City of David

I had a brainwave in the shower Christmas Eve morning. It had been building for a while, I think, but I was humming Joni Mitchell’s “River” and remembering how I played it for colleagues a couple of weeks previous on a semester-end Zoom social. I work with the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK at Cardiff University, and many of my colleagues and our students are Muslim. Easy assumptions about Christmas are therefore suspect, but it’s not a matter of rejection. My friend and co-lecturer Mansur Ali, for example, gives an annual sermon about the nativity and the importance of Jesus in Islam.

Nonetheless, I didn’t think that “O Holy Night” would be the right one to bust out. And puerile commercial Christmas songs like “Jingle Bells” just grind in the annoying dominance of the season with none of the spiritual uplift. Well, “River” is the silver tuna, then. Christmas-adjacent, and pretty besides. One of my students even beckoned her mum to join the Zoom call to hear.

Photo by Katie Munnik

So now we’re all locked down again for Christmas. The governments at Westminster and the Senedd really mishandled the messaging for this season. They devised a dubious pretext for safe family gatherings, which then required a tranche of other disruptions to school and university students so that isolation could happen in time to make these gatherings “safe”. I personally thought this was a bad idea, but the stakes are low for me anyways because my family is all back in Canada; we’ve been used to being just the five of us for the holidays for many years.

I’m not a Grinch, though, and I’m sympathetic to the desire of those whose grannies and aunties and cousins and such are close. I’m also a pragmatist, and I know that many, many British people were going to do it anyway. But when the weight of the bad-ideaness crushed even the bumbling optimism of Boris Johnson, who redrafted people’s plans with less than a week to go, even I felt angry and dismal.

That was the moment the ukulele brainwave should have landed, but it took a few days.

Ukulele Lockdown: The Numbers

Since we got locked down (locked in, maybe?) in the middle of March, our engagement with the exterior world has radically changed. Out less (not at all if you can help it, or once a day for exercise), not in groups, working from home, or perhaps furloughed. I don’t know about you, but I was online much more – for work, for social interaction, for entertainment, and of course the necessary doomscrolling, where we let the wash of awful envelope us with a relentless swish of the thumb. It’s been a time, and we’re not even out of it yet.

But alongside the well-intentioned physical habits we’ve been encouraged to take up – the daily constitutional or, when that doesn’t manage to happen, running up and down the stairs several times – and the Calvinistic improving ones (in my case, Spanish on Duolingo: going for a 90-day streak tonight!), I picked up an odd one: ukulele videos. It started at Easter weekend, when I decided to share some original songs of mine in an immediate fashion. “Daughters of Etobicoke” was written on Maundy Thursday, “Mercy” on Good Friday, and then “A Passionate Year” which was not written on Easter but name-checks it in the first line (“There’s a lesson we learn every Easter…”)

It was fun, and I fancied I might keep going for a while. I even gave it a hashtag, #UkuleleLockdown, which had been *very* lightly used at that point by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and someone who was learning the instrument during lockdown. It existed, but not in a major way. I learned that you can post a video directly to Twitter so long as it’s 2:20 or fewer (140 seconds, which parallels the number of characters you were originally allowed in a Tweet, in case you’re baffled at the seemingly arbitrary figure). That was a constraint I could work with, which made recording on the ol’ iPad pretty easy. I kept it pretty low-maintenance, so only one or two takes unless I was really struggling, and just a minimum edit, topping and tailing to make it fit and sometimes fading out at 2:19 if the song couldn’t be shoehorned into the time constraint. Even with the slow upload onto Twitter and Facebook, the whole thing could be accomplished inside half an hour.

My studio, during “This New Spark of Life”. Photo by Katie Munnik

Some people – especially those who would not identify as ukulele lovers – asked why: why this instrument, why this vehicle for sharing? Well, I didn’t want to obsess over a high-quality output, because I’ve put studio-quality recordings together that I have spent some time and effort on. This is meant to be free, quick, and easy. Maybe it’s a pick-me-up for someone (the ukulele is famously cheerful), and maybe some friends and family will make a point of tuning in. The smallness of the instrument and the enterprise gave some unity to the project, and it was something I could do every day.

