Time Out Chicago / Issue 121: June 21–27, 2007

Celebrating this key element of Hawaiian musical culture in suburban Chicago isn’t as odd as it might first seem, according to Jeff Smith, a uke enthusiast and driving force behind the fest. "Chicago actually has a huge ukulele history," Smith says. "That’s the reason I took this on."

Steve Mondry, who owns the Legal Grounds Coffee House with his wife Karen, says, "With all the festivals we have…What’s surprising is that a place like Chicago doesn’t already have something like this already."

After the ukulele was introduced to the mainland in 1915, its popularity skyrocketed, and companies started cranking out ukuleles in Chicago. (Ukuleles typically have four strings, and come in four sizes; the standard or "soprano" is the small one most people think of.) From about 1917 to 1930, about 75 percent of all the ukuleles in the mainland were made in Chicago, Smith says.

Local manufacturers like Lyon & Healy, which still makes harps, and Elk Grove Village–based Harmony, once the largest string-instrument maker in the U.S., got into the uke biz. Smith, who has "a collector mentality," owns 103 ukes, about 70 of which
were made here.

Although it’s been known for the last century as the quintessential Hawaiian instrument, the ukulele arrived in the Pacific from Madeira, Portugal, in the late 1800s. The islanders embraced the instrument and renamed it after a flea (uku) that leaps (lele)—probably, Smith says, because of the finger-flying fretwork required to play it.

The inspiration for the festival began last summer, when the Mondrys flew to California to visit Smith, a die-hard surfer who’s organizing the event out of San Diego. "It’s a surfer mentality, I think, the ukulele," Steve Mondry says. "Last summer, Jeff would take the kids surfing, and then afterwards he’d teach my son and daughter how to play." (His twins, now 11, enjoyed it so much, they take uke lessons in Chicago.)

They also attended a San Diego uke fest, which started everyone thinking: The Mondrys already had a perfect venue in their coffeehouse, which has a large outdoor patio overlooking the Des Plaines River, and could provide both indoor and outdoor stage areas. The jam festival’s eclectic lineup will showcase the versatility of the miniguitar, from locals to prominent Hawaiian musicians who rarely travel this far east. Saturday’s daylong roster should provide a broad sampling of an instrument that plays a lot more than just Don Ho tunes. Derick Sebastian, a 25-year-old from Maui, "is an electric-guitar whiz who loves Santana, and he channels all that energy through his ukulele," Smith says, while veteran musician Kimo Hussey of Oahu plays more traditional Hawaiian music. Other performers will roll out the Tin Pan Alley uke tunes that took the mainland by storm in the 1910s and ’20s.

The kickoff concert Friday night features singer-songwriter Victoria Vox, a Green Bay native, whose recent embrace of the ukulele has altered her career trajectory: In 2006, she released And Her Jumping Flea (which featured, among her original tracks, covers of the 1925 classic "Ukulele Lady" and of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s 1993 hit mashup "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World"), which was recently nominated for a Hawaiian Music Award. "That’s a pretty big deal for a blond-haired girl from Wisconsin," Smith notes.