Jake's Jolly Uke Club

Each month over an evening we work through a variety of songs as a group and use this as a vehicle to explore Uke technique, singing and performing. This group started at the CAA club in Covent Garden but due to the venue being constantly booked out we have moved our location Eastward to Bloomsbury and a charming little juicer called 'The Rugby Tavern'.  We have appropriately changed our grand name from the Covent Garden Ukulele Club to the even grander 'Bloomin' Bloomsbury Ukulele Society.' Dates this autumn so far for the club are: the 28th September,26th October & 23rd November 2011.Click on the logo for our Facebook group

Songs are decided in advance by email in the group and Jake presents a few suprises each month. The repertoire covers songs from the 1920's to the present day. Jake will not however play any material by Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet although, he his quite personable about other performers from the 1980's including A-Ha! The aim is to eventually perform and share these songs with an audience periodically but there is no real pressure and the pace is set by the class players themselves*. The classes cost £10 each a session or this season as an incentive £25 for the three in advance,  and we are always looking for new 'nice people' to join up, so please feel free to contact Jake for more details. The classes start at 7.30pm and run till 9-9.30. generally people start arriving from 7pm to dust/dry down, tune up and buy a drink. We always finish our session with a wind down one for the road drink, to calm ourselves down after our frenzied playing.

*The course is not for complete beginners and I expect that people can play simple songs such as 'Comin' Round The Mountain When She Comes' or 'Stand by Me'. I also expect everyone to have a go at singing and really joining in. If in doubt email me  and I'll try to answer your question. For complete beginners I run a three week course at the CityLit college near Holborn which runs twice a year !

Jake is incidently one of the biggest Uke players in the country !

Useful Links for Uke Players :

Firstly a link to a really good online tuning site

Now a really good simple chord chart with fingering

The Excellent Duke of Uke website and address details and also the Southern Uke Store which is a huge Uke shop based in Bournemouth

Roy Smeck playing Ukulele percussion & Jake Shimabukuro doing the While My Guitar Gently Weeps thing thats had over 8 million hits. Meanwhile I was put onto James Hill recently as he was headlining at the Cheltenham Uke Festival: here is his version of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean . At the less techi end of the spectrum we have Priscilla Ahn and a delightful self penned number that is a homage to Traditional Uke/hawaiian songs such as Sweet Leilani. Check out her song Finding My Way Back Home.

Here is the link to my pal Martin Wheatley and his stunning Uke arrangements. I'd prefer it if he wore a Dickie Bow in the videos I must admit. 

World Cup action with The Dulwich Ukulele Club 

There are loads of Uke Links vis the Santa Cruz Uke Club webpage

Finally there is an arrangement of my own song Then Again on my myspace page with Martin Wheatley on acoustic Hawaiian Guitar and myself on Uke and Vocals

 Lastly two good sources of songs for Uke with Tabs:

Chordie which has a huge resouce and a facilty to view chords needed to play a particular song and also an onboard programe to change the key of a number ! Also Doc Uke is a great sight as their are free downloadable pdf's that print and work very well. Try also The Ukulizer where again you can change keys for the uke key you'd like, and finally here a site with Beatles songs that you literally play along withcalled Ukulele Beatles Fun !

Ukulele Teaching with Schools:

Jake teaches children aged from 6-11 in Ukulele at schools, privately and with the Kitchen School of Music.  The Uke is a great instrument for children as it is relatively cheap to buy for schools ( around £15-25) and is both an accompaniment for voice as well as an instrument in it's own right.  It can be used as a tool for making original and creative songs and together with advanced techniques in Rock Endings lends itself readily to performance.

As a Uke teacher in schools Jake can model courses from one off sessions, workshops over several days or as an integrated part of the schools curriculum with planned lessons over a term. It is great fun working on a project such as an end of term concert ! 

UKULELE TRIBES

In his travels as a Uke man Jake has observed the Ukulele fever gripping the country presently. More to the point though, he has become fascinated by the sociological aspect of the many tribes of Uke players. He has become a 'Uke Spotter' in a very literal sense.

Here is his list . Can you spot yourself ?

