On a sunny September morning in the courtyard of the Torrance Cultural Arts Center, the audience relaxes in folding chairs while dozens of members of Huntington Beach's Kolohe Ukulele Club strum the wistful Island classic "Kuu Home o Kahaluu." A mother stands with arms around her son, swaying to the music. A seated couple lean their heads together. After the applause, the charismatic emcee bounds onstage and announces the next artist, Maui boy turned Seattle-based musician Neal Chin. Some stay put for Chin's performance; others wander over to the vendor booths or grab their ukes and head off to various workshops.
Kolohe club members Marti Carl and Paul Levey step off the stage dressed to the nines, Marti in a muumuu and hat adorned with a red silk flower lei, Paul sporting a crisp aloha shirt and a jaunty straw fedora. Ukulele enthusiasts and festivals are hardly uncommon outside of the Islands-Hawaii's indigenous string instrument is one of the fastest-growing and most popular instruments worldwide. But what, I ask, makes this one, the Los Angeles Ukulele Festival, so successful and beloved? "There are a lot of expats here," Paul says. He's right: While Las Vegas is often called Hawaii's ninth island, California is home to the largest population of Native Hawaiians outside the Islands, as well as a large population of former residents. "But it's also the proximity," adds Marti. "There are a lot of people who just love Hawaii but aren't from there. They visit and fall in love with the music. Then they start coming to events like this."
Paul and Marti fall into this latter category. "I started playing ukulele around fifteen years ago, when I met some Hawaiian friends," says Paul. "Marti and I met maybe six, seven years ago playing Hawaiian music together, and then I went through a life change. My wife passed." Marti squeezes Paul's hand and picks up where he trails off. "We've been musicians all of our lives, and Hawaiian music is a very communal kind of music. It brings people together ... and now we're getting married in November!" The couple plays with Kolohe Ukulele Club every Tuesday night at Island Bazaar Ukulele Paradise, a store and studio in Huntington Beach, as well as with a five-piece band they met through the club. "It's so great to be back," says Paul of the annual gathering, now in its sixth year. "The festival was on hiatus through the pandemic. Now we get to see friends after a long time and hear such great artists. Plus, we got to open the show! How cool is that?"
“It’s been so cool to be back with friends and fellow artists jamming together … it’s such a welcoming vibe,” says ukulele virtuoso Abe Lagrimas Jr. (seen above), one of the headliners at the Los Angeles Ukulele Festival, where SoCal devotees of Hawaii’s indigenous string instrument gather to pluck and grin. On the opening spread, 10-year-old Chloe-Echo Cochrane goes full blue Hawaii. “I’ve mostly taught myself from home,” she says. “I just like the way it sounds. It can be applied to so many different genres of music and it always sounds good.”
Across from the stage sits a vendor tent with a large banner: Plucking Strummers Ukulele Club. Folding tables hold a small stack of t-shirts printed with the letters "GCEA" (the standard "my dog has fleas" ukulele tuning), a few fliers and not much else. When I ask about the sparse setup, Ricc Bieber grins. "We're recruiting! Part of our reason for being here is for outreach." Sporting a bright aloha shirt with an electric guitar print, Ricc says that he came to 'ukulele through guitar. "About eighteen years ago somebody stole some of my instruments. So my daughter bought me an ukulele as a consolation gift. Now I've got ten! It's so versatile, you can play practically any genre of music with it. I play rock 'n' roll: Eagles, Def Leppard, the Stones, the Beatles, Motley Crue-anything 1960s through '90s." Ricc has been a member of the Plucking Strummers for years. "We're in a fairly centralized location. I'm from Northridge, but we've got members from Van Nuys, from West LA, all over. We meet on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month in Los Feliz, so it's easy, it's convenient. Parking's good. Afterwards some of us go and have lunch at the golf range right down the street. It's really about the camaraderie. You meet a lot of nice people."
