The ukulele is everywhere. The other morning, for example, well before 8 a.m., a heavyset young man with meaty hands and braided hair sat hunched over his ukulele — the words “Just be kind, dammit” taped to the front of his instrument — on State Street, quietly strumming. Although he had a sign asking for donations, there were no passersby. That was not the point. As I got closer, I could hear him singing — in something between a whisper and a prayer — “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” A national anthem of sorts for ukulele players, the song has become so ubiquitous you forget how touching it really is. He played it, he explained, to get the day off to a good start.
Somewhere around 2003, Victoria Vox was trying to teach herself that same song on the guitar, inspired by Hawaiian singer and uke player Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwoʻole. She was living in Green Bay, Wisconsin, having recently graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she first encountered the instrument. A fellow student was playing some “silly perverted songs with sassy lyrics.” The ukulele didn’t really “make sense” to Vox but she had an inkling it could be legit.
As she practiced “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” her musical mentor, a retired postal worker, interrupted her efforts. “You need a ukulele,” he called out. “I’ll get you one of mine,” she remembered him adding. It turned out he had 29 vintage ukuleles hanging on his wall. “I think he had all the ukuleles in Green Bay,” Vox said. Before that, Vox had only had limited exposure to the instrument. Today, she does all her composing on the ukulele. “I can pretty much do anything on it. I can be silly. I can do tearjerkers. I can go wherever I want.”