Kids - The nicest tribe as basically if a kid is into Ukulele thats got to be a good thing and a welcome break from stealing the kitchen knifes and donning the hoody at dusk. All Uke kids cover their cases in stickers and have a father with a beard. Most commonly heard phrase ' Dad, my fingers hurt ! '

Modern Retro - the bright colours and cheap price of the Ukulele have lured this group of gals with hair bands and guys (pony tail obligatory ). They cluster in Hoxton and form Ukulele bands that sound like Kate Nash singing 'Coming Round the Mountain' with alternative lyrics. They frequent 'The Duke of Uke ' shop but never buy anything and leave a paper trail of flyers for their next  happening wherever they are. Most commonly heard phrase ' Dad, my fingers hurt !'

The Pro - Looking old before their time this small group lead a solitary life and never congregate with any other Uke players ever. Their mature looks are from seasons in Blackpool and cruise ships tours singing George Formby to the over 70's. They wear blazers with little badges on them, carry their Uke's in cases that make them look like Freemason's and never smile except on stage when it looks more an American cheerleader than a border line acoholic entertainer. Most commonly heard phrase ' I'm off on the Canberra in 4 days '

Hoarders - Also known as collectors or purists. This tribe is perhaps the most volatile of all the groups. Fiercely opininated on every aspect of the Ukulele they cluster in groups of 3-5. They are always taking new Uke's out of cases but never play them for more than 5 seconds more interested in showing the serial number or checking the style of tuning peg than playing. Inheritantly bitchy and excitable a new theory about 6 Uke's made in 1927 is all that it takes for a row of technical expletives to erupt causing serious tea spilling in any nearby saucer. Life long friendships can be  broken forever when a group of vintage uke collectors find one of them has brought a brand new uke or exactly the opposite when a modern collector buys an old uke for the cost of family car. Most commonly heard phrase ' Yes my wife left 3 years ago but did you know the new C543's binding interferes with the fretmarkings, it's an outrage, a disaster, what has the world come to ! '. 

Americans - Their sentences always start and end with word Maui or another Hawaiian island. This is so because it is technically impossible to focus and listen to this tribe speak due to the dazzling whiteness of their sneakers. This group never play small Ukulele's (regular ) but favour large or supersize ( the tenor or baritone ) . They always have very shiny brand new uke's made from tropical rainforest wood and have those tuner things clipped on at the ready at all times. Most commonly heard phrase. ' I didn't know George Foreman played the Uke i thought he was a boxer who sells that BBQ grill thing'

Anti-Folk - This cultural group grew as a reaction to Grenwich Folk scenes commercialisation in the 1970's and 1980's and can be thought of as a folk punk movement. This is a real sub-genre of music and the ukulele more often takes centre stage as the instrument of choice due to cheapness and simpleness to play. The players of anti-folk ukulele never perform the same set of material twice, though their set will always contain the line 'the writings on the wall' two songs before the finale which features a food product such as a biscuit that is mythologised and engineered into a mantra.

The Jingle Maker -This uke player is not really a uke purist but is happy to ride the zeitgeist of the uke's popular sound. Marketing strategists are now aware that any product that either needs gentle humour or summer whimsey to sell their product  needs the uke to do this. So we rush and buy, washing powders, Honda cars and house insurance all due to a clever muso-jingle person tinkling awayfor their PRS fee.

Much of Jake's childrens material is now self penned and together with his playing of the accordion, banjo and ukulele he uses puppets and props to provide lively and engaging music sessions of between 30-60 mins in length. If your interested in using Jake either with workshops or as a music leader in your nursery contact him by email or phone.

Jake's knowledge and sympathy with music for the very young has led to him being comissioned by Impossible TV to compose all 60 episodes of music for the channel 5 animation called 'Birdbath'. You can now watch all these episodes via the Channel5 Milkshake website.

Click Here for Birdbath Episodes

Jake songs seem to appeal to kids, as Jake's fellow pierrot pal Gacko demonstrated recording his sons rendition of one of Jake's songs: Presenting,  Alfie Bridgens performing fantastically The Sea Kissing the Shingle at home in his Pierrot Costume aged . Well done Alfie !