It's clear that the Plucking Strummers are here to kani ka pila (jam) as well as recruit. A few members and some new players strum together, bobbing their heads and laughing through stumbles. "We encourage beginners to come in. We have a whole hour in the beginning of our meetups devoted to them," says club leader Gene Mazzanti. "A lot of them have no place to go for something like this. There's a lot of online stuff, but there's nothing like being in a room and playing together as a group. We welcome anyone of any ability. But, I mean we do have some people ... like this guy, who's amazing." Gene thumbs at Ricc, who laughs appreciatively. "We're not selling anything. Although, you can buy our t-shirts," he laughs and fluffs out his own GCEA tee. "But we're not selling things. We're selling the idea to come and have fun."
As much fun as it is, and as welcoming to newbies as it might be, the festival has its share of 'ukulele heavyweights. Abe Lagrimas Jr.'s advanced workshop is standing-room-only, with late arrivals camped against the walls on the floor. Abe is sharing techniques for improving overall sound and teaching one of his original songs, "Mahana." Originally from Oahu, Abe stands at the front of the room wearing true aloha casual: a tailored Reyn Spooner shirt and Chuck Taylors.
Abe is one of the festival's headliners-an ukulele virtuoso with multiple albums as well as multiple Na Hoku Hanohano awards. He started out as a jazz drummer studying at the Berklee College of Music, but homesickness got the musical better of him. "I picked up the ukulele when I was in college because I left Hawaii," Abe says. "It was the only thing that, musically at least, kept me grounded in Hawaii. It's kind of funny, though, because the first songs I learned on the ukulele were jazz standards. Weird for a kid from Hawaii. But I was immersed in jazz theory back then, so there I was strumming 'Autumn Leaves' and 'Skylark.'"
"I started playing in 2003, and by 2012 I was thinking, 'When is this going to be really uncool?'" laughs songwriter Victoria Vox, who teaches workshops at the festival. "But the popularity of the ukulele just never slowed down. People at the festival are coming up to me saying, 'I just started last year,' or 'I picked it up during the pandemic.' It's great that people are giving it a try-and once they try it, they realize how nice it feels to play, that it's good for the soul."
Known for his original fusion of upbeat Hawaiian and smooth jazz, Abe is a regular at ukulele festivals across the world: North America, the UK, Germany, China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia. He also teaches online. A few years ago Abe was approached for a publishing deal by none other than his alma mater. "I got asked by Berklee to write a jazz ukulele book," he says, "so I did!" Jazz Ukulele: Comping, Soloing, Chord Melodies was published in 2015, the first intensive method book of its kind for ukulele.
Things changed with the pandemic. "It was tough," Abe says. "As artists we weren't able to make a living playing live music anymore and had to adapt. At first I was against the idea of teaching on Zoom or recording myself. I just couldn't imagine performing or teaching in such a disconnected way. But many of my colleagues were quick to try it and successful, so eventually I started, too. I was able to reach a lot of new students pretty quickly in places like Washington state, the Bay Area, Chicago, Italy, Brazil. It was pretty crazy. I'm so glad to be teaching in person again, but it definitely had its perks."
Online teaching also gained Abe a few fans, one in particular he's pretty jazzed about. "I started recording performances and asking folks to send a donation if they liked what they saw. One donation came in with a message thanking me for my work. It was a woman who had taken up ukulele as a hobby during lockdown and really enjoyed my music. I was kind of struck by her, like, 'Wow, she's pretty cute!' We started messaging more about music, and this romance began to build. We're getting married later this year!" Abe and his fiancee, Karen-who's here selling merch at Abe's booth-decided to move back to Hawaii a few months ago to start their lives together, but they say they'll definitely keep coming back to the West Coast for festivals like this. "It's been so cool to be back with friends and fellow artists jamming together, and to see some of my students in person again here today. It's such a welcoming vibe."
Over in the cavernous Toyota Meeting Hall, YouTube star Bernadette Plazola is teaching a beginner workshop and strum-along. "You'll be playing your first songs by the end of this introductory class," her program declares, "where you'll learn your first chords, basic strumming and tips and techniques to get you jamming right away." Workshops like these are Bernadette's bread and butter. The music teacher-turned-YouTuber got her start in 2018 with a 30-Day Uke Challenge video series that teaches complete newbies to play Israel Kamakawiwoole's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in a month. The series went viral, and at the time of this writing has 1,227,127 views. Bernadette's kind demeanor and her teaching expertise (she has a master's in education from Cal Poly Pomona and spent years teaching music to kids) make for engaging videos.
