Tag: ukelandiamagazine

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Community Artist – Marisa Levy

by Yuta Hsu

If you’ve been a Ukelandia member for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen this person’s posts. A little “ or “ a little wave, followed by a cover that would bring a smile to your face. Or maybe a small collaboration ( of a handful of members. Or maybe even a large collab put together with lots of love. Either way, I had the distinct honor to sit with the lovely Marisa Levy.

Born in Korea, she was adopted as a baby by her very loving selfless parents. Her father, her biggest hero, was a decorated Vietnam veteran. Her mother is also pretty amazing. Her parents had two sons, and then decided to adopt wanting to help children after remembering how life was in Vietnam. They ended up adopting four children: one child from Vietnam (older sis), two children from Korea (Marisa a boy), and one from Hong Kong (younger sis). Growing up where there weren’t a lot of A sians, she would sometimes feel out of place, but her parents always made everyone feel equal and as much a part of the family as her brothers. She has done 23 and Me and found a close cousin, but she hasn’t reached out to her… yet. She now has her own family consisting of her husband of 20 years and two teenage boys. The boys have taken to their Asian side and are bringing her along on a journey learning more about her heritage.

A retired hair stylist and make up artist, she’s currently a stay at home mom When not playing an instrument of some kind, she enjoys fishing, nature photography, paddle boarding, kayaking, painting, and cooking. She admits she can get bored easily, so she’s seemingly always looking for a new challenge. Like many of us, a main mo tivator of her uke journey was the COVID lockdowns of 2020. Just before the lockdowns, she was actually picking up an electric piano to learn to play, and saw a little pineapple uke that was too cute to pass up. “I taught myself basic piano via YouTube vid eos. I then decided to pick up the uke I bought and give it a go watching YouTube. That s how I found Bernie and Ukelandia. It kept my mind busy and gave me a community to share my hobby! Things are getting back to normalish, but it still calms me to play and Ukelandia lets me see everyone s journey and progress.” She has since expanded to baritone uke, U bass, guitar, guitalele, and violin. And if you look hard enough, you may see her play a saxophone or percussion, too!

Known by some as “The Collab Queen,” I asked her about the collabs and what inspired her to organize them. “The collab idea came from me wanting to cover a song I really like (I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons), but I knew it would sound better with more members adding their talents. I made a post and received way more volunteers than I ever thought I would! It turned out so great and we just kept on going every few months with a new song!” That first post asking for volunteers resulted in a video of 12+ Ukelandia members (some recording t hemselves for the first time!) doing a wonderful cover of Mumford Sons complete with kick drum. That first collab was so well received, another one happened a few months later where 25+ members (including Bernadette!) joined in for “I Need Never Get Old” by Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. Then came “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen. After that, “With a Little Help from My Friends” by The Beatles. And while she was organizing these large collabs, she was still posting her own videos, doing smaller coll abs, and encouraging other members on their uke journey.

As life slowly returns to some sort of normalcy, the ukulele is still a part of her life. When her father passed away last year, she found solace in the ukulele, finding chord melodies more comforti ng and therapeutic. The positive influence of the ukulele cannot be denied. I asked her what she’s learned on her uke journey so far, and she said “I learned that collabs bring us closer together and encourage some that feel more comfortable in a group pro duction. ThatThat’s my favorite part of it! Some have only recorded themselves to share for the collabs. Safety in numbers, as they say. I met so many great people doing them! ItIt’s time for another one, by the way.”

