Report from the 2019 Summer Ukulele Meetup

I'm smiling. I'm full of energy — I got so much from all of you at Monday's meetup! Thank you for coming in such great numbers, and from what I could see, you had a good time. The meetup had barely ended when I started receiving messages saying how much you enjoyed the event and asking when the next one would be. I cannot yet say when we will organize the next ukulele meetup, but we will announce it in the same way as this one, so keep an eye on the website and Ukulele Hungary Facebook page!

Back to yesterday's meetup, then — a quick recap. The official gathering time was 4:30 p.m., but Zsolt and I arrived a little earlier, just as the Ethnosound team were setting out one beautiful ukulele after another. Following Zsolt's excellent idea, we arranged the room on a "one music stand for every two chairs" basis, and I think the setup worked really well. Thanks for the suggestion, Zsolt! People started arriving well before 4:30, and by half past four there were already quite a few of us, so I thought we should warm up with something. It spontaneously turned into a workshop — or rather a group strum — which made me very happy. You picked it up so naturally that I could hardly believe it... it sounded as if the group had been playing together for ages! During the good half hour of warming up, even more people arrived, and at 5:15 Zsolt's workshop began.

Here we are already playing the finished song all the way through:

This recording was streamed live on Facebook thanks to Ethnosound.

My workshop came next. We reharmonized the songs we had played during the warm-up and then, to be honest much to my surprise, we ended up getting through every single song. I had expected us to play at most two or three pieces from the lyrics-and-chords collection I had prepared, but apparently I chose well: you liked the songs and played them really well. I was very happy that the big pile of paper did not have to come home with us — you took it all!

It was a wonderful experience for me that you were such active participants in the workshop. I did not have to play Knockin' on Heaven's Door alone, and Proud Mary and Hotel California gained some lovely female vocals as well. Thank you for being brave enough to come up and help! And that thanks goes to EVERYONE too, because we played the songs together on roughly FORTY ukuleles, and luckily — after a little encouragement — your singing voices joined in as well, and they sounded great. Yes, you read that correctly: forty ukuleles. During Zsolt's workshop I counted the instruments in people's hands (37, plus the two of us, Zsolt and me), and a few more participants arrived afterwards, so we definitely reached forty. It's a shame we did not invite someone from Guinness, because I am sure we broke the Hungarian record for the number of people simultaneously playing ukulele per square meter. Put another way, I am certain this was the largest ukulele meetup we had held up to that point. I think I can speak for Zsolt as well when I say that our aim was to give you an experience: the experience of making music together, something that brings everyone's creativity and imagination to life.

I do not want to go on too long, but before the photo avalanche, my closing words must also be words of thanks. First of all, thanks go to Ethnosound: besides turning up with lots and lots of ukuleles and accessories, they played an essential part in making it possible to hold the meetup in such an exclusive and professional venue, the Budapest Music Center. And of course we also thank BMC for providing the venue and the technical equipment. I hope you had the chance to try a few ukuleles, and that some of you even found the right instrument for yourselves. Many thanks as well to photographer Gábor Kelemen for the pictures below; he tirelessly photographed all those strumming hands and singing faces. (If anyone has an objection to a photo in which they appear, please let us know and we will remove it!)