Irremovable Stain:
The Ukelin's Forgotten History and Why It Will Never Completely Disappear
By John Katona
This report is reprinted with kind permission of the author.
Please be kind, don't plagurize.
My parents went to Hawaii when I was a sophomore in high school. I couldn't care less that they left me home as long as they returned with my one request, an authentic Hawaiian ukulele. They not only returned with a ukulele, but in their newly acquired knowledge and obsession of everything Hawaiian, they bought another Hawaiian instrument. It was magnificent. I loved looking at it. It was the weirdest looking string instrument I had ever seen, with thirty-two variously gauged strings running in three directions. There were heart-shaped bars holding up eight strings on each side and the other sixteen strings were split up into sets of four to create chords. One side had a guitar-body type shape to it while the other was a rectangle, all of which about an inch thick. It was worn with age, not use, and was horrendously out of tune. I sat for over three hours playing each string repeatedly into a stage microphone precariously balanced next to one of the two slightly off-center sound holes located on each end of the instrument. The mic was plugged into a tuner and each time I finished tuning I played the first string to find it quite a bit out of tune again. I felt like the thirty-two strings were thirty-two untrained puppies I was trying to pose for a picture. After it was in tune, I had as much trouble figuring out how to play the awkwardly shaped instrument, which required strumming with a pick and playing with a bow simultaneously, as tuning the beautiful frustration. I slowly developed a makeshift technique of playing the instrument and found it quite fun to play because all the notes were in the same key and I was sure I was the only Michigander in the past few years to possibly dig up and actually play the ukelin. The idea that I was doing something that no one I knew, or possibly met, was attempting excited me and motivated me to learn as much as I possibly could about my forgotten instrument.I started by searching the internet to find tunings and basic information. I was disappointed to find that the majority of sites were put together by individuals and that there weren't any web sites funded by large music companies. However, some of those individuals did put together helpful homepages devoted to the ukelin. The site that stood out above the others was one put together by a single ukelin enthusiast and was entitled Bob's Ukelin Home. At my first browsing I was enchanted with the newfound information, and with "Bob's" help I tuned and began playing the instrument. The tones produced by the instrument had an eerie sound with haunting high notes played slowly and gently using a bow and deep, resonating chords played rashly using my thumb or, with even more power and feeling, using a guitar pick. It bothered me that no one I knew shared in my astonishment of the instrument. Why did the world ignore and forget the ukelin?
After my initial enthusiasm, I too abandoned the ukelin for other more popular instruments like the guitar and piano. The break lasted a couple of years, but as I became increasingly interested in more eclectic styles of music, I also became increasingly interested in wider varieties of instruments. I developed a love for an Icelandic band, Sigur Rós, and I decided to attend a concert of theirs at the State Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. They were mesmerizing as expected, but the surprise was the opening band of four Icelandic women, who not only opened the concert with a half-hour set, but accompanied Sigur Rós on strings. Sigur Rós had updates on their website of the four women, and their new album was even available for purchase (Eighteen Seconds). One year after that concert, I saw the Icelandic women, Amiina, headline their own concert at the Magic Bag in Ferndale, Michigan. During the songs, the women would walk around the stage, switching between the more than twenty-five instruments. The four would start out on violins, viola, and cello; then they would switch to bells and keyboards; then they finished the song on a mix between the two types of previous instruments. Most of the instruments played at the concert were familiar to me, but they also played a few stringed harp-type and guitar-type things I had never previously seen. That night sparked my interest in the ukelin for a second round.
This second period of re-interest persuaded me to buy any book even mentioning the Ukelin. I learned as much as I could as I pieced together bits and pieces of contrasting information. For example, one book said a harpsichord company, Oscar Schmidt, produced most of the ukelins (Brend 141) while another said the International Musical Corporation was the sole manufacturer (Beloff 102). Upon further research I found that the two books described the two sides of the whole picture. The International Musical Corporation was a company out of Hoboken, New Jersey, and their name was printed on most of the ukelins. Even though the instrument bore their name, the International Musical Corporation's ukelins were produced at an Oscar Schmidt factory in Jersey City, New Jersey. Later, Oscar Schmidt absorbed the International Musical Corporation (Autoharp History) and, sadly, Washburn ended up buying out Oscar Schmidt some years later (Oscar Schmidt). But, back to the beginning, the ukelin was patented in 1926, and it was supposedly a cross between a ukulele and violin, (Beloff 102) although I don't see any resemblance to the ukulele and the only similarity to the violin is its necessity for a bow. The instrument was spread around by the abandoned occupation known as the door to door salesman. The salesmen would travel largely throughout the Midwest and Northeast of America selling the instrument to anyone willing to surrender enough money. Even though ukelins were a descendent from the Hawaiian ukuleles, ukelins were seldom even brought to Hawaii. They were sold almost exclusively by hand, after showcasing their "ease of play." On the inside, the ukelin had the price of thirty-five dollars so the clever salesmen could make the appearance of giving a "one time only" deal of much less (Bob's Ukelin). The ukelin was produced longer than many of the other hybrid instruments similar to it, but in 1963 the ukelin was stopped being produced (Beloff 102). The reason the ukelin production was discontinued was that the company was taken over by Oscar Schmidt's only relative, Peterson, and he was unhappy with the way that they were being sold. Salesmen would do things like sell them to women working in fields and the husbands would see the instruments and try to return them to the original company (Bob's Ukelin).
