The Metropolis

See this: the ukelele hits London. Hard

Mike Pollitt | Monday 21 November, 2011 11:43

That’s James Hill covering Billie Jean on the ukelele. It’s good. He’s performing in London next week after screenings of Mighty Uke, the ukelele documentary you’ve all been waiting for. We caught up with the film’s director Tony Coleman to find out what the hell he thought he was playing at.

How did you come to make a film about the ukelele?

I used to be a professional musician in Canada, a bass player in a touring rock and roll band. My big sister, a nursery school teacher, played the ukulele and I used to tease her about how corny it was. But she passed away about 15 years ago and I inherited her ukulele. As soon as I started strumming it I realized that this was a completely different approach to making music. It was simple and fun and inspired me to write music in a way I hadn’t before. I started taking it to jams and before long my friends all wanted one too! I started doing some research on-line and discovered that this was happening all over the world. My partner Margaret and I had been looking for a project to work on together and that was how MIGHTY UKE was born.

One of the ukelelers says “people who play the ukelele are happy”. Are they?

People who play the ukulele are often less concerned with the way others see them, which allows for a certain freedom that does seem to make people happy. Not many people pick up a uke to enhance their social status, they pick it up because it makes them feel good. I can’t speak for everyone, but it makes me happy, and MIGHTY UKE does seem to leave audiences feeling joyful and inspired, which is rare for a documentary.

The film explains how the ukelele came to be seen as “an instrument of wackos and weirdos” in the 1960s and 70s. But most of the ukelelers in your film seem defiantly normal. Was the ukelele victim of a profound injustice, or does it attract oddballs?

That is really the heart of our film, taking the audiences expectation that this was an instrument for oddballs and illustrating it’s practical applications for people of all walks of life. Thirty years ago if someone said they did Yoga, people would snicker. Today, most realize its profound health benefits. I think the same thing is happening with the uke. Medical studies have indicated that the second best way to battle depression is by making your own music (physical exercise being the first). And the uke is extremely easy to get making music with.

I believe the ukulele was really a victim of the Baby Boomers rebellion against much of what their parents liked. And by the fifties, the uke was being marketed to kids as a toy. Teenagers don’t want to play with toys. Many of the great musicians of the Boomer generation started on the uke, The Beatles, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell…the list goes on.

We meet quite a variety of players in the film, who was your favourite?

That’s like picking a favourite amongst your children! Shouldn’t do it. But what I can say is that as a result of this film we have developed a wonderful relationship with the performer James Hill, who will be playing at all of our UK shows. He is a musical virtuoso on anything with strings, but his sensibility is all about sharing that virtuosity and creating programs for kids to use the ukulele as an easy way to teach music literacy.

The film suggests that The Beatles fatally damaged the ukelele’s reputation with their electric guitars, but Paul McCartney was a keen ukeleler himself. Should he feel guilty for his crimes?

Sir Paul has nothing to feel bad about. In fact it was, his rendition of Something at the Concert for George that reintroduced the uke to the general public. Ironically, the Beatles, especially Paul and George, both ruined and revived the ukulele’s reputation. It was their success with electric guitars that made teenagers in the 60’s toss their ukes in the closet, and then their return to the uke in later life that helped bring it back. During the making of MIGHTY UKE we found many “recovering guitarists” picking up the uke to try to regain the musical innocence with which they approached the guitar when they were young.

Will the uke ever be taken seriously? Is it too happy for its own good?

There is enough “seriousness” in the music business already. Part of the beauty of the uke is that it isn’t too serious. Most other instruments come with a set of expectations: riffs, arpeggios, songs and showmanship that players are “supposed” to achieve before they can call themselves “good”. The uke doesn’t have that baggage yet. When people pick up a uke, they have no pre-conceived notions of what they should do with it, so they are free to make their own music their own way. That allows ukers to express themselves instead of someone else. MIGHTY UKE is about a revolution that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

You take us to the Langley school system, where the uke is used to teach music. It seems to mean a lot to those kids. Were you surprised how strong a pull this little instrument had? Should we be getting it into our schools over here?

Quite a few UK schools are using the ukulele to teach music and music literacy already, both at the elementary and secondary levels. The real surprise in MIGHTY UKE is how powerful a school ukulele orchestra can be, how versatile the instrument is and that players can achieve real virtuosity on it both individually and in groups. Teaching music on the uke is an excellent idea because it is cost effective, teaches rhythm and harmony and allows players to sing along. That combination is hard to come by with other instruments.

At times in the film the uke is described as “democratic”, “accessible” and “the people’s instrument”. Is it really a political instrument?

“Politics” in that context is just another word for human interaction. Since the dawn of recorded music, we’ve been increasingly relegated to the role of passive consumer in our relationship to music; made to sit back, listen and shut up unless we can outdo the pro’s, and that’s left many people without any musical voice. The uke is easy enough to learn to play that kids and older folks without training can learn to play, which can be quite liberating to those of us who have spent most of our lives as passive listeners.

What about the future? Can the uke become cool again?

I hope not. Cool is the death of genuine. The uke’s beauty is that it defies expectation, especially the expectation that everyone, even little kids with mohawks in Ramones T Shirts, should aspire to cool. Trying to be cool is trying to be what you’re not. What I love about the uke is that it encourages you be be who you are, unapologetically.

Mighty Uke is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse on Friday 25 Nov, Clapham Picturehouse on 26 Nov, and the Lexi Kensal Rise on 27 Nov. Tickets available from the venues.

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