And every day I did, bar one, up until last Thursday.

Short Reflections on the Strike: Some Wins

Crikey, these are getting ragged.

It’s late.

We had a gloriously sunny day on the picket line.

My wife made the most amazing sole meuniere with blood orange – okay, it was plaice, but it was still really good. Just before we sat down to eat, I saw word that my employer will spread out strike deductions over three months and not be a stickler on penalising action short of a strike.

After making and then fighting fires on the comms front, I have been learning the chords to Bohemian Rhapsody on the ukulele so that I can accompany my union members at our mass rally for the final day of striking tomorrow. Friends, if you thought my job was weird when I was on the clock, you should see me when I’m off it.

Yes, friends, this will be me tomorrow. Something to see, for sure.

Short Reflections on the Strike: It’s like Thunder! Lightning!

Photo by Jonathan Marsh

I’ve written before about music – how important it’s been to me on the picket line and how it brings out our creativity.

Lyrics adapted from Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” by Carina Girvan

I do mean “our”. More people have been coming forward with lyrics they’ve adapted. I’ve had calls to learn “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Shout”.  At our rally on Thursday, I heard some folk behind me singing new words to Cher’s “Believe”, and though I had no form to give to the verses, once I figured out what key they were singing in, I could back them up on the chorus. Today, a few of us jumped in on a rewritten “Jolene”, and we all got organised for that British pub classic, “Wonderwall”.

Lyrics adapted from Noel Gallagher’s “Wonderwall” by Nicky Priaulx and Steve Davies

It’s great fun, even if “UUK” doesn’t scan so well most of the time (though watch this space: I’ve been tinkering with Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”…) It’s grim to be away from our classes and our research. It sucks not to reply to student e-mails. We’ve had sharp cold, mild snow, and drippy rain. And we’re losing money on the days we’re out. So it’s not a party.

But we can find spots of joy nonetheless. A good fiery speech gets us going. A visit from a politician plugs us in to the wider conversations, by which our dispute will eventually be resolved. But singing together – that is what gladdens our hearts and gives us something to remember at the end of the day.

I’ve always wanted to properly work out a cover of “Knock on Wood”, the disco classic. The music, on the ukulele, is a doddle. But I’ve never quite committed the time. Marching at the Thursday rally, I absently strummed out the chords. A colleague from the journalism school hummed, “I don’t want to lose the pension…” We could see there was something there, but we had to get on to the fiery speeches and politician visits, so we left it.

Over the weekend, I picked it up again. In fact, the lyrics fit over extremely well. Except for the title and landing line in the chorus, of course. The person in the song feels really lucky, whereas we don’t. Maybe lucky to have the pension we have, but it is in the process of being taken away. I tried “Strike for Good”, which I liked in the sense of a positive message (for the good) but couldn’t really use because it sounds like we want to keep on striking forever. Unambiguously not the case. “Strike to Win” is a compromise. Doesn’t rhyme, but then, “wood” doesn’t rhyme with anything else in the original lyric. Still a bit weak, a bit hard to sing forcefully. But it went over well all the same.

 

Strike To Win

I don’t want to lose the pension that I got
Cause if I did, I would surely lose a lot 
Cause our pension is better than any stocks I know 
It’s like thunder, lightning 
The way you treat us is frightening 
Think we better strike to win

 

I ain’t superstitious about ’em – don’t wanna take no chance 
Your defined contributions don’t lead me to romance 
Cause our pension is better than any stocks I know 
It’s like thunder, lightning 
The way you treat us is frightening 
Think we better strike to win

 

It’s no secret about it – we’re experts on this stuff 
So see to it (see to it) that we retire with enough 
If we had a decent pension, it would mean so much 
It’s like thunder, lightning 
The way you treat us is frightening 
Think we better strike to win

 

Put Yer Ukes Up: Ukevangelism, Part 2

Photo (c) Laure Kolk 2009

So I wrote about a change in my ukulele fortunes a while back, when Child Number 2 started singing in the choir and I lost my Monday night pupil. (We still have not fixed a new time for lessons, and this is really bad, but he can still play the hell out of “Taps”, so all is not lost but merely on hold.) I referred to a book on the uke by Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain member Will Grove-White, and I sorta intimated that I would write a review of it soon. Sooner, later, whatever: here it is now.

