S5, E13: The Joyful Instrument That Became the Sound of Hawai’i

It started as an abandoned ukulele on a wall. Afar’s Aislyn Greene hadn’t touched it in two years — but that idle instrument sent her down a rabbit hole into one of the most joyful origin stories in music. The ukulele arrived in Hawai’i on a Portuguese immigrant ship in 1878, got a royal endorsement from a king and queen, fell into obscurity, and then took over the world. Along the way, a family of master craftsmen has been hand-finishing every instrument for over a century, and one of the greatest string players alive still can’t believe people underestimate it.

Meet today’s guests:

Roy Sakuma is a musician, educator, and founder of Roy Sakuma Ukulele Studios, Hawaii’s most famous ukulele school with four locations. In 1971, he launched the Ukulele Festival Hawai’i, now the state’s top summer event, and has spent 50 years making the case that the ukulele is no toy.

Chris Kamaka is the third-generation owner of Kamaka Ukulele, the oldest continuous ukulele manufacturer in the world, founded in Honolulu in 1916. Each of the 1,000–1,500 ukuleles they produce annually is hand-played by Chris before it leaves the shop.

Jake Shimabukuro is a virtuoso musician widely regarded as the greatest ukulele player alive. He has sold out concert halls worldwide and recently collaborated with Mick Fleetwood on a Blues album.

Transcript

Roy Sakuma: And you just strum along. You know, it’s like I am what I am. It’s just those simple chords. You know, I am what I am. I’ll be what I’ll be. Look. Can’t you see that it’s me? All of me.

Aislyn Greene: I have an ukulele on my wall that I haven’t touched in about two years. I was taking lessons, and then life did its life-ing thing, and it’s just been hanging out there ever since. But I’ve always loved the sound of the instrument. And last year I was looking at my poor abandoned ukulele and I wondered, how exactly did you come to be? How were you made and how did you come to be the instrument of Hawaii? So as you do when these questions come up, I started googling and I started reaching out to people in Hawaii who could tell me the story. And it is a story about an instrument that is deceptively simple, we’ll talk more about that in a moment, and brings so much joy because joy is the word that popped up in every interview I did.

I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked: America 250. And today we are going inside the world of the Hawaiian ukulele. We’ll meet a master craftsman, a legendary teacher, and one of the most virtuosic string players alive.

To understand the ukulele, you have to go back to about 1878. That’s when Portuguese immigrants began arriving in Hawaii to work the sugar cane plantations, and they brought instruments with them, including a small four stringed guitar called the braguinha. It’s also known as the machete de braga. Eventually, some of these Portuguese newcomers became luthiers, and they created a sort of hybrid instrument that had a new tuning. The Hawaiians were captivated by this new instrument, and as they began to play it, they gave it a new name.

Roy: The Hawaiians. When they picked up the instrument, they fell in love with it. And as they played and learned to play on it, the name came out to be ukulele, which ‘uku’ in Hawaiian means flea and ‘lele’ is jump. So that’s how you got ukulele. And it was because when people played the ukulele, their fingers traveled all over the fretboard.

Aislyn: This is Roy Sakuma, a musician, teacher and owner of Hawaii’s most famous ukulele school. We’re going to hear more from him in a bit. First, though, we need to understand the ukulele royal connection.

The instrument really owes its fame to Hawaii’s last king, David Kalakaua. He and his sister, the future Queen Liliuokalani, were both musicians, and they encouraged Hawaiians to adopt the instrument and to create their own music. The Queen would even go on to compose Aloha OE, one of the island’s most sacred songs.

Roy: It’s like the state symbol for the state of Hawaii. Of course, they know the hibiscus is the flower, but the ukulele is a very beautiful symbol to represent the state of Hawaii.

Aislyn: For more than a century, one family has been at the center of this story. The Kamaka family has been building ukuleles in Hawaii since 1916, making them the oldest continuous ukulele manufacturer in the world. I spoke with Chris Kamaka, the third generation to run the family business.

Chris Kamaka: Grandpa was a really good musician. In his early days, he was a merchant marine. He was so fascinated by the ukulele, when he got home, he decided to make for family and friends. From there, it just blossomed.

Aislyn: Today, there are about twenty people working in the Kamaka shop on Oahu, and the process of making an ukulele is, of course, very hands-on. And it starts with Koa, a wood that’s native to Hawaii and grows best on the Big Island.