Like the ukelin, assortments of other hybrid instruments from fifty years ago have almost been totally forgotten. The list of those hybrid instruments was very large and consisted of more than a hundred different types. They ranged from zithers to pianolins to marxolins to marx guitarchimes to triolas (Fretless Zithers). They were all fantastic; each in a completely unique way. There was the marxophone, which was like a mix between an autoharp, zither, and hammered dulcimer. The hammers were weighted and played using typewriter-like keys while strings were plucked using a pick. The marxophone was even used by The Monkeys and Ray Manzarek of The Doors (although it is often misspelled "marxaphone" on the album credits). It was produced by a privately owned company in New Troy, Michigan, and it was invented by Henry Charles Marx who invented many of the other hybrids (Brend 140). Each of the instruments had a similar story, yet none have lasted the test of time.
More recently, I contacted "Bob" from Bob's Ukelin Homepage and he was kind enough to tell me a little about himself and give me some acquired knowledge picked up through the grapevine and not found on his website. His full name was Bob Buzas, and due to his job, graphic design work in New York City, creating a website devoted to ukelins seemed a little ambitious of an endeavor. He explained his drive by saying, "way back when (1995), an IT guy connected my work computer to the internet and said proudly, 'now you can find anything. The internet has it all.' 'Anything?' I asked, doubtfully. 'ANYTHING,' he replied confidently. So I thought for a minute and came up with a stumper. I typed into a search engine: u-k-e-l-i-n. The response came back: 0. The IT guy thought I had made up the word to bug him. Thus, the ukelin site was born. Somebody had to do it." His skillful playing even brought him an opportunity to make an appearance in the soundtrack for an independent film, Investigating Sex (Buzas). Like Bob, many other ukelin enthusiasts are out there, but still not enough to see the ukelin on more than a handful of new albums.
Ian Sigmon from the band Day in Age (dayinage.com) in a recent interview talked of his new found interest in uncommon instruments, including the ukelin. Ian and the lead singer, Bryan Pope, have been incorporating as many new sounds and instruments as possible without forcing the listener to become overwhelmed. They have been playing congas, shakers, and various guitars and keyboards at their most recent concerts. He was at a friend's house when he was first introduced to the ukelin. He said, "I was in complete admiration of its unparallel beauty and its prodigious tonality. Soon began a vehement search for this ever-intriguing instrument." He soon afterward went eBaying and acquired his own (Sigmon). Ian was not alone searching eBay to find the ukelin either.
I searched eBay and found a few ukelins, all priced near twenty dollars. By the descriptions, I could tell that most of the sellers didn't really know what they were selling (eBay). As people find the lost or forgotten instruments, they know that they have something too good to throw away, but they don't know what to do with them other than sell them or give them away. The author of Strange Sounds, Mark Brend, put it nicely when he wrote, "the promise of easy home music was never realized, and the instruments were quickly consigned to closets, attics, and cellars, from which they are now emerging, strings rusty from decades of idleness, to be snapped up by the eBay generation" (Brend 141). It's true that the instruments were played little or not at all. Mine, in particular, had a set of strings on it at least fifty years old, but they looked like almost brand new. So, why were the ukelins never even played?
The ukelin was relatively easy to play, much like the autoharp. It originally came with detailed instruction on how to play; it included everything from preparing the bow for playing and proper placement of the instrument to their simplistic style of reading the music using numbers (Directions for Playing). Without these instructions, playing the ukelin is very confusing and frustrating. When I received mine in the mail it didn't come with the directions, so I was lost until I finished doing a little research. Although the playing was easy, just looking at the instrument was intimidating and, without a lot of motivation, it was not worth attempting to self-teach. Also, tuning was extremely tedious and time consuming. With good equipment and lots of patience, it still took me hours to tune.
