Ukulele

From Madeira to Honolulu

The ʻukulele is a Hawaiian instrument with Portuguese roots. In August 1879 the ship Ravenscrag brought immigrants from Madeira to Hawaiʻi to work on sugar plantations, and among them were craftsmen and musicians. Historians generally agree that they brought small guitar-like instruments, chiefly the machete de braça, also known as braguinha, and the larger rajão. The earliest makers in Honolulu are commonly named as Manuel Nunes, Augusto Dias and José do Espírito Santo.

Hawaiians embraced the new instrument and adapted it, using local koa wood and making it their own. King David Kalākaua is widely recorded as an early supporter, and the instrument became associated with court life and with hula accompaniment. Claims of sole invention, such as the label Nunes placed in his instruments, are best read as marketing by a maker of the time. Evidence is incomplete about who contributed which changes, and the development was collective.

Koa, nylon and twelve frets

Traditional Hawaiian ʻukuleles are built from koa, a native hardwood with a honey-brown tone and a visible figure. A maker warms and bends the thin side pieces, joins them to a flat top and back, and adds a neck, a circular soundhole and a bridge. Three instruments in a college collection follow this pattern. The sides are steam-bent, twelve metal frets are set into the fingerboard, and dots mark the fifth, seventh and tenth frets.

Makers also use mahogany, spruce and other tonewoods, as well as laminated and synthetic materials. Strings were once gut, and nylon later became general; fluorocarbon strings are also common today. A soprano ʻukulele has a vibrating string length of about 13.8 inches, roughly 35 centimeters, in the examples documented by that collection, which keeps tension low and makes the instrument light and comfortable to hold.

A voice made by a string that turns back

Most ʻukuleles use four single strings with a short scale and light tension. The plucked strings ring briefly and brightly, and because the body is small the sound is focused in the middle and upper range with less bass than a guitar’s. A strummed chord produces a quick, glittering attack that settles into a soft, rounded tone. Koa in particular is often described as sweet, but descriptions of tone remain subjective.

The most distinctive element of the sound is the tuning. Standard soprano tuning is G4–C4–E4–A4, and the fourth string, the G, is tuned above the third string rather than below it. This arrangement is called re-entrant tuning, and it produces a compact cluster of notes in which melody and harmony sit close together. Chords fall into easy shapes, and strummed accompaniments have a characteristic shimmer.

Small range, sizes of tone

With the standard tuning, the lowest sounding note of a soprano is middle C, the C4 on the third string. Twelve frets take the top string up to A5, an octave above its open pitch, so the whole compass spans an octave and a sixth, and instruments with more frets reach higher. The compass is narrow compared with a guitar’s, which shapes arrangements: melodies are kept within a small span and bass lines are usually implied rather than played.

Some players replace the high G with a lower G an octave down, called low-G tuning, which adds depth and widens the range at the expense of the re-entrant effect. Larger ʻukuleles sound fuller and rounder, while a soprano is typically the brightest and most traditional in tone.

Strum, pluck, tap

Basic playing is strumming with the fingers or the thumb across the strings while the left hand forms chord shapes. Strumming patterns give Hawaiian music, jazz-age songs and modern pop their characteristic rhythms, and muting and tapping the body can add percussion. Players also fingerpick, sometimes spreading a melody across several strings so that notes ring into one another.

A university magazine notes that performers in recent decades have developed new techniques and brought the ʻukulele into solo concert use, and the instrument is widely used in schools, where its small size and light string tension suit young players. At the same time, Hawaiian traditions of performance and instrument making remain active, including long-established Honolulu workshops, and many players learn within them.

Four sizes and a few cousins

Four sizes are usual, from smallest to largest: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The first three are commonly tuned G–C–E–A, with soprano and concert often using the re-entrant G and tenor sometimes using a low one. The baritone is typically tuned D–G–B–E, like the top four strings of a guitar. Scale lengths increase with each size, and makers differ on exact dimensions, so these figures are approximate.

Other variants add strings, such as six-string and eight-string models in which strings are doubled into pairs. The banjolele puts a small banjo-style body on a ʻukulele neck, and electric and solid-body models have also appeared. Such hybrids show how readily the ʻukulele was borrowed into other plucked-string traditions, including those of the Mandolin and Banjo.

Island music and world stages

In Hawaiʻi the ʻukulele sits at the center of local music, alongside guitar and voices in songs, and it accompanies hula. A college collection notes that it fitted easily into the ensembles of its early period, which included guitar, mandolin, violin, banjo and double bass. A tourism boom in the 1910s and 1920s helped establish its Hawaiian identity around the world.

Mainland American interest grew after the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and a museum of music making notes that mass-produced instruments were marketed to the American public from that year. Later waves of popularity followed in the 1920s and 1950s, and renewed interest grew from around 2000. Today ʻukulele clubs, orchestras and festivals exist across many countries, playing styles ranging from traditional Hawaiian songs to jazz and rock.

Protecting a thin wooden shell

Because the top and sides are thin, changes in humidity and temperature matter. Wood can swell in damp air or crack in dry air, so players generally keep the instrument in a case away from heat, direct sun and parked cars. A slightly humid room is kinder to it than a heated one, and sudden temperature changes are best avoided.

New nylon strings stretch for days and need retuning until they settle. Strings are wiped after playing and replaced when they sound dull or no longer hold their pitch. A loose bridge, lifting seam or cracked top is a job for a repairer, not glue at home. Tuning pegs and gears are checked periodically, since slipping tuners are a common cause of unstable pitch.

Small facts worth knowing

• The word ʻukulele is often explained as meaning jumping flea, from ʻuku and lele. One story ties it to a nickname given to an English courtier at the court of Kalākaua, but other explanations exist, and the origin of the name remains debated.
• Manuel Nunes was born in Funchal, Madeira, in 1843 and reached Hawaiʻi on 23 August 1879, according to the ʻUkulele Hall of Fame.
• A museum exhibition in 2007 and 2008 in Carlsbad, California, traced how American makers marketed the instrument from 1915.
• Koa, the traditional wood for ʻukulele bodies, is native to Hawaiʻi and grows naturally nowhere else.

Terms used in this entry

banjolele

An instrument that combines a banjo-style body with a ʻukulele neck and tuning.

braguinha

A Portuguese name for the small guitar-like instrument related to the machete.

fret

A metal bar across the fingerboard that marks where a string is shortened to change its pitch.

koa

A hardwood native to Hawaiʻi, traditionally used for ʻukulele bodies.

low-G tuning

A tuning that sets the fourth string an octave lower than usual.

machete

A small four-stringed Portuguese instrument from Madeira, an ancestor of the ʻukulele.

re-entrant tuning

A tuning in which a string is pitched higher than the string beside it, so the pitches do not rise steadily from one side to the other.

scale length

The vibrating length of the strings, from nut to bridge.

Browse the full glossary

References

1. Grinnell College Libraries. ukulele · Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection. omeka-s.grinnell.edu/s/MusicalInstruments/item/2115
2. University of Hawaiʻi. An Ukulele Comeback · Mālamalama, the magazine of the University of Hawaii system. hawaii.edu/malamalama/2007/01/f1_ukulele.html
3. Museum of Making Music. The Ukulele & You. museumofmakingmusic.org/ukulele
4. ʻUkulele Hall of Fame. Manuel Nunes. ukulele.org/inductees/1997-1998/manuel-nunes

Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.