulele’s ‘re-entrant tuning’, which is also found on instruments such as the five-string banjo and means that the strings don’t run from low to high – instead, they begin with the G above middle C, then drop down to middle C itself before rising up to E and then A. This high register gives the ukulele its characteristically bright sound, but limits the range to that of a descant recorder.
‘With the re-entrant tuning, it’s an exercise in minimalism,’ explains the Orchestra’s Nick Browning. ‘You have to imply a lot as there’s no bass note. It’s a small instrument with a tiny range, so you have to orchestrate carefully. But by using the high G and playing across the strings, it does allow you to achieve that campanella – or bell-like – sound that would have been heard in Elizabethan music. So the ukulele has the potential to connect people to a vast repository of classical and contemporary music.’