World Play Your Ukulele Day

What the day is

World Play Your Ukulele Day is observed on February 2. The ukulele is the instrument most likely to be learned by an adult who believes they are not musical, and there are structural reasons for that.

Origin and background

It is not originally Hawaiian. Portuguese immigrants from Madeira arrived in Hawaii in the 1870s to work the sugar plantations, bringing small four-stringed instruments including the machete. Hawaiian players adopted it, altered the tuning, and made it their own, and royal patronage under King Kalākaua established it as a Hawaiian instrument within a generation. It reached the American mainland in force after the 1915 Panama-Pacific exposition in San Francisco and became a craze.

The standard tuning contains a genuine oddity. On most stringed instruments the strings run from low to high in order. On a ukulele with re-entrant tuning the top string is pitched above its neighbor rather than below, so the pitches do not ascend across the neck. This is why strumming produces that bright, compact jangle rather than a bass-anchored chord: there is no low end at all, and the notes of a chord sit bunched together.

The practical advantages for a beginner are real. Nylon strings under low tension are gentle on untrained fingertips, the short scale means small hands reach easily, and several common chords need only one or two fingers. A player can accompany songs within an afternoon, which is not true of most instruments.

The serious repertoire is considerable, and players who treat it as a toy tend to be surprised by what the instrument does in trained hands.

How to take part

• Learn three chords, which unlocks a startling number of songs.
• Tune it properly with an app or clip-on tuner. Most bad ukulele sound is tuning.
• Strum with the fleshy part of the finger rather than a plectrum.
• Play with other people, which is what the instrument is built for.
• Listen to a virtuoso player once, to recalibrate what it can do.