There are many stories as to the origin of the ukulele in Hawaii but the most commonly accepted is that it originally arrived in Honolulu on August 23, 1879 with Portugese immigrant Joao Fernandes. He apparently was so happy to have completed the 4 month, 15,000 mile voyage from Portugal that he jumped on to the dock and started playing his cavaquinho (a four stringed instrument shaped like a small guitar) The Hawaiians were so impressed with the speed of his fingers flying over the fingerboard that they called it the “ukulele”, which translates to “the jumping flea”.
The Hawaiians were quick to adopt the instrument as their own and within a decade it had become the most popular musical instrument in Hawaii. It was so popular that even King David Kalakaua, the last reigning monarch of Hawaii, learned to play it. The King learned to play and design his own ukuleles from Augusto Dias, one of the first ukulele luthiers in Hawaii.
The popularity of the ukulele has gone through many cycles. It made its first major impact on the American mainland during the 1915 at the Hawaiian Pavilion at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The American people fell in love with Hawaiian music and the ukulele. By the 1930s the ukulele boom was over and it didn’t see a resurgence until the 1950s when it was popularized again by Arthur Godfrey on his TV show “Arthur Godfrey and his Ukulele”. By the early 1970s the ukulele had disappeared off the musical charts and there was only one company manufacturing ukuleles.
However, the third ukulele renaissance is upon us. Global interest in this easily played, fascinating little four-stringed instrument has been climbing steadily over the last few years. It is quite easy to learn to play the ukulele. Because of its small size, children normally can learn to play it and many schools use ukuleles in their music programs.
So why don’t you jump on the bandwagon and join such personalities as Jimmy Buffet, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and Van Morrison, to name a few, and learn to play the ukulele now.