Chris: So when it gets to our facility here, we air dry it and it’s usually an inch per year, depending on the size of the wood.

Aislyn: Yes, you heard that correctly. Chris said an inch per year, so it can take anywhere from four to six years to dry a piece of coal wood. And it’s a totally natural process.

Chris: We don’t speed up the drying process by kiln drying or anything. It’s all done naturally, so we air dry it, but we sticker it and let it sit in the back and let the wind blow through it from there.

Aislyn: The wood gets cut into matched sets that make up the sides, the top, and the back of the ukulele. That’s so that the grain pattern runs consistently around the instrument. The body is assembled, the neck is carved and fretted separately, and then everything comes together. But before the instrument is finished, there’s one step that really stood out to me.

Chris: Make sure we’re getting the correct tonal vibration coming from the top. And my dad always told us to listen for a bell tone. And that’s kind of neat because in the old days, when my mom introduced maybe about a dozen or so hearing impaired workers, she was the OT, occupational therapist, and she introduced these guys to my dad. and he taught them what to feel for. They would tap on it and feel the vibrations in their fingers as well as against their body. And they had it down. You know, some of them worked for dad over 50 years.

Aislyn: And after all of that, you know, the drawing, the carving, the bracing, the finishing. Chris himself plays each instrument before it leaves the shop.

Chris: I took a look and make sure the action is good, if it needs to be adjusted. Just kind of break them in and play each one and make sure they’re playing nicely and just adjust it if need be. Play it. And until I think it’s it’s good to be sent out.

Aislyn: Chris says that these days they make anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 ukuleles per year. And Chris himself is a musician. When he’s not testing ukuleles, Chris plays the upright bass in a local band called Ho’okena.

Chris: It’s actually an area on the Big Island, but the definition, actually of that means to quench one’s thirst.

Aislyn: Here’s something that surprised me about the ukulele after such a prestigious beginning, it fell out of favor. And for much of the mid-20th century, even in Hawaii, people didn’t take it very seriously. Roy Sakuma remembers this very well.

Roy: I remember so many people telling me when my wife and I were teaching ukulele, they said, so what do you do for a living? And we would say, oh, we teach the ukulele. They said, no, but what do you do for a living? What do you do? Because I remember back when I was learning to play the ukulele, 90-percent of the people in Hawaii that I recall, they thought of ukulele as a toy instrument, not as a musical instrument as a toy instrument.

Aislyn: Roy has spent his entire life changing that perception. He fell in love with the ukulele at age 16 after hearing this song on the radio. The year was 1963 and the song was sukiyaki or sushi as it was kind of informally known.

Roy: It became the number one song in Hawaii. It was a big hit. I fell in love with that song. And just by chance, I found a little, little, um, classified ad saying, learn from Otosan, who’s a teacher. So I went to see him and I asked him if he would teach me, and he said yes. And the rest was history.

Aislyn: That teacher who taught Roy everything he knew basically said, hey, it’s your turn now. So Roy and his wife, Cathy, launched Roy Sakuma Ukulele Studios, which now has four locations and is Hawaii’s most famous ukulele school. But Roy’s biggest contribution might be the ukulele festival he started in 1971.

Roy: The ukulele was like, in the closet. Very few people took out the ukulele to play it in those days. And I started the ukulele festival with the idea of showing that to the people, not in Hawaii, but also throughout the world, that this simple instrument could play just about anything. My dream was to keep it free and they would come and listen. They were so enthralled by the sound and the way, the beauty of the music. They would buy an ukulele and take it back to their city and learn to play. A lot of them would email my wife and I, Hey, can you tell us how to play? How do we do this? And we would share with them. Many of them started their own ukulele club in their city, which eventually became ukulele concerts in their city. And that’s how it spread throughout the world.

Aislyn: By 1976, just five years after the first festival, the Ukulele Festival became the number one summer event in Hawaii and groups came from Japan, Brazil, Australia, Korea, Taiwan, and from across Europe. True to Roy’s vision, every single performance was free.

Roy and his wife, Kathy ran the festival together until 2022. And their impact on Hawaiian music is hard to overstate. In fact, Roy was a teacher and mentor to a man who has become one of the most famous ukulele players in the world. We’re going to meet him after this word from our sponsors.