There is considerable demand as well for Jake's workshop skills with children in both large scale and small scale events. He has had comissions in the last year from The Manchester International Festival, Somerset House, The Royal Festival Hall, Arts Depot and The Georgian Theatre Richmond.

- Caspar with his Dad at his first banjo lesson -

There is much interest with Jake's fantastic new childrens band 'Tea Time Treats' Featuring six fabulous musicians playing a range of fun instruments. Expect to see Trumpet, Saxophone, Accordion, Piano, Ukuleles , Double bass , Drums and Banjo. Lots of songs about Panyattas, Jellyfish & Jumping Kangaroos . Their first gig will be at The Arts Depot in Finchley on the 4th May 2009 ( see gig lists on this site for more details )

Promo for Tea Time Treats 

- The Tea Time Treats - 

A Short History of Music for Children in the Twentieth Century

By Jake Rodrigues Mar 2008

Whilst giving a demonstration of multicoloured musical pipes in my ‘Windy Workshops’ show I announced,

‘This next piece of music was written by a musical genius called Mozart. Put your hand up if your four years old. Well, while your up stairs playing your gameboy this lad Mozart was knocking up the best known tune ever known and he was three and half and younger than you !’

This gag plays on two myths. That of childhood genius and the second that Mozart wrote this tune when he had just started using a potty or whatever they used then. The truth is that whilst Wolfgang Amadeus was a prodigy he didn’t write Twinkle Twinkle until he seventeen  and then it was a set of twelve variations called Kochel-Verzeichnis. The melody was in fact a well-known German ‘folk melody’ and the whole point of the piece was to demonstrate virtuosity and compositional prowess with such a simple tune. Wolfgang’s little tune demonstrates the paradoxical and potency of a children’s tune. It seems elevated and denigrated at the same time by its treatment by and by association with Mozart. I guess the Mozart story of at three and half writing a simple tune to amuse and satiate his dribbling peers is as good a place to start as any. The history of Children’s music is steeped it stories, either accompanying the tales of pies full of blackbirds, and falling down hills or in epic pieces of classical music that conjure far away places or the changing of the guards.

Children’s music has always been prevalent in our western culture and it only takes a cursory glance to realise in all cultures it has always been so. Music with song has been used to amuse, bond, count, teach language, as well as tell stories and histories. In it’s most obvious form we have the nursery rhyme, but there is also a long history of events such as the dancing round the maypole, singing Christmas carols and other ritualistic songs and melodies.
The styles of music I have just been listing are what many would call ‘folk music’ and other than the Christmas Carols would have been passed down orally from generation to generation. The fact that we are still singing ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ and the old plague song ‘Ring a Ring a Roses’ is a testament to the longetivity and continuity of  this music. Any exploration of Children’s Music has to accept this huge tradition as effectively the base colour and palette from which this genre has developed.  
 

Until the baby boomers of the 1950’s in Europe and America children’s music with a few notable exceptions was a haphazard affair . To look at this in terms of  classical music we need to start in the nineteenth century and earlier still. As Mr Mozart’s earlier example demonstrates musical novelty is perhaps the keyword with the classical repertoire that has developed for children. There are two categories of music as well to consider here. Music written for children/novices to play  ( cue the sonatina’s of Clementi ) and music written for children to listen to and be inspired by. This latter repertoire is a slim volume of work written by composers for their children very often . A good example is Debussy whose Etudes and children’s corner were written with his child Claude-Emma in mind . The best known of these pieces is ‘The Golliwogs Cakewalk’. Perhaps the cynic in me might say that even this piece is a novelty pastiche of  Ragtime rather than a piece written really for children. The dilemma that soon becomes apparent is whether a composer is dumbing down by writing for children. In Peter Van der Merwe’s book Origins of the Popular Style the point is made about the assimilation of Classical form and how by the middle of the nineteenth century Classical Composers in their urge for originality and innovation were moving yet further away from their audiences.

