There is a Ukulele Underground Here

I met up with three people who were proud ukulele owners and players last week. They were members of Ukulele Underground, which had a forum I would rarely visit, but I would most certainly search for anyone in the local vicinity, see if they did gather, and try to join in. Oh, and I thought my Samick UK-50 concert ukulele was fancy enough, but not nearly.

A Kala tenor, a thin-body Kala soprano, a fiber-glass body soprano Lyric, and my concert Samick

Mackie was the one with the two inch think songbook, Anna was the maestro, and Jude had that awesome tenor ukulele. They’d met up before, but they all exclaimed how they were all bitin from the last meetup. It felt like I was intruding an already established collective, but then I’m always that guy who took his time in immersing himself with new people.

The musical tastes were varied, but it did look like they had been exposed and was following the ukulele community standards, knew the terms, even Mackie enrolled in an online class. I, in contrast, was just this guy who wanted to know the chords, and had a vision that it really is best to keep the repertoire personal: I wanted to play songs I grew up before I ever did listen to the modern rock music, so that’s about late 80s to early 90s, my early teens and earlier than that. Though, I guess it was a given that with a group like we now have, compromises have to be made. No issue for me, though I’d really prefer our own stamp on the songs we’d eventually select, and trying out OPM songs would be ideal.

With my weeks-old, almost-misplaced, point-and-shoot digital camera, I took a few photos, and shot some video. Watch them on my Vimeo page here.

I did play a bit, with Mackie on Beirut’s version of Hallelujah, and did a verse of APO Hiking Society’s When I Met You, which I was just trying to learn. I am intent on doing my own thing next time, but I’m still unsure on what song to cover. My usual ol’ sad bastard ballad? Let’s see.

Jude proposed a monthly gathering, and no one disagreed. I was from Bulacan, and the rest of the guys are from the far south, up to Laguna, which I guess are facts we have to live with, unless we’d prefer returning to our little online holes, and minor forum discussions.