Jake Shimabukuro is one of the most extraordinary string players alive. He sold out concert halls across the world playing the ukulele. So of course I asked him how it all started.

Jake Shimabukuro: I remember I was four years old, my mom sat me down, she put the ukulele in my lap and just, you know, told me to put my fingers here and just strum the strings. And I just immediately fell in love with it and couldn’t put it down. And I, you know, I tell her I love it just as much today as I did back then.

Aislyn: Jake’s mom actually had a Kamaka ukulele and she guarded it very carefully. Jake said he had to beg her for years to let him play it.

Jake: She’s like, no, you’re not touching my ukulele. After, I guess she got tired of, you know, hearing me beg her to play it. She finally sat me down, and it really changed my life.

Aislyn: Jake grew up on traditional Hawaiian music. He was mentored by Roy Sakuma and grew up listening to artists like Eddie Kamae, Jessie Kalama, and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. But he was also listening to Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, and instead of picking up a guitar, he stuck with the ukulele but asked himself a different question.

Jake: How can I play that song on the ukulele? Or how can I get that sound? And to me, I just I never, ever thought of playing anything other than the ukulele.

Aislyn: Jake said that the key that unlocked so much for him was learning how to amplify the ukulele. Once he could match the volume of electric guitars and drum kits, the genre barriers kind of dissolved. Over the years he’s recorded with Bette Midler, he’s performed with the Allman Betts Revival Band, and most recently, he collaborated with Mick Fleetwood on a blues album. He told me about recording A tribute to Christine McVie.

Jake: We didn’t really talk about the arrangement or how we were going to do it, but I just remember Nick just started playing this rhythm, you know, on the tom toms, and I looked over at him and his eyes were closed. And so I started with the melody and it was almost like the song played itself. And I just remember when we got, when we got to the end, you know, we just kind of faded out and Mick kept going with his drum groove. It was a very, um, sacred moment. And he said that he could feel Christine’s presence in the studio with us.

Aislyn: Jake says that there’s something about this instrument that invites that kind of openness.

Jake: I used to tell people that I thought, you know, the ukulele sounded like voices of kids, you know, or like, like children playing. And one of the best things about being a touring ukulele player is that audiences all over the world have such low expectations. And I love that. I love that because one of the wonderful things about the instrument is that people don’t take it seriously.

Aislyn: He says that he wishes more people would have that attitude toward other instruments.

Jake: You know, the thing about the ukulele is you don’t feel like you have to be a musician to play it, because you can get that immediate gratification, right? Like I did when I was a kid, just, you know, my mom just told me to put my finger right here and I just strummed that one chord. And I was like, wow, I’m playing it. So you get that instant gratification. At the same time with that same instrument, you know, you can spend your life like just expanding and learning more and more and more about it. So you can also see the potential of it.

Aislyn: And that brings me to the end of this episode and my impromptu lesson with Roy. He has been teaching for 50 years, and he has developed his own method. And it’s not about tabulature or standard music notation. Instead, it’s about something simpler and intuitive. Over the years, he’s shared that method with a seven year old girl who is named Super Child of the World in Japan. He shared it with Jake Shimabukuro, and then over Zoom on a random weekday, he shared it with me.

Roy: Do you want to try it?

Aislyn: Yeah, let’s try it. Okay, okay.

Roy: And all down strums for strums each all down. Okay. Ready? At the count of four. One two. Three. I want g7, I and c I’ll be a minor. I’ll be start again f g7, you see? C it’s me. Stay on C stay on C all of me. Now start again from I am g7, I am I’ll be a minor. o f g seven u c. And c and stop. That was it.

Aislyn: Hey, that was it. That was amazing.

Roy: It’s so simple.

Aislyn: It’s so simple. And you’re a wonderful teacher. Thank you.

Aislyn: I was so rusty. I stumbled a lot, but it was only three chords. And suddenly Roy had me playing a song. And this is the same song he wrote in 1970 that he still sings in schools and he says, makes kids cry because the message hits them so directly. The lyrics, I am what I am and I’ll be what I’ll be.

This is Unpacked: America 250 and I’m Aislyn Greene. In the show notes, I’ve shared links to everything we mentioned today. You’ll find the Kamaka website. Roy’s website and his teachings. The Ukulele Festival and Jake’s latest album, plus a playlist of ukulele music so that you, too, can share in the joy.