With Fame, Comes Responsibility

While surfing the web, I found that my blog has been discovered by Ukulelia, a really good blog about ukuleles. Dang! I'd better start writing better.

I need to learn more upbeat tunes. I tend to be attracted to the melancholy in life and music and have noticed that this tendency finds its way into my song choices. One thing that I like about the ukulele is that it lends an irony to sad tunes. You have this cheery little instrument, thought of as a toy or an instrument worthy of only Tiny Tim on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In." It is perfect for Disney and Muppets tunes. But, when you play a song like "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" on it, it gives the song a poignancy that it doesn't have on the guitar or banjo. It adds to the idea that this guy, the American working man, has helped build the great industrial monuments of this nation, but has to stand on the sidelines, watching others enjoy the fruits of his labors as he himself is forgotten. Not even a memory.

And the idea that he's sings the song while playing the ukulele-a cheap, tiny instrument associated with fun-creates a tension in the song-a yinyang where singer and instrument pull against one another for control.

I may have been an English major for too long. But the other thing I have noticed is that the lyrics progress from "brother" to "buddy." Like maybe this guy's family has even forgotten him and he has to turn to people who may have once been his friends. In fact, through the first two verses, the narrator in the song is an anonymous American worker/WWI vet and doesn't become a person ("Hey, don't you remember, you called me Al?") until the end, when he's talking to his "buddy."

I wish I had known how to play the ukulele when I was in Grad School. This is not a major regret of mine, but a minor one.

Since learning the uke, I have learned how to play "Wayfaring Stranger," a song that is frequently alluded to in Cold Mountain. I wrote and presented a paper on that novel to a class taught by a favorite professor and thought about opening by singing the song. This professor was a folk musician and had actually spent time traveling to farflung regions collecting songs from isolated communities.

I chickened out because I thought it might detract from the content of my presentation. I was also a little shy about singing a capella. But, if I would have had a uke, I think it would have ben sweet.

The uke being my first musical instrument that I have stuck with, I have learned something about the construction of songs that I didn't get before. I can see how a songwriter has to shape both words and music into a piece of art, much like a painter has to shape color and subject matter.