April 2019 Resonate

A war won with music, pick your top ten songs, arty ukes

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Back in February 2018, Resonate reported on some close-to-indestructable ukes made by a company called Outdoor Ukulele. The company has now set up a physical shop, so if you're passing through the town of Bend in Oregon, USA, you may want to drop in and see how they make these polycarbonate wonders. Included in the latest range are a couple of banjoleles. It appears they've been stealing mag wheels off cars to make this model.

In light of last month's tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, the timing of this movie's release is heartbreakingly fortuitous.

Soliders Without Guns is a partly crowdfunded, movie-length documentary about how the Bougainville Civil War (1988 - 98) was finally ended – after 14 failed peace agreements and 20,000 dead – by New Zealand peacekeepers. Despite their plan receiving worldwide condemnation, the New Zealanders went in with guitars instead of guns and brought the warring parties together with music and cultural connection.

The war had begun when Bougainvilleans rose up against the Australian-owned Panguna copper mine, which had destroyed their environment, taken their land, and divided the people.

Multi-award winning director of the film, Will Watson, believes that there is always a better way to resolve things than violence, and has made it his life's work to prove that's true.

Watch the trailer – Soldiers Without Guns is released on 18 April and if you're in Australia, you can get it screened near where you live via Demand Cinema. It just takes one person to set up an online ticket booth with Demand Cinema, decide on a time and place, tell everyone they know and once the minimum number of ticket sales are reached, the screening is confirmed. Have done it myself, it's easy.

Pick your top ten and record them next to your blood group!

This excellent article by Victorian musician and music educator Henry Vyhnal looks at what we do and don't know about music and dementia and a huge new study into music therapy and dementia care.

It also explores how Alzheimer's patients, in particular, are brought alive by the music they love best and that due to human brain development, our favourite songs are nearly all ones we first heard from our mid to late teens.

There are some great links at the end of the article, but I've included the Henry Dreher clip below as it's such a wonderful example of how music reconnects people with seemingly irreversible neural disease.

Meanwhile, what are your top ten favourite songs or pieces of music?

Henry Dreher, from 'Alive Inside'

Music in schools, in China

China prizes musical education very highly, and it in no way detracts from young students' academic achievement, in fact, the opposite is true.

This article details the music schooling given during China's nine years of compulsory education, as well as the teacher training required. Even pre-school teachers are well-trained in music.

There is more to the story, however, in this 2015 study by Law & Ho, published in the International Journal of Music Education. It is a fascinating look – given the vast changes in China over the past forty years – at the desire of Chinese students to engage with their own popular music and that from Western and other nations, in the classroom.

Meanwhile in Berkshire...

A group in Reading, southern England (also known for its annual rock festival) has set up a system of fund-raising and matched grants to local schools so that they can participate in their Ukes in the Classroom (not the James Hill one) program. Find out about the history of the program and the latest milestone.

Jumping flea? No, twitching cat

When an artist convinced her luthier partner to spend his spare time making ukuleles which she then used as her canvas, it resulted in three beautiful instruments (the 'Tickler' series), the one in this article named after a beloved cat.

Enjoy the gorgeous design, read about the eclectic and rare woods used by luthier Lou Reimuller, the story behind the cat design and find out what that bridge is! The artist, Amy Crehore has decorated many more.

Pictured is Tickler #2

A non-allergenic peanut

I love a crowdfunded ukulele idea. This one ends tonight and has earned more than $16,000 USD after aiming for $2000.

You've heard of the pineapple and boatpaddles and flying V shapes, but do you know about the travelling peanut? The catch with this crowdfunder is that Eleuke peanut ukes have been around since 2011, but it seems their maker, luthier Philip Kwak is using Indiegogo as his business investment model for the 2019 series.

When I was looking for a good peanut uke picture I found the one below, on sale at Amazon. The description says 'creative bottle shape' but I'm christening it the Cricket Bat.

SNIPPETS

How do police operations get their names?
In a most unfortunate appellation, Operation Ukulele is targeting retail thefts, tap and go fraud and anti-social behaviour in the Rockingham area, south of Perth, Western Australia. According to this article, some names are chosen because they make sense, others are randomly selected from word databases which include "lists of words such as fish, plants, battleships, castles, fonts and gemstones." Drop the ukes please!

Listen in
Like to listen while you're driving or doing the washing up? Try one of these uke podcasts, on a myriad of topics, or see if you can tune in to Canda's UKE BOX all ukulele radio show.

Many might meetup
Just discovered the Australian Meetup site has a ukulele section. It says there are 22 groups and 7,633 members listed, which averages around 350 registered Meet-uppers per group. They probably don't all turn up at once.

Cars

Gary Numan (Gary Webb to his friends) came to prominence in the late 1970s, fronting new wave band Tubeway Army then in 1979 with his solo hit Cars. The lyrics paint a picture of the car as carapace, a protector and yet separater from the outside world.

Numan is still touring, although as this article notes, his inability to manage money (houses, Ferraris, three aeroplanes) left him penniless before he and his wife devised a plan to dig themselves out of that particular ditch.

Cars is (almost) made for uke. The original is in D but I've done this songsheet in C as it's more manageable. If you want to play along with Gary, just throw a capo onto the second fret.

The riffs were originally done on bass but work nicely on uke and I've adapted the synthesiser part into a harmonising riff. The riffs are great in that they are the circular kind that you can just keep repeating. If you simply want to play chords, there are a forgiving three!

This original song by Scottish singer-songwriter (and uke player) Zoe Bestel is beautiful and almost meditative. She wrote is as "a love story between the moon and the ocean, how they follow each other but never quite get to be together."

Have always loved moonlight on the ocean!
Danielle

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