Ukulele Magic - Jake Shimabukuro

Last year at FloydFest 2006, I missed Jake Shimabukuro's performance.

I didn't think much about it until I heard Scott Perry say, "I used to say I played the ukulele, until I heard Jake playing today. Now I say I am working on playing the ukulele."

Scott Perry is a competent musician and he plays many instruments well so this made me determined to look up Jake Shimabukuro and find out for myself. I found Jake's website and learned that he has an international reputation and a number of CDs to his name.

I still hadn't heard any sound clips, so I kept searching until I found a few brief mp3 snippets on a few sites. These were interesting, but I did not get the sense of a performer of the stature that Scott Perry had described.

I finally found this video on YouTube where Jake is playing George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". You have never heard a ukulele played like this...

Comments

[chosha]

That was glorious. It reminded me of something that happened on a trip I took to Melbourne recently. Late one night I saw a busker playing and sat down nearby to listen. The music was like the essence of birdsong, so beautiful, almost unearthly. It wasn't until I was leaving that I remembered to find out what instrument he was playing - and discovered it was an ordinary plastic recorder, the same squeaky instrument every high school first year learns to play (badly). Amazing that whole 'touch of the master's hand' phenomenon, isn't it?

[Rick Parrish]

I was fortunate enough to meet and hear Jake at Floydfest last year and it was an incredible experience. Not only is he an amazing musician but he's very friendly and comes across as a sincere and likable person. Sometimes I think nice folks (especially nice musicians) are drawn to this area.