Feel-good strum sessions
Enduring ukulele trend spawning new fans
TORONTO — After eyeing her son’s ukulele with a mix of curiosity and trepidation, music lover Shelly Steele couldn’t resist the urge to pick it up.
It immediately felt good in her small hands, and the narrow neck, short frets and four strings were easily covered by her inexperienced fingers.
Things felt much different than her clumsy attempts to handle a guitar, or even the flute she was assigned in high school decades ago. At 42, Steele finally found the invigorating hobby that could unleash the latent musician inside her.
This is no kitschy fad, the school teacher insists, pointing to an explosion of uke-focused activity in her hometown of Guelph, Ont., which includes singalong pub jams and a ukulele festival at the end of September.
“Anybody that I know that is my age, they’re picking up the ukulele. They’re not picking up other instruments to learn as kind of their instrument of choice,” Steele says.
Indeed, the ukulele craze is proving to be an enduring phenomenon that’s here to stay, thanks in part to famous devotees including Taylor Swift, Eddie Vedder, Train and Jason Mraz, whose recent releases have helped revamp the fourstring’s image from twee novelty to bona fide musical instrument.
Its embrace by school music programs hasn’t hurt, nor has its relatively affordable cost, with lowerend models starting at around $40.
Guitar salesman Matt McKenna has seen the ukulele phenomenon translate into consistent sales at music store Long & McQuade in downtown Toronto. He says a surge in interest about seven years ago “hasn’t dwindled at all,” with sales this past Christmas hovering around 600 ukes.
“It’s almost like it’s a cult, I guess,” McKenna says. “But (it’s) a very a positive one, because people generally have great fun playing it.”
Today, a newbie can find a slew of feel-good uke circles across the country where newcomers can learn chords and build a repertoire with like-minded pals at a pub, senior’s centre or community hall.
A big driver is the social connections that this quirky instrument can quickly forge, says uke fan Steve McNie.
“People are looking for personto-person human engagement at a time when we’re so fixed on our screens and with our digital lives,” he says. “People crave opportunities to become part of a community that provides human interaction.”
And for those adults and seniors looking to pick up an instrument later in life, a brightly coloured ukulele can certainly seem less intimidating than the piano, or even guitar.
Longtime music teacher Elaine Rusk of the Royal Conservatory of Music is glad to see the trend, noting that adults who dive into music lessons give both their brains and their mood a powerful boost.
“My own experience teaching and working with adult learners at all levels,” says Rusk, “is that they’ve made a choice to do this and they tend to be very passionate and committed and receive great joy out of even the smallest achievements.”