subject: Looking Back At Ukuleles Origins [print this page] If you think that ukuleles are native to Hawaii, you are wrong. It was in the end of the 19th century that the Portuguese went to Hawaii and bringing with them various instruments such as machete and rajo which is a music instrument with 5 strings and traced back to early 1800s.
In the history of ukuleles 4 men were involved in making the instrument common in Hawaii. It was Joao Fernandes who first played a stringed instrument at the docks when he arrived at Ravenscrag in the year 1879. The other three arrived with Fernandes they were Manuel Nunes, Jose do Espirito Santo, and Augusto Dias, and they worked in the sugar cane fields.
When Santo, Dias and Nunes were finished with their contracts they started as taro patch fiddles for their families. And Nunes engaged in making ukuleles and made a factory in 1910. In 1922 he passed away and his son continued operating the factory until 1930.
The ukulele became famous in Hawaii and even the royals were amazed with it and played with the instrument. Its native elegance may have attracted the native settlers in Hawaii and adapted their music to it. The four-stringed instrument was unique for them particularly the jumping with the fleas tuning since the fingers look like fleas when playing this instrument.
Martin, a truly large guitar maker, started producing the ukulele in 1907, but no one bought them. After starting production yet again in 1915, the instrument's recognition skyrocketed, and in 1920 they began making them out of koa wood from Hawaii. 1926 was the most popular year for Martin's ukes, when the company made 14,000.
It was at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco where the publicity of ukuleles started out at the mainland. It was within this period in which majority of the guitar makers like Gibson, Dobro, Regal and Harmony started producing their very own style of ukulele and sold almost half a million in the year 1931.
It might be with its small size and its low cost price that made people interested in them and made it one among the popular musical instruments around the world. Even the Prince of Wales was fascinated with it and played the instrument. Prince Edward also played with the instrument and asked Harmony to make him a unique design with a gold-engraved coat-of-arms.
During the Great Depression period the popularity of the ukuleles were affected and after the World War II people switched their heads on another direction and were more interested in electric guitars. Nevertheless, the ukuleles never lost its spark in Hawaii.
With internets potential to link people the ukuleles fame returned into picture. Most well-known musicians such as Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Mike Okouchi, and Brittni Paiva started playing with ukuleles and their fame as well grew. With the return of ukulele into picture a lot of producers began creating ukuleles again. Nowadays, ukuleles are back into the light again and its getting most liked than ever and even diverse genres are now making use of ukuleles.
