Those with a passion for the ukulele, especially those from the USA, midwest, might know already about the events in Nashville, IN, such as the Brown County Ukulele Festival, and the Ukulele World Congress. These are 2 annual events which occur in winter (BCUF) and summer (UWC). So far I have been to 2 ukulele festivals, and I just attended my first world congress this past weekend. It was wonderful and I met a lot of amazing people with similar passions. The weather couldn’t have been better, and the ambiance could not have been more peaceful, rich, and inviting. This is the kind of place I don’t mind leaving my truck unlocked with a lot of my belongings. I was surrounded by salt of the earth people who don’t have a single frown or selfish thought to give.
Both of these events are hosted by Mainland Ukuleles, which is also based in Nashville. As it happens, I’ve never visited their store, but there are always a lot of their ukuleles at these events and the instruments are very high-quality. My next uke purchase is very likely to be a Mainland Ukes baritone ukulele! I love the deeper and fuller sound it provides compared to concerts, tenors, and even low-G tenors, which is what I mainly play these days. One problem I have is that my vocal range is too narrow, and many of the songs I know well in the usual keys like C and G don’t fit my range very well, so I found out this weekend while performing at the open mic that a bari would expand my performing range significantly. It was a rewarding experience playing things for people, that either I had never performed before, or that sound better in my lower register. Shoutout to Clark G for letting me use his ukulele to perform those!
So I performed both days of the UWC event. The first day was recorded on someone else’s phone so I’ll post that video later when I get it.
The second day I played King of Carrot Flowers by Neutral Milk Hotel, followed by In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson. I have a video of me performing that song already in the music section, but here it is again live on a bari uke.
While I’m at it, I might as well post my performance from BCUF ’22. There I played Father & Son by Cat Stevens/Yusuf. The nerves got me a little that first time, so had a couple of noticable mess-ups.
Update 2024: I thoroughly enjoyed my 2nd UWC this summer! Here is a set I played on a bright and perfect Saturday. The first song is my original called Rain, which I wrote much earlier and that can be found in the Music section of this blog as well. The second is a cover of Heartless Bastards’ song, Revolution.
Finally, perhaps the best single moment of the 2024 UWC for me was when we were all sitting around in the wee hours of the morning jamming together, and Arjen started a wonderful Māori rendition of How Great Thou Art.
That concludes this blog post. Hey you, reader. You have yourself a nice day.