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"I started playing in 2003, and by 2012 I was thinking, 'When is this going to be really uncool?'" laughs songwriter Victoria Vox, who teaches workshops at the festival. "But the popularity of the ukulele just never slowed down. People at the festival are coming up to me saying, 'I just started last year,' or 'I picked it up during the pandemic.' It's great that people are giving it a try-and once they try it, they realize how nice it feels to play, that it's good for the soul."
Bernadette remembers the first time internet success really hit her-it was here at the Los Angeles Ukulele Festival in 2019, the last one before the pandemic. "I did not expect people to know who I was," she says. "I knew the channel was getting views, but it didn't really sink in because I was teaching in Japan when I started it. Nobody was watching my show there because it was in English. But when I came to LA for the festival, people recognized me. And I was like, 'Wait, how do I know you?'" she laughs. Like Abe's workshop, Bernadette's that year was standing-room-only, a problem that organizer Mitch Chang prepared for this year by booking her in Toyota Meeting Hall, the center's largest room. As her lesson wraps up, Bernadette calls some folks from the audience up to the front. One by one, subscribers to her page come up and play solo, giving courage to all the beginners in the room to keep at it.
"I owe them so much," Bernadette says of her subscribers. "I have this huge community of people who support me, and I get to do what I love because of them." That support went above and beyond music in 2020, when Bernadette's daughter Daniella was born with a blood issue. Though Daniella is healthy today, Bernadette was away from her studio and unable to post during the first few months of her newborn's life. But her subscribers sent funds through her Patreon account so she could continue earning income. "They were really there for me," says Bernadette. "It just blows me away. I also think it reflects on the instrument-the joyful, positive energy the 'ukulele gives off is just like the community that's attracted to it."
Behind the behemoth soundboard near the main stage in the courtyard, festival organizer Mitch Chang confers with sound engineer Steve Shoemaker about the final performance: a festival-wide strum-along to Queen Liliuokalani's "Aloha Oe." Since the inaugural festival in 2015, Mitch and Steve have been the men behind the magic. Back then the festival was hardly the first of its kind: The Southern California Ukulele Festival had been going for longer than a decade in Cerritos, California, until organizer Susan McCormick retired around 2011. Steve had worked nearly every one of them. Steve reached out to Mitch about doing sound for the new ukulele festival, and the rest is history. "Want to see the most important piece of equipment back here?" Steve asks, holding up his carafe of coffee.
Unassuming and kindly, Chang assesses the stage, thinking through a long checklist of details. Mitch owns KalaKoa Entertainment, the event company through which he organizes this festival, along with the Southern California Slack Key Festival, the Los Angeles Guitar Festival and the Los Angeles International Flamenco Festival. Mitch was born and raised in Honolulu and is a graduate of the UH Manoa music program. As a music buff and ukulele performer and teacher, it seemed only natural to add the ukulele festival to his menu of events once the opportunity opened up. "I wanted this festival to be accessible for people who want to learn how to make music," Mitch says. "There are so many people who were discouraged from learning an instrument early in their lives for whatever reason, and this instrument is so easy to learn and is used by such an inclusive community. So the festival is set up to be interactive and give people the opportunity to hang out with others and feel supported and encouraged. It's also designed to show the versatility of the instrument. I love being able to introduce people to new talent and new styles to keep them encouraged."
As headliner Victoria Vox-known for her pop/folk originals-finishes her set, Mitch and Steve prepare for the strum-along finale. Victoria calls her fellow performers onstage while emcee Christine Achico jumps on the mic to remind everyone that the chords and lyrics for "Aloha Oe" can be found in their programs. The majority of the remaining festival-goers tune their ukulele, and soon the melody is bouncing off every wall of the center. "It's just a lovely, lovely event to work," says Steve. "Great people and great musicians. The dynamic range that people are getting out of the ukulele these days is just phenomenal. But also, a festival like this is just a genuinely delightful way to spend the day."
A man walks by the soundboard in a black t-shirt that reads "Spread Aloha," where the "o" doubles as the sound hole of an ukulele. It seems that in Los Angeles, at least, that is exactly what the little instrument is doing.
