The Return of the Jumping Flea
Eddie O'Strange
The Return of the Jumping Fleas!
Or how we learned to stop worrying and love the ukulele
Ian Lendler
Sunday, November 25, 2007
It is, admittedly, a long way from Hawaii. Twenty-four hundred miles,
to be exact. But if you were to sail from the postcard beaches of
Honolulu to Berkeley, you wouldn't know they shared the same ocean.
Landing on the shores of Berkeley, you would encounter a dispiriting
swath of highways and warehouses dumped there by a society that no
longer needs the sea.
Among those warehouses, however, you would find one building filled
with evidence that the two cities are, in fact, long-distance next- door
neighbors. In West Berkeley's Sawtooth Building, a faint smell of
Hawaii lingers in the air. This is the workshop of Mike DaSilva, one
of America's premier ukulele-makers, and the sawdust on his workshop
floor is koa wood, imported from Oahu. In the rafters, his pet
parakeet flaps and squawks above the 30 or 40 people sitting below,
chatting amiably and tuning their ukuleles. Or trying to.
This is the sixth meeting of the Berkeley Ukulele Club, and many
members began playing only a few weeks ago, so tuning is a skill not
yet fully mastered. Some of them picked up the ukulele on a whim. Some
are here because a friend convinced them it would be fun. Few are
aware that by playing the ukulele, they're joining a tradition that
has deep roots in the place-memory of the bay, harking back to a time
when the ocean's presence defined this shipping port that was known as
the Gateway to Hawaii.
On Aug. 14, 1883, the steamer ship Mariposa made the voyage from
Hawaii to the bay carrying an exotic group of passengers - Hawaiian
musicians. Their arrival sparked rumors along the San Francisco docks.
"Leprosy!" cried the local papers. Nonsense, said the harbor doctor,
whose diagnosis was somewhat more prosaic. As with many bands out on
the road (or ocean), some of the musicians had syphilis. This did
nothing to dampen the city's excitement.
Thousands of Knights Templar from across the country were convening on
San Francisco for their Triennial Conclave. On Aug. 16, they joined
the city's elite in the court of the Palace Hotel, packing in as
tightly as decorum would allow to witness what no one in America had
ever heard before - Hawaiian music.
"Thunders of applause" greeted the performers, wrote The San Francisco
Chronicle, declaring them "prime favorites with the populace." The
music the Royal Hawaiian Band introduced to the mainland that night
proved as infectious as the band members.
Mike DaSilva learned that when he started the Berkeley club. "I
expected 20 people because I personally knew 20 people, but then 50
people showed up."
Fortunately, he has plenty of space to accommodate them. In 2004, as a
hobby, DaSilva made his first ukulele, in his garage. Now he turns out
10 a month in his 2,500-square-foot workshop. He may expand even
further soon, because we are living in the midst of a global ukulele
revival (you may now laugh amongst yourselves).
In Britain, there's a nationwide shortage of the instrument. American
luthiers claim they can't keep up with demand, even if they double
production. San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Folk Art recently
mounted a retrospective on the instrument. And it's now possible to go
on a ukulele bender around the Bay Area and attend a class/jam session
every day of the week. In fact, this article itself will only further
fan the flames of ukulele fever until, presumably, gangs of uke- wielding
youths will roam the streets terrorizing old ladies with
their crazed, up-tempo rhythms.
At this point, it would be reasonable to ask, "What the hell is going
on?"
"It's so unassuming" is DaSilva's explanation. "People can buy one as
a joke, but they soon find out how expressive it is. If you were to
design something for a fad, then the ukulele would be it."
Hawaiians were the first to be swept away by the ukulele's charms. The
Hawaiian word "ukulele" means either "jumping flea" (to describe the
player's hand movements) or "the gift that came" because the
instrument came to Hawaii in 1879 with sugarcane workers from the
Portuguese island of Madeira, off the coast of Morocco. Within a week,
the Hawaiian Gazette observed those workers "delighting the people
with nightly street concerts ... [performing on] a cross between a
guitar and banjo." Within a decade, this unassuming guitar-banjo had
ingrained itself into Hawaiian culture.
After the U.S. government overthrew the Hawaiian royalty in 1893, the
white businessmen who profited from the revolution decided to drum up
tourism by marketing Hawaii's "exotic" culture to mainland Americans.
The most successful effort was the 1912 Broadway play "Bird of
Paradise." Financed by Claus Spreckels, a German sugar baron who ruled
Hawaii by fiat from his offices in San Francisco, the play was a smash
hit. The plot detailed the romantic troubles between a white man and a
beautiful Hawaiian who (1) is an island princess (2) and lives on an
island with an angry volcano that (3) can be appeased only by the
sacrifice of ... an island princess (It sounds trite now, but "Bird of
Paradise" was responsible for popularizing the idea of female volcano
sacrifice).
While not a terribly accurate portrayal of Hawaiian culture or
volcanic geology, the play did showcase what the New York Times
described as "the weirdly sensuous music of the island people."
Subsequent touring productions spread the ukulele-and-steel-guitar
sound across America. In the South, the steel guitar was quickly
converted into a staple instrument of bluegrass and country music.