‘ Certain melodic features common in Chopin and Liszt during the years 1830-1850 faded out of ‘serious’ music after the mid century , though they continued to flourish in popular music. A little later the same thing happened to the Romantic’s lush chromaticism. As soon as it became the property of every parlour balladeer the ‘serious’ composer abandoned it…it hardly mattered…provided it was clearly unpopular’

If Victorian Composers were having issues concerning their adult audience, their relationship with their potential juvenile audience for the most part would have been non-existent. A snapshot of nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century in terms of children saw them having little if no contact with men of the middle and upper classes, and making the presumption that to be a composer you needed to be educated, that pretty much cuts Classical Composers from children period. This theory obviously is just conjecture and would need to be proved in detail, but the notable exceptions serve to prove my point  that Classical (male ) composers have tended to have little or no contact with their own children let alone other’s. The best-known exception is Prokokiev who wrote orchestral music for his son and then repeated this with many compositions especially on returning to his native Russia.

It would be fair to say that his 1936 piece of work ‘Peter and the Wolf’ is considered the premiere piece of children’s classical music. Visiting the Barbican library recently there were no less than five versions of the work with different narrators my favourite being Dame Edna Everage. Edna makes her/his entrance with the immortal line ‘Hello Possums, this is a story about a great big wolf” . This must be a great work to survive an onslaught such as that.
In the top ten of classical children’s hits Peter and the Wolf are at the top of  the pops followed by the Carnival of the Animals, The Nut Cracker Suite and Swan Lake. The rest of the charts are fought out by Rimsky Korsakov and his  thousand and one nights
Benjamin Britten's young persons guide to the orchestra and Bela Bartok’s concerto for Orchestra, Oh and don’t forget old Holst’s  planets. The common theme’s are either accessibility ( the Britten & Bartok pieces just mentioned ) or in pieces of music that are often musically onomatopoeic of what they represent ( skeletons on xylophones etc. ). Another generalisation I know but a look at the programmes of the last few years Children’s Proms, bar the exception of the orchestrations of the Harry Potter theme tune seem to bear this out .

The coming of sound recordings with the advent of  gramophone records, radio and film in the early twentieth century, saw the massive growth of all sorts of music . Classical Music was the star focus of Walt Disney’s third movie Fantasia, which animated popular and quirky classical pieces. The films reception at the time was muted and despite being seen as now a children’s classic it still has the power to upset classical purists who complain how the music has been chopped and changed to fit the animation. For me Fantasia is still very challenging as a piece of art. Some of the work I can easily see is great fun and digestible for children. However, there is a real darkness and menace in several sequences that scare even a dad like me. Perhaps it is impossible to view now without the perspective of the second world war and the uncertainty of the thirties. Scary in a way other popular children’s films don’t get near or choose not to.

Walt Disney’s two films that preceded Fantasia ( Snow White & Dumbo ) were far more typical of where music for children was heading by the late thirties. As well as picture book animation, and a strong narrative these animations had modern, witty and highly innovative songs and soundtracks.  The effect of the three to four minute recording time available on a 78 record had a profound effect on twentieth century music and this is evident with all Disney’s major animations. Composers teamed with lyricists and by the mid thirties a huge industry specialised in popular music. Family friendly music became big business and a hit song from a film would be released on 78 , sheet music and would be played back to back on the radio and in live bands . The recording industry in America soon blossomed and the model was copied throughout the world. At the same time as films, variety stage shows and light comedic operetta’s developed into a new high bred pioneered by the 1927 stage sensation ‘Showboat’. We take the established conventions of the musical for granted now but in the nineteen twenties they were revolutionary. Films and Musicals effectively began to bounce off one another and there was a golden between the thirties and the start of the 1960’s where musicals were made into films and visa-versa. They also significantly targeted families producing an entire cannon of family entertainment that we are still watching with kids to this day. I consider this period as being the richest vein in terms of children’s music. Together with this musical animation continued to  be prolific and composers and writers found ever-new ways to engage both adults and children at the same time. The music shifted with the times such as the Jungle Book’s jazz rhythms or Peggy Lee’s smokey vocals in the Aristocats. Performers such as Danny Kaye , Burl Ives and later Julie Andrews became children’s music specialists. The film Mary Poppin’s was a typical innovative entertaining film mixing entertaining animation with live performers and an incredibly memorable music score aimed directly at kids. Likewise the seminal piece Tubby the Tuba meshes characterisation with orchestration in a way that was both a homage to and an ironic take on  Prokokiev’s and Poulenc’s orchestra / narration pieces.