I’m inclined to agree with her!
And as is my tradition, I ended our interview with a questionnaire based on one Bernard Pivot used on his talk show. Here are Marisa’s answers…

  1. What is your favorite word?
    Journey or Progress. I like the idea of going somewhere better or more positive, or attaining a goal/skill… the process of bettering oneself.
  2. What is your least favorite word?
    Perfect.
  3. What turns you on?
    Someone that cooks for me and plays me some music.
  4. What turns you off?
    When someone is cocky, justified or otherwise. Confidence is good, cockiness is bad.
  5. What sound or noise do you love?
    A major chord followed by a minor chord.
  6. What sound or noise do you hate?
    Loud chewing or drinking.
  7. What’s your favorite curse word?
    Well, it depends on the situation, but the one that starts with the letter “F”
  8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
    Animal rescue/rehab.
  9. What profession would you not like to do?
    An office job.
  10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
    Would you like to organize a collab with all of the musicians up here? And my answer would be “Hell yes! I mean, Heck yes!

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Digital version of Issue 4 now Online

Here is our 4th Issue of the Ukelandia Magazine

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Cats-Pink-and-Sparkles-Obsessed-Ukulele-Girl!

by Pauline van de Haar

The first time I held a ukulele was in 2011. My classical guitar teacher suggested the ukulele was an instrument that may work better for me. I wasn’t bad at playing classical guitar.
Actually, I played well enough to go to the conservatory. However, playing 5 to 6 hours a day was difficult as my hands and shoulders just couldn’t handle it. In 2012, I tried to take
part in the music exams, so I would graduate at the highest amateur level in classical guitar. Unfortunately, I was physically unable to participate in this exam. I quit playing guitar in
a split second. I hated my body for not being able to play and make music. In 2017, the doctor’s diagnosis of fibromyalgia was identified as the main reason for all my pain.

Luckily, I restarted playing the recorder in 2010, started in 1999, quit in middle school ’because it wasn’t cool. In 2014, I graduated at the highest amateur level in classical recorder!
After saying goodbye to my guitar in 2012 (which is still hanging on my wall), I bought my very own first Aloha concert ukulele. I fell in love in a NANO second!
Playing the ukulele doesn’t cause me too much muscle pain and has brought the joy of string instruments back in my life!

It took me 6½ years to buy my second uke. Late 2018 is when my UAS (Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome) really started. The second uke, also a concert but with no brand has a cats’s paw as a sound hole. I restrung it a year or two later with a low G string.After buying my second ukulele, UAS set in and many more were purchased. I have a Flight Travel Series TUS-EE Sunset Elise Ecklund Signature soprano ukulele, which is amazing to travel with.

In 2021, I came across a new ukulele with kittens all over it. As a cat behaviorist, I couldn’t resist buying it. It’s the Flight Travel Series TUC Kitty concert ukulele. Then, I really wanted a baritone as it’s a little bit closer to a guitar, but still playable for me! I fell for the Flight Natural Series NUB310 baritone. Most recently, I bought an Enya Nova U pink concert ukulele. It’s just magnificent! Never have I ever seen a ukulele like this one close up! The Enya feels different, sounds lovely and is wonderful to look at. Funny fact: my niece’s name is Enya too! Maybe I’ll buy her an Enya uke one day, if she wants one! Before the Enya Nova, I saw a Kala ukulele. All those Sparkles! I mean, how could I resist ordering one for myself?! So, I did. It’s the Kala KA-SPRK-PINK Sparkle Series Pink Champagne concert ukulele.

Another amusing fact- in the last 1 ½ years, I bought the last 4 ukuleles for myself. As my friends say, “That’s just, a little crazy”! How can I help myself when I have UAS? For now, I may stop buying more ukes. I just can’t tell you for how long though!

That’s the crazy thing about a Cats-Pink-and-Sparkles-Obsessed-Ukulele-girl!