"Bird of Paradise" was a national awakening of consciousness about
Hawaiian music," explains John King, a historian, musician and author
of "The Classical Ukulele." "And what the PPIE did was consolidate
that awareness."
"The PPIE" is how devotees refer to the 1915 Panama-Pacific
International Exhibition. And it has many devotees. Just nine years
after the great earthquake and fire effectively leveled San Francisco,
the city mounted what is considered the greatest of all world's fairs.
Among the marvels was a 435-foot Tower of Jewels covered with 100,000
gems, the Romanesque Palace of Fine Arts and a telephone line that ran
clear across the country so New Yorkers could hear the Pacific Ocean.
Against this spectacular backdrop, the humble ukulele became one of
the expo's most unexpected hits.
The idyllic surroundings for the expo's Hawaiian Quintet had something
to do with it. At the tropical Hawaiian Gardens exhibit, "the canaries
have heard the music so long that at certain places they take up the
tune and sing an accompaniment," wrote Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of
"Little House on the Prairie," who was one of the PPIE's 17 million
visitors.
The band's signature song, "On the Beach at Waikiki," became a
national hit. And over the expo's six months, the Hawaiian concession
stand sold thousands of ukuleles to tourists who returned to their
hometowns with these exotic instruments and visions of island paradise
in their heads.
"The PPIE was the watershed event when the ukulele came onto the radar
screen of the nation," says King.
This craze was quickly exploited by a different set of islanders - the
hitmakers of Manhattan's Tin Pan Alley. These songwriters wrote
hapa- haole (half-white) songs, which combined English lyrics with
faux- Hawaiian words. Throughout the 1910s, the ukulele rode a wave of pure
silliness with Lewis Carroll-esque songs like "Oh, How She Could Yacki
Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo," "The Honolulu Hickie Boola Boo" and the
slightly off-message "Stingo Stungo."
Hawaiian music eventually gave way to hot jazz in the 1920s, but the
ukulele's giddy sound transferred seamlessly. It became a staple on
college campuses and in speakeasy jazz bands. As with Hawaii, the
ukulele had firmly ingrained itself into American culture.
On a sleepy street tucked into the base of San Bruno Mountain in South
San Francisco, a steady stream of cars pull up to an unassuming house.
This is the home of Hiram Bell, 53, and judging by the dazed grins on
the people who leave, you might imagine that Bell was the purveyor of
a particularly fine, high-grade pharmaceutical. Instead, you would
find him and his visitors engaged in a far more legal activity -
ukulele lessons.
Bell wasn't always this busy. When he moved to San Francisco from Oahu
in 1979, he hoped to find work teaching piano and guitar.
Unfortunately, students were scarce so instead he found himself
working on the shipping floor of a chocolate factory.
He never considered teaching the ukulele. When Bell first arrived
stateside, he encountered something that he never knew existed.
"There's a stigmatism about it on the mainland that doesn't exist in
Hawaii. People here just remember Tiny Tim playing 'Tiptoe Through the
Tulips.' "
So how did the ukulele go from being the life of the party to a
wallflower curiosity?
In the 1950s, the ukulele's popularity was sky-high because of that
marvel of the modern age - plastic. Promoted by Arthur Godfrey, a
ukulele-strumming TV personality, 9 million plastic ukuleles were sold
as toys to the fledgling Baby Boom generation.
But when those kids became teenagers, and their minds turned to
teenage pursuits like getting high, getting laid and most of all,
getting on their parents' nerves. Guitar-driven rock 'n' roll offered
all those possibilities. The ukulele - with its image as an instrument
for kids, Hawaiian tourists and Jazz Age flapping - did not. Closets
and garages across America became ukulele burial grounds.
In the ensuing decades, the ukulele became less an instrument than a
quirky affectation, played only by birthday clowns and the kid in
college who took too much LSD and started dressing like a 1920s
grifter. But the news of the ukulele's demise never reached Hawaii.
"Where I grew up," says Bell, "a ukulele was sitting in the corner of
everyone's house, and everyone would be strumming it."
Bell's hometown, Oahu's Palolo Valley, is to the ukulele what the
Dominican Republic is to baseball. He grew up alongside musicians who
were pushing the instrument in new directions, like jazz, reggae and
rock. One of those musicians was Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, the zaftig Bob
Marley of Hawaii, better known as Iz.
As much as anything, it was Iz's haunting 1993 version of "Somewhere
Over the Rainbow" that sparked the current revival. Disseminated by
movies, commercials and wedding DJs, the song's memorable arrangement
- just voice and ukulele - entered popular consciousness in the late
1990s. "That song did a lot to help the ukulele world," acknowledges
Bell.
As the song's popularity increased, Bell added the ukulele to the list
of instruments he taught. Suddenly, he found more students. Lots more.
And Bell became the happiest Hawaiian ever to walk away from a
chocolate factory.
With a few exceptions, the members of the Berkeley Ukulele Club have
more salt than pepper in their hair. The same holds true for all the
uke clubs around the bay as Baby Boomers nearing retirement search for
ways to enjoy their new-found free time. But why the ukulele? Why not
the zither or guitar?
