From Israel Kamakawiwo’ole to Julia Nunes to Eddie Vedder, you can’t throw a banjo without hitting a ukulele player, but the exact reasons why are hard to pin down. Versatility? Accessibility? As the Melbourne Ukulele Festival once again rolls into town, with a program promising to be their biggest outing yet, we needed to learn more. Enter Ryo Montgomery, the prodigious Aussie talent behind The Montgomery Brothers. If anyone knows the secret to ukuleles, it’s a man the governor of Hawaii introduced as the number-one uke player in the world.
“I think Jake Shimabukoro is one of the biggest reasons,” Montgomery says. “He’s one of the most well-known uke players, who covered While My Guitar Gently Weeps. To the world, he made this statement that you can do anything on a uke. To me, and a lot of other musicians seeing that, you realised you can actually play so many things on the uke. To a lot of people it was this little thing you used to strum a couple of chords, a silly little instrument. But once Jake resurfaced it, played all this crazy stuff on it, a lot of other people started picking it up. The one thing I love about uke is that it’s easy to pick up and play straight away. You can learn a song in 30 seconds. They’re hard to master, but they’re easy to have fun with. It’s a very noble instrument.”
Nor is it only seasoned musicians who have felt the allure of the travel-friendly instrument. As the evolving success of the Melbourne Ukulele Festival attests, its everyday popularity is growing. For a festival that began humbly enough at the Edinburgh Castle over one day, it’s now swollen into a three-day festival with over 50 artists. While the MUF may well be the country’s premiere ukulele extravaganza, in reality it’s simply the tip of a community that stretches from desert to shore. Young and old, pro and casual player; scores are falling under its jaunty spell.
“In the last five years, it’s grown incredibly,” Montgomery says. “For example, we help out at Music City Cairns. When we first started with ukes, it was something that everyone didn’t really take seriously. But then the Cairns Festival came, and people saw these crazy Hawaiian players, these amazing jazz players from New York, all these Latin players. So the community now is great. There are so many different groups around Australia that get along to the different festivals, and there’s zero ego there. If you try to start a guitar group, it’d be the end of the world. All the egos clashing heads. But with the uke, people get together and it’s fun. I know one group, the Bad Boys of Uke, and there’s about 200 players who get together and go to a pub and play. It’s the best vibe, and it’s honestly just people sharing music, having a good time. I don’t think you really get that with any other instrument. And those groups are everywhere, all over Australia.”
Though Montgomery is only ten years into his uke career, it’s clear that this is a love-affair whose ardour isn’t fading any time soon. It’s said it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something; a milestone he suspects was passed some time ago.
“I may have done more than that 10,000 hours. My father owned a club, and after seeing him play I wanted to be this guitar hero. So he bought me a uke and explained all the most influential guitarists in the world, like Tommy Emmanuel, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, they all started on uke before they played guitar. Chet Atkins said if he didn’t play uke first, he wouldn’t be able to do what he does. If you’ve never played guitar before, it takes a week to work out a chord, guitars can be tricky. But uke, you play it straight away, and now, I can’t put the thing down.”
By Adam Norris