In addition to intimidation and painstaking tuning, the ukelins were not well equipped for playing popular music. When I got mine, it came with a small songbook of possible pieces of music to purchase. The problem was that I had never heard of most of the songs and many of the ones I did know were kind of like young children's songs or old church hymns. Some of the songs I had heard of were "Rock of Ages," "Jesus, Lover of my soul," and "Jesus Loves Me." The ones I hadn't heard of seemed to be either hymns, country songs, or in another language, maybe German. Also, some of the titles that didn't seem like the other styles were "laugh out loud in confusion" funny like "Mr. Johnson, Don't get Gay" (Number Music).
It seemed that pop music was totally different than anything that would require an ukelin. The Billboard top five songs for the week of March 26, 2007, were Akon's "Don't Matter," Fergie's "Glamorous," Beyonce & Shakira's "Beautiful Liar," Mim's "This is why I'm Hot," and Gym Class Hero's "Cupid's Chokehold" (Billboard Singles). Most of the music of all five songs were digital, with the exception of a little bit of guitar and drums. Even their voices had an enormous amount of effects and digital "help." As technology improved through audio samples and pitch correction, skillful playing became less important. Is there really a place for the ukelin in style of music centered on computers and electronic music?
It is really just a matter of time before most of pop music is produced totally by an over-weight, unshaven, thirty-five year-old computer programmer with a little background in music, sitting by himself in front of his Mac with his Taco Bell. Hot twenty-three year-old blondes, dressed in shirts cut to their bellybuttons and bikini bottoms, will be the face of the music that the public sees. A perfect interview with the record companies will be a sexy striptease, ending in a promise of an intimate, future date. Don't get me wrong, deft musicianship will not die out completely. Wherever there is a beautiful sounding, grand piano or mint-condition, sixty-seven Fender Strat people will realize the entrancement that heavenly tones can evoke. Independent record labels will keep producing talented musicians and songwriters, but the record sales will never quite reach that of the computer-generated, MTV manipulated pop music. As the pop music becomes increasingly electronic, the independent music will become increasingly experimental. The middle ground will vanish.
With bands like Sigur Rós and Amiina experimenting with a variety of instruments, the boundaries of implemented instruments will be outwardly pushed. It is just a matter of time before ukelins and other obscure instruments are rediscovered by famous musicians. Popular bands will realize that there is a whole new, beautiful sound for each instrument and each sound evokes a separate specific emotion.
The first time that the instruments were introduced, the wrong types of people got a hold of them. Common people without time to develop the skill needed to truly enjoy or learn the ukelin were buying them. Like clothing styles that go out of fashion or popularity only to return thirty years later, the ukelin will return to popularity and in a bigger, better way. The question turns from "Why is the ukelin unknown?" to "When will the return of the ukelin happen?" The ukelin will never become hugely popular due to its flaws of difficult tuning and uncomfortable playability, but it will start showing up more and more in music.
The discovery of the ukelin feels fantastic. It is like reading a poem from a shredded book in my grandparent's attic and discovering that the poem is really like a reflection of my life or like watching an old movie, with dead actors, found in a TV bought at a garage sale and seeing the black-and-white picture create omni color day-dreams. Each person can have their own unique experience with ukelin-type instruments like Ian Sigmon had and like I had.
Marjorie Rommel had a similar story [to] Ian and me that she wrote about in her short story "My Mother's Ukelin." She told that her mom had an ukelin leaning against their organ for more than twenty years, after her father bought it at an auction for eight dollars. Her initial interest was instigated by a poet named Peter Ludwin, who played an autoharp while he read his poetry. Ludwin pointed Rommel toward a stringed instrument repairman, Abel Fortune, to learn more about her own stringed instrument and possibly repair the broken strings and tune the contraption. Fortune provided Rommel with a brief history and some interesting facts about her ukelin, but she waited to get the instrument strung and tuned for less money. After repairing the ukelin, Rommel played the ukelin, and she explained its sound by saying, "The ukelin's sound is of an entirely different order, high, strangely resonant, and sweet, and well, like I said, plaintive as the wind blowing off the prairies at night. You almost expect to hear a coyote chorus joining in" (Rommel).
Rommel's experience is a good example of what, hopefully, is to come for the future of the ukelin. After the initial tuning and maintenance, the ukelin is a relatively simple instrument, able of producing perfect tones for certain emotions. If the ukelin doesn't explode into popularity through live shows or live recordings, it will surely show up in the form of samples on the computer to be altered and possibly enhanced. Even though, seemingly, no one knows much of the ukelin, it is still, most definitely, due for a comeback sometime soon. Something so amazing can't disappear forever.
Ukelin photo in upper left courtesy of Ulf Skogsbergh. http://www.ulf-photo.com The information presented on this site represents my exhaustive search for ukelin information If you have anything to add to this site, or if you find any information in this site to be in error, please notify me at ukelins@hotmail.com.