"It's only got four strings," explains club member Doug Beckstein, 57.
A decade ago, Doug was diagnosed with colon cancer. The chemotherapy
was successful, but it left him with what he calls "chemo brain," a
loss of motor-skill memory that can result from irradiation.
"I wanted to play an instrument to help exercise my brain," says Doug.
"I'd played guitar for 20 years, but after the chemo, I couldn't
remember any of it. I had to start all over."
Like most ukulele converts, Doug did the math: Four strings are easier
to learn than six. A quick learning curve has always been the
ukulele's greatest attraction. That's why Boomers are returning to
their closets and unearthing those ukuleles from their youth. And
they're discovering the instrument has therapeutic powers.
"It physically makes you feel better when you play it," says Doug.
"When you pick up a ukulele, people start laughing."
Many members of the club (none of whom seem overtly New Age-y) attest
to the instrument's physical effect: "It's relaxing," "It makes me
happy," "It feels like being in a spa."
Another club member, Carol Siegal, 48, is evidence of the ukulele's
ability to inspire addictively good feelings. Though she's been
playing only a year, Carol is already a card-carrying uke fanatic.
Literally. Her business card announces her as "Uke Gal." Her license
plate reads: "Huulaa." And her explanation of the ukulele's charm is
simple: "It's social. You play the piano alone, but when you play the
ukulele, everyone starts singing and laughing."
There's that word again. In the literature of the ukulele - sales
brochures and instruction books - the words "laughter" and "smile" are
a compulsory element. The temptation would be to write this off as
cheap salesmanship, but frankly, it's true.
Over the course of a boisterous evening with the ukulele club, you get
the distinct impression that the ukulele serves the same purpose as
alcohol in a karaoke bar, a license to lose inhibitions. People sing
with abandon. They jump onstage to teach the group new riffs. Bouts of
rhythmic hand-clapping erupt. At one point, a bongo drum is involved.
And a roomful of respectable middle-aged men and women is transformed
into a kindergarten finger-painting class - messy, anarchic and fun.
If the ukulele's revival were just another pit stop on the Baby
Boomers' march toward death, like arthroscopic knee surgery or driving
an RV to Arizona, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they'll take its
popularity to the grave with them. But they aren't the only ones
rummaging through America's closets.
"My ex-boyfriend was a flea marketeer," says Tippy Canoe, 36, lead
singer/uke player for Tippy Canoe and the Paddlemen. "He started
bringing ukuleles home."
Before she became a uke chanteuse named after President William Henry
Harrison's campaign slogan, Michele Kappel, 36, was a drummer in the
garage-pop band Kirby Grips. That was six years ago. Nowadays, Tippy
has trouble trying to describe her current music: "Americana," "retro- pop"
and "ukulele doo-wop country '20s jazz pop" are a few of her
suggestions.
Part of the problem is that Tippy isn't playing traditional ukulele
music. She's never even been to one of the Hawaiian amateur clubs. "I
know there's a strong Hawaiian scene in the bay, but I don't really
know much about it."
She hasn't had to. San Francisco has developed an alternative ukulele
scene where people play '40s burlesque, '50s country, '60s pop, any
decade, every style. Because among the young, single and drinking
demographic, the ukulele has become downright hip.
Overseas, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, which covers the Sex
Pistols and Nirvana, has hit the pop charts. And YouTube has made a
phenomenon out of Hawaii's Van Halen, Jake Shimabukuro, 31, whose
version of the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" has been viewed
more than 2 million times.
Before the Internet, uke enthusiasts were a disparate bunch, unaware
of one anothers' existence, either globally or locally. That's all
changed. "MySpace has gotten a lot of the San Francisco uke scene
together," says Tippy.
Suddenly, rather than playing desultory solo sets at open-mike nights,
"ukie nerds" (a term Tippy hears less and less) could band together
and fill entire clubs. Last year, she was part of a multi-group
performance of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" album. It was such a
success that they reconvened to perform Prince's "Purple Rain."
Meeting on the Internet as well as in clubs, Tippy quickly found
herself making new friends.
It's a curious trait of this unassuming little instrument - it
inspires people to come together. It's an impulse that Tippy shares
with amateur clubs like the Berkeley Ukulele Club that convene every
week. The Hawaiians have a word for it, kanikapila, which loosely
translates as "to gather together, play music and enjoy yourself."
The late George Harrison, a self-professed uke-o-holic, defined its
attraction a little differently: "Everyone I know who is into the
ukulele is crackers."
So the question is this: If the ukulele is increasing in popularity,
is the world becoming more crackers? Or are people simply catching
onto what the Hawaiians cottoned to in 1879, that as a way of playing
out our years on earth - together, going crackers and strumming a
ukulele tune - it doesn't seem like such a bad way to go.
San Francisco writer Ian Lendler is the author of "Alcoholica
Esoterica: A Collection of Useful and Useless Information as It
Relates to the History and Consumption of All Manner of Booze" (2005,
Penguin). E-mail maga...@sfchronicle.com.