Avowed ukulele lover George Harrison once wrote in a note to a friend “Everyone I know who is into the ukulele is ‘crackers’... you can’t play and not laugh!” I’m crackers for the ukulele. The instrument has lit up my life like the nine o’clock fireworks – it’s sparkly, fun, wholesome and everyone’s welcome.
It all started a few months ago with an invitation to a “ladies salon” house-warming party, asking us to come with an offering. So, I baked a cake, not realising the offering was meant to be a poem or a song or a performance of some kind.
Actor, Play School star and national treasure Justine Clarke was a more organised guest than me, and on brief: she brought along her ukulele, and 10 photocopied hand-outs with the handwritten chords and lyrics of Tonight You Belong To Me (an old American song made famous by Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in The Jerk).
She played the song, taught us harmonies and how to sing it in rounds.
We sang with Justine leading us, 10 of us singing together, with the happy tone of a ukulele tinkling the melody and keeping us in tune.
It was one of the happiest, most connected few minutes I’ve ever experienced. Like getting in a warm, sun-drenched car on a chilly day. If I’d been under medical examination at the time, I’m sure my oxytocin and serotonin levels would have been going through the roof.
It was a feeling I’d felt before, but not for a really long time.
As a teenager, I lived for making music. School lessons that weren’t music were only time wasters getting between me and the piano. Lunchtimes were spent sequestered in tiny music rooms, playing and singing through musical scores. As soon as I got home, I was out the back of our house at the piano, pounding out a Carpenters classic or something from Les Mis. I lived for my weekly singing lesson. I was in the house choir, the school choir and the school vocal group. I sang in bands outside school, and at a local club every Wednesday and Saturday night. I’d sing anywhere - weddings, funerals, aged care facilities, markets, eisteddfods.
Leaving school, I carted around a Roland EP7 keyboard to every share house I lived in across Sydney and London. And sang.
And then, somehow, I stopped singing and playing. I don’t know why. Perhaps I realised I wasn’t talented enough to make a life in music? Perhaps I was embarrassed that the music I loved wasn’t cool enough?
I sold the keyboard and only remembered that music used to be everything when I was in the shower or at a school reunion.
The group of women singing to Justine’s uke strumming brought back that feeling of whole-hearted nourishment only making music with a group of people you’re in step with can do.
Now I’d felt that joy and connection again, I wanted it regularly. I couldn’t rely on it happening occasionally at a party if someone happened to bring and play a ukulele.
I’d have to learn the instrument myself.
Fingers hurting, I started to learn all the basic chords needed for the songs I wanted to sing. Slowly, with practice, they started to become a little easier and my fingers toughened up.
I signed up and paid for an online course “Ukulele For Absolute Beginners”, having never finished a single online course I’ve tried in anything.
Diligently, for the 15 days of the course, I sat down at the computer with my ukulele and learned new skills. At night I’d practice them before going to bed. Halfway through the course, I was already excitedly anticipating the next day’s lesson and had to set a timer on my practice or I’d play all night. Any spare moment became a moment to play ukulele.
The way this new hobby – strumming, fingerpicking, 12-bar blues on this tiny instrument – has brought a level of happiness to my life I can only compare to having a new puppy or even falling in love. Or riding a bike as an adult, after not riding since you were a kid. Try not to grin from ear to ear.
Within my group of friends, I’ve become to ukulele what 1990s Oprah was to diets. I’m trying to convert to all my friends. I’m inviting them to join my monthly ukulele group. I’m sending them links to cheap starter ukes that keep a good tune. I want them to feel this happy. I want their brains to light up with music and new skills.
Give it a go. I am sure that happy tone of a ukulele string will light up your heart.
• Melanie Tait is a playwright and journalist living in Sydney