The radio further propelled performers such as Danny Kaye and Julie Andrews and all sorts of other children’s music. In Britain composers such as Eric Coates wrote short novelty pieces of music with children in mind with pieces such as The Three Bears and The Jester at the Wedding Suite and on the subject of Bears the nineteen thirties classic The Teddy Bears Picnic was a weekly choice on Listen with Mother a massively popular radio show on BBC’s Home Service.

Before blowing Listen with Mother out the water with the advent of pop, teenage music and TV in the 1960’s let’s go back to folk music and it’s revival in the twentieth century.
Both in America and Britain folk music was being collected and intellectualised in the early twentieth century. In Georgina Boyes book ‘The Imagined Village’ she tells how folk music was essentially recreated and contrived in the twentieth century an example being the statistic of there being 9 folk clubs in 1959 blossoming to 1700 in 1979 . Both sides of the Atlantic saw this music being reclaimed by the middle classes often with a socialist political agenda. In Britain Ewan McColl spearheaded this revolution. In America, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger  and Ella Jenkins were at the vanguard of the new folk movement . Guthrie and Seeger’s ‘everyman’ appeal was based not only on their workers anthems but also on their inclusiveness regarding their music. Children’s songs were essential to their act and their integrity. Seeger made two classic children’s LP’s that defined a new style or re-invention  of American children’s music. His most famous anti war  song  was even child friendly I remember singing ‘ Where have all the flowers gone’ at school without any knowledge of it’s underlying message ( successful propaganda if ever there was) . Guthrie wrote children’s songs that contemporary artists such as Natalie Merchant from the 10,000 Manics and Billy Bragg now cover. Seeger’s folk repertoire is based on American country and Blues music . His stripped style ( just him and a banjo ) encouraged the whole folk revolution to sing to their children all the old story songs like ‘Froggy went a Courtin’ and ‘John Henry’ . Here were educated singers singing music from the Appalachians to families in Greenwich Village, New York in the 1940’s and 50’s. There is now an established ‘folk repertoire’ of children’s music and leading children’s musicians like Dan Zane and Bluegrass musicians like Cathy Fink use these songs pretty much exclusively. In Britain the folk revival took longer to shape up but by the 1970’s all the leading folk musicians such as Maddy Prior and Martin Carthy were making forays into children’s music. The children’s song gives the English folk revival real continuity as childhood is the time when we sing most with our families and where the amateur can shine in the actual doing and making of the music rather than polished concert performances. It also puts the control of the music back in the parent’s hands literally. 

This movement has gained momentum and is continuing to thrive perhaps as an antidote to the increased commercialism and targeting of children and teenagers in terms of music and entertainment. The term teenager did not exist in the Listen with Mother world of the 1950’s but the advent of Rock and Pop together with television changed the whole industry of music for children. Pop music which exploded in the 1960’s targeted teenagers and young adults , but also excited children literally by its energy and beat. It was and is music to dance to so young children will naturally like it despite I am sure many a prude parent trying to ban it. Some Pop bands most notably ‘ The Beatles’ aimed some of their output directly at Children. The Yellow submarine and The Magical Mystery Tour  were vibrant, psychedelic. and funky fantasy world’s. The mid sixties saw music for children as being very fashionable and the monopoly that Disney had held with children’s popular music for thirty years was taken from them this group of unconventional Liverpudlians. Perhaps the best piece of children’s music from this era was made by the songwriter in The Beatles arch rivals ‘The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson As a response to Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band , he wrote an epic flowing selection of songs and musical soundscapes called ‘ Smile’ . The album was never completed because Wilson had a complete mental breakdown before it was finished. It was released some thirty years later and is a musical expression of the joy of American childhood, songs like ‘Vega-Tables’ and ‘Barnyard’ are a sonic hoot of pops and whistles  a kaleidoscope of music for a whole range of ages, including kids.