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Take me with Uke

by PeeWee

On our way to the beach, I spotted a friend looking at my ukulele gig bag suspiciously. “What’s in there, Peewee?” she asked. “Uhmm . . . just stuff,” I shrugged in the most nonchalant manner I could manage. You see, my ukulele gig bag does not look like a conventional ukulele bag. Grandma custom-made it for me, ‘different’ from all the typical ones you get in music stores. I wanted one which would blend in easily with
other travel bags and not attract too much attention. ‘Why go to such lengths?’ you might ask. Well, the answer was simple. I had never really told anyone that I had a ukulele and had spent the last year secretly learning to play it by watching tutorials on YouTube. Strumming away in the solitude of my bedroom gave me great joy. Though my skills had improved over the months, I considered myself more of a closet ukulele player and I intended to keep it that way. I would not want my uke bag to turn unnecessary heads and give away my secret. Why then had I risked being exposed? Taking my ukulele to the beach with four other friends had been a bold, reckless move, I know, but the beach seemed to beckon me. I imagined finding a lonely, secluded spot to play my uke, the sea breeze in my hair, the sand between my toes. The feeling had been so intense that I had had no qualms about picking up the uke and packing it in with my luggage.

The day at the beach passed by in a fervour of games and fun. Post-dinner, we sat talking around a campfire. My friend, Raoul got out a guitar and played a few songs. The dancing firelight… the waves breaking upon the shore… the sea spray… the music… It was blissful! My fingers itched to get hold of my ukulele, but I controlled myself. Slowly, one by one, people drifted indoors to go to bed. I went in too, but sleep eluded me. I felt restless. I finally got up, grabbed my uke which had been carefully tucked away out of sight and sneaked back outside.

The campfire was still burning, although feebly. A light wind gently caressed my face… playing in my hair… It felt wonderful! I hugged my uke and began to play a little ditty I’d learned on YouTube. I played it over and over, lost in the moment, oblivious to the passage of time. It might have
been a minute or it might have been ten; I stopped and sighed contentedly. Suddenly out of the blue, I heard a tiny cough and I stirred out of my reverie, scared. “That was beautiful,” said a voice and a face swam into view.

It was Raoul, the guitar guy. I blushed, at a loss for words and clumsily attempted to get up. “I didn’t know you play so well…” He smiled and sat down next to me. “Er… do I?” I asked. “Yeah, you do. Do you sing too?” “Er…” I said cautiously, “I don’t intend to..” “Why not?” “I can’t.” I said flatly. “Of course you can!” “Not in front of you.” “I’ll look away then.” “No… I can’t…” I repeated. “What are you scared of?” He asked. “I’m not!” I said defiantly. “Sing then. Show me how fearless you are. ” “But…” “Try,” he said simply and smiled. “Okay fine!” I said agitated. He had touched a nerve. I hate above all being called a coward. I took a deep breath and tried. My fingers involuntarily began playing my favourite chord melody. He began humming softly. “I love this song,” he mouthed. Within a few minutes, we were both singing our hearts out. One by one, I played all the songs I knew and he joined in with equal enthusiasm. Never before had I experienced such joy! Playing alone was great, no doubt, but it was nothing, nothing compared to this. This was magical, soul- stirring.

“Thank you,” I whispered to him, moments later, as we stopped to catch our breaths. “Anytime,” he whispered back. “This is the first time that I have played before someone,” I blurted out. “I know,” he smiled a knowing smile. “You know?” I asked. He grinned mischievously. “How?” I persisted.
“Well, we’re neighbours, aren’t we?” he laughed. “I live right next door to you, Peewee!” I will never forget that night… the night that changed me… the night that I finally let go of all inhibitions… the night a closet ukulele player CAME OUT !

I’m burning my Ukulele !

by Monica Raye

That’s it! I’m burning my ukulele.
I’m a pyro, as in “pyrography”: the freehanded art of decorating wood with burn marks. I’ve been a pyro for two years now.
It started with me posting on Facebook ‘I’m burning my son’s guitar’, which resulted in replies asking what he had done to tick me off. My son moved out and left me his electric guitar to be creative with. So I stripped it down and burnt it. It came out looking so nice that I didn’t want to send it to him. So I burnt an uku to match. Unfortunately, it’s a cheap ukulele-kit you can put together. I chose maple leaves as the design because it represents Canada, it’s on our flag and we love our maple syrup eh. It’s home.

