ARTS & CULTURE
WE SHOULD ALL PLAY THE UKE BY SAMUEL HARRIS conversation about music both sacred and secular, and to kick it off let’s look at one of music’s humblest but happiest expressions of joy: the sound of the ukulele. The cheerful jangle of the ukulele makes an appearance on many contemporary pop tunes. Vance Joy’s hit “Riptide” and Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” get the foot tapping with their opening chords — that chunky strum, clean and simple. On her song “You and I”, Ingrid Michaelson sings, “Don’t you worry there my honey / We might not have any money / But we’ve got our love to pay the bills” over a sweet ukulele line. The ukulele is ubiquitous on video sharing site YouTube, appearing in hundreds of clips of cover versions of hits past and present. In this happy stamping ground of the amateur, the uke shows off its nature as an instrument that is affordable and accessible to all — just as joy is.
I hope that in this season of Eastertide your heart is joyful and that you are “mak[ing] this day a living hymn of praise” as the Divine Office’s intercessions for Easter Sunday have it. Around the diocese our parishes celebrated, each in their own way, the great Easter liturgies with an embrace of what Pope Benedict XVI called the “right way to give the faith its central form of expression in the liturgy”: a reverent and focused use of music to effect a “lifting up of the human heart” to the “mystery of infinite beauty”. In this arts and culture section we want to include some 25
SAMUEL HARRIS
Singer Julia Nunes’s mash-up of Justin Bieber’s “Baby” and the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?” and her “Build Me Up Buttercup‘’ are delights from start to finish. Have a look at a duo going by the name of Honoka & Azita playing a Beach Boys medley, blissful smiles on their faces; a deceptively simple version of “I Fought The Law’’ by a venerable bluesman named James Clem; actors Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt crooning a sweet and funny love song. But joy is a thing that is found not just in dancing and laughter but also quieter, in the midst of sadness or suffering: the joy of hope and trust while hurting, of the recognition of the often-difficult experience of being human. “Sad songs can ring extra poignant on a uke because it has an innocence and clarity that can hit you right in the heart,” says Nunes. See Twenty One Pilots’s singer Tyler Joseph taking Elvis’s
