Look at it this way, once the hipsters move on to some other shiny thing, there might be a flood of used instruments on the market, just ripe for the picking!
I took up guitar when I was 12 yrs old because of Eddie Van Halen, and kept at it because of Andy Summers (The Police) and The Edge (U2), and other instruments along the way because a certain musician inspired me and I wanted a piece of what they were doing ...i.e., took voice lessons because of Sinatra, bought a trumpet and got lessons because of Chet Baker, both of which were a ton of work to even get mildly proficient, and found that I was more interested in writing music than trying to be a performer. I went on to study songwriters like the Gershwin Bothers, Jerome Kern, Rogers & Hart, etc as well as the orchestrations and arrangements from Benny Goodman, Johnny Mercer, Harry James, Nelson Riddle, et al, and came upon Bucky Pizzarelli, Chet Atkins, and others, which brought me back to guitar again.....
Since I have no kids yet , I hope my instruments would be passed down to my niece and nephew, and if not donated to some young children with lots of interest and/or talent but no money or access to a decent instrument.
I'm soon to be significantly thinning my large instrument collection save for my ukes and a few special guitars, in order to enable me to SIMPLIFY
- I will NOT part with my ukes, regardless what is on the radio. (in another life, I used to be a mobile DJ, and had to listen to about 20-30 hrs of pop radio per week at a minimum in order to remain a good DJ (you have to know all the music that 'the kids are listening to), and now listen mainly to the weekend programs on NPR only)
However, the study I have in mind for myself over the next umpteen years to be able to play like Aldrine, Jake, John King, James Hill, Tobias Elof, et al will keep up the interest enough for me. I have UU+ and also joined The Ukulele Way. After I complete all the offerings from those programs I will be looking for a teacher for one-on-one lessons to take me to the next level.
As far as the ukulele as an instrument, the future is here already, with the Blackbird Tenor uke, made of modern materials, and if you upgrade to the RMC pickups ($275), you get MIDI functionality, and then can further extend the tonality and textures that you can render beyond what a layer of strings, over a fretted neck, and then a vibrating sound box alone will give you.
Hook this MIDI-uke to your iPad or computer, and it will transcibe what you are playing in real-time, and give you notation and/or tabs, and sound like anything you want, all/each with the correct software.
I thought that by now, Godin would have made their MultiUke offering with this option, since they already have thier Multiac SA guitars that have these RMC pickups, but it seems that Blackbird is actually the first to offer MIDI capability with an acoustic ukulele.
I guess my point is that when you stop trying to 'be cool', and have the confidence to listen to your inner voice and just 'be yourself',and stop following (er CHASING) the trendy/SHINY-things with all the hipsters, you achieve a sense of FREEDOM, while others, who may not, are trapped like a rat in a maze, and cant find a way out.
I dont care if my clothes are out of fashion, they are comfortable and they 'fit' me. Same thing with the ukulele. I will always have and play several ukuleles, despite some yoppa-doppa on MTV with his underwear sticking out and 'mime-ing' his GuitarHero while his falsetto-N-beatz rise up the now-worthless-to-me music charts.
One of my long-time friends asked me what music I'm listening to, I told them about Appalachian Music with the Bowed Dulcimer, and about a vocal form from Portugal called 'Fado' done very nice by Ana Moura, and played them samples, and they just shook their head and walked away. Later I heard them tell someone that I will listening to Ozark mountain music, and 'French ballads' even though I did not speak the language. Further shock and horror.
I dont care any more. I listen to what makes me happy, not what I am aurally assaulted with on tv and radio.
We need bigger and
more frequent Ukulele Festivals, like on the scale of
Burning Man or the NFL
SuperBowl, but at least 4-5 times per year, and that way all the other 'distractions' will fall even further into irrelevance.
I wanna build an Ark, load it with hundreds of like-minded musicians, and go on a never-ending world tour.
Who among my fellow UU brethren wants to come with me?