The book is called Get Plucky with the Ukulele, and it’s a gift to the modern world, coming at the right time now that the second wave of ukulele has crested and the Good Ship Jumping Flea has come down the other side, not upturned. The wee instrument got rather faddish, to the point where US comedian Ria Lina could sing “Not Another Ukulele” at the Edinburgh Fringe on the ukulele with as little irony as is possible in such a setting. You still see them in shop windows, but I think the surprise factor is gone. Those who bought them in the swell of the hype may still have them kicking around the house, so when you talk about playing it, the response is no longer a) are you kidding?, b) oh, I do that too!, or c) ukulele? pfft, that’s so Hackney-three-months-ago now where’s my beard oil? We can confront the instrument as it is, unironically and neither undersold nor overhyped.

“We All Cherish Strange Things”: A Meditation on Ukulelevangelism

Last night, I would have been giving my middle child a ukulele lesson. I taught his sister when she was his age, and she has augmented this with violin through school and, this year, singing in the church choir. I would have been teaching him, only last night, he joined his sister for choir practice, a step he’s really excited about.

We’ll have to find another time for uke lessons, though, because he’s been progressing really well and there’s still so much to learn. But with a vacant hole in my early evening, I picked up a book by Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain member Will Grove-White – I’d thumbed through it when I bought it, but I was writing up my PhD at the time, so I didn’t give it a proper “look”. It’s fun and good advocacy, and maybe I’ll pop a review of it up here shortly. But reading it sent me back to an old piece of writing of mine. Before I started “maintaining” this blog (that may be too grand a word for it), I would put occasional longer pieces of writing on Facebook in the “notes” category – remember those? Thing is, those don’t always get a lot of reading, and they’re rather buried. But I thought this was a rather good piece of writing that deserved a second public.

So, it’s a recycled blog post (20 January 2012), reviewing two records – one dated even at the time and the other largely inaccessible outside the snug Ottawa market. Obscure, as the ukulele itself is. But not small: it’s a long read, so grab some popcorn.

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“We all cherish strange things”
– Neil Gerster, “Set Me On Fire”

This is partly a review of two albums – Neil Gerster’s Hearts and Other Shipwrecks and Eddie Vedder’s Ukulele Songs – and partly an essay on the ideas these records inspire for the strange thing that I, or we, cherish, the ukulele. (Vedder’s record barely qualifies as “new” anymore, but both were released in 2011, so I’ll take that as “recent” enough to give me licence for writing this.)

First, my own interests on the table: I am a ukulele performer, and so my appreciation of these records is overly informed and rather biased. I like the instrument, and I want others to like it, too. As well, I am personally implicated with both these artists. I’ve known Neil for 13 years – though we’ve not been in close contact for all of that time. But we played at Carleton University’s sadly (for all intents and purposes) defunct pub, Rooster’s, and shared a love of good lyrics and melodies. More recently, he played bass and sang on my own record, I Am with the Hunters; and while he was putting his own record together, he asked me for thoughts on arrangements and such. Whilst I have no such direct contact with Eddie, I might as well have done. From the release of Pearl Jam’s second record, Vs, I have faithfully followed his musical progress, memorising and personalising his words, learning his changes and riffs, and letting myself get swept up with thousands-strong audiences during his performances.

Purple Prose

Somewhere in the narcissistic hubub of finishing my PhD thesis this summer, I missed a great story about purple.