Step one is drawing and burning the outline. As you can see, even my little work table fell victim to my pyrography. I decided to continue the design over the edge, giving it a fuller view. I did have to clean the tip of the tool to keep it clean and give an even line. I continued the design to the back. It looks fuller in my opinion. The tool I had been using was just the wand, but I was just experimenting with it at the time. I found that just using the one tip felt easier to me.
To shade and get the darker effects I moved my tool slower not stopping. For a better burn I have to continue cleaning the tip. I also discovered that if my burn was too dark I could use an emery board to sand it lighter. When I got to the open area, I just made smaller movements back and forth to create the wavy effects. I added a couple leaves to the head. I ordered a wooden fretboard since the kit had a plastic one. When it came in I decided to burn it too. I just couldn’t help it.

Once my ukulele was finally finished I
added a leather cord to it as a strap, added small feathers to the tuners and named it Autumn. I didn’t use the strings from the kit but got better quality ones and used a lowG. My hubby made the stand for Autumn
and it sits on a shelf in my living room
beside my other soprano ukulele.


I got my inspiration from people like Dino Muradian, James Roberson and other artists that I found on Pinterest. Dino Muradian lives in Hawaii and actually is living his dream burning ukuleles for a ukulele company. Now that would be awesome to do. So if there’s any ukulele companies that would like me to burn for them I would be thrilled.

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Here is the digitial version of our 3rd issue

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Community Artist Dave Thorpe

by Yuta Hsu

The number five. Trad Irish music. Twenty Twenty Vision. What do these all have in common, you may ask? How could such seemingly random things have any connection? If you look around hard enough, you’ll see the hidden connections, but you don’t have to look very hard to find this connection. It’s none other than the very talented and lovely Dave Thorpe. A man of many talents, one of which is bringing a smile to your face with his disarming charm and laid-back manner.

Born in 1960, he grew up listening to his father’s records, ranging from The Beatles, Slade, Simon & Garfunkel, to big bands like Glenn Miller. You can see his varied musical taste started early. As a child, he took classical piano and trumpet lessons, but found that they didn’t agree with him. He discovered his love of stringed instruments on the age of fifteen when he borrowed his sister’s guitar and taught himself how to play. Back in those days, there was no internet or YouTube, so he had to learn by looking at chord sheets and listening.

For most of the last 20 years, he mainly played guitar for Trad Irish sessions and gigs with some of the best Irish musicians such as Elmer McGowan (flute), Colette O’Leary (accordion), and Brendan Power (harmonica). He also recorded several albums (all available on Apple Music/Amazon/etc), the most recent being his first ukulele-based titled “Twenty Twenty Vision” back in June of 2021.

Since music was a passionate hobby, I asked him about his professions. To no one’s surprise, music played a big a part of that too! He’s been a classroom teacher for decades, working with children who had special social, emotional or behavioral needs. Many times he’d bring his guitar in and play music for the children, but it wasn’t music therapy per se, as he was really just a teacher who happened to be a musician. He didn’t say it in this way, but I think he was inspired by witnessing how music helped the children to earn a master’s degree in music therapy. He became a full-fledged Music Therapist in 2013, and helped countless people for nearly 10 years. He worked with cancer patients, people with autism, adults with dementia, and survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.

One of his greatest projects as a music therapist was setting up the first dedicated music therapy service in a renal dialysis ward. This was an important project to him because he was a patient at the same dialysis ward back in 2004, before getting a kidney transplant in 2006. Knowing how difficult dialysis is, he wanted to go back into that setting and use his newfound skills to help. It was a very successful program, but unfortunately lost funding after three years. Since then, he became a dialysis patient once again, as his kidney transplant is now failing. He now finds himself in the same dialysis ward three times a week, six hours each time, sitting next to some of the same patients he played music for, waiting for news of another transplant.

In his words, finding Ukelandia “was brilliant!” Before COVID hit, his life consisted of a lot of going out and performing at venues all around London. Playing Trad Irish music meant musicians sat around tables playing all sorts of instruments right next to each other, which was obviously out of the question with the advent of COVID. He hasn’t played with another musician live since February 2019 and misses it. Mostly, life is going to dialysis, maybe an outing or two and being at home playing ukulele.

We talked a bit about his some of his outings, and a recent favorite was being able to visit the Southern Ukulele Store and meeting Alex. If you don’t know, SUS is a wonderful uke store in England and Alex uploads many videos to YouTube. On the platform he is showing off the many incredible ukes they have, along with tutorials about strings, woods and many other topics related to our favorite instrument. Dave was given the VIP treatment, with no other customers in the store, and hundreds of ukes to play with! In the words of Dave himself, “it’s a two and a half hour drive, but it’s worth it!” As a result of his visit, he ended up two more ukes.

I paused slightly and smiled, because I realized that Dave was in that very familiar spot in his house we see in all of his videos… on his couch, with a painting on the wall behind him and a uke always within arm’s reach. It’s amazing that he only really picked up the ukulele a few years ago and now it’s his go-to instrument. Dave is on a wonderful musical journey which he shares with all of us with his video’s and articles in this magazine. I was honored to listen and share his story with us all.

Oh, and the number five? Dave lives just a few blocks from the old Wembley Stadium, so he’d get to hear concerts for free. Once, he got to hear the Bon Jovi concert for what seemed like five times.

Before we stopped, I told him that I like to end my interviews in the same way James Lipton of ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio’ ended his, with a questionnaire based upon one used by Bernard Pivot on his talk show. So without further ado, here are Dave Thorpe’s answers…

  1. What is your favorite word?
    Syzygy. A word that describes the seeming chaos and order of the universe.
  2. What is your least favorite word?
    Like. When used as a filler word or a pause. Or emojis!
  3. What turns you on?
    Music. Song lyrics.
  4. What turns you off?
    Our current Prime Minister
  5. What sound or noise do you love?
    The C5 chord. It’s neither major nor minor because there’s no third.
  6. What sound or noise do you hate?
    Foxes at night. Though he points out, as a music therapist, that any sound can be used in a positive way. Except those damn foxes.
  7. What is your favorite curse word?
    Bollocks. It’s a very flexible word.
  8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
    “I would’ve loved to do music at a high level.” Meaning, he would’ve loved to been a full-time musician.
  9. What profession would you not like to do?
    Anything that’s a 9-5 desk job.
  10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
    “John Prine’s over there, and he’d like to talk to you about all of those covers you’ve done over the years.”

Here are the issues of our magazine

Issue #1

Issue #2

Issue #3

Issue #4

Issue #5

Issue #6

Contributors and ads.

If you like to contribute or see your ads in our magazine, get in contact with us…

Here are our contributors so far:

Ukelandia Etsy-Store
You searched for: Ukelandia! Discover the unique items that Ukelandia creates. At Etsy, we pride ourselves on our global community of sellers. Each Etsy seller helps contribute to a global marketplace of creative goods. By supporting Ukelandia, you’re supporting a small business, and, in turn, Etsy!
K-Stand/Home
These K-Stands fit most Ukuleles and Ukulele Gig Bags from Soprano Ukuleles, Concert Ukuleles, Tenor Ukuleles, to Baritone Ukuleles. The Patented thin flat design allows the K-Stand to fit neatly inside a Gig Bag for easy storage and travel and instantly transforms into a sturdy support. Included with every K-Stand is a soft pouch to protect your instrument’s finish while the K-Stand is in the case.
Tinman Ukulele Strings
The Tin Man’s exclusive and finest Ukulele Strings. Formulated with genuine Stardust and Fluorocarbon to make your instrument resonate to the moon.