A huge thank you to all the students, parents, musicians, staff, and other volunteers who made the 40^th Annual Ukulele Festival such a wonderful event! Every year is a testament to the global popularity of the ukulele—proven by the vast range of places our musical guests come from. This year, we were happy to welcome first-time Festival guest Nico Salsac from France to our stage, alongside wonderful performers from Japan, California, and Hawaii. And we can’t forget our favorite Canadian ukulele player, James Hill, who is becoming a regular at the Festival for good reason. The crowd was amazed at his funky rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” replete with bass line and record scratch noises, done with “no special effects” besides just being plugged in. We were  blessed to have Tommy D’s running wit, Bryan Tolentino’s real home-grown musical talent, and Natalie Ai Kamauu’s soaring chicken-skin vocals come and join us at this year’s Festival. And we all know that the Ukulele Festival would not be the Ukulele Festival without our dear friends, Ohta-San and Herb Ohta, Jr. It is always an honor for Roy to share the stage with his mentor and ukulele master.

Also featured in the Hawaii ohana this year, to the delight of our students, was C &K. Our “Strummers” group had a blast sharing the stage with such charismatic and generous performers. Every now and then, either Cecilio or Kapono would turn around and smile at all the students of the “Band” strumming along behind them, and smile, direct a guitar solo, or playfully wink and grin—truly including everyone in the fun. And the crowd felt the magic too—we could tell from the rousing, unanimous “HANA HOU, HANA HOU, HANA HOU!”

By the way, we saw Henry Kapono filming the massive crowd and massive student ukulele band surrounding them on his iPhone while he was playing—any chance that’s been posted on the internet?

But there’s no doubt about it, the real stars of every Festival are our students, young and not-so-young, who practice so hard for this annual show—the “My Ukulele” group and their enthusiastic singing voices, our “Chit-Chat” group who really showed everyone what it meant to boogie, our “Over the Edge” group with their fast flying fingers, our courageous “Strummers” (C&K, wow!), and our “Band,” the advanced group that all our younger students aspire to join one day. We are very, very proud of all of you!

Jake Shimabukuro closed out the show this year with another of his ultra-charged performances. “Orange World” had him running up and down the steps of the bandstand, solidly backed by Noel Okimoto and Dean Taba—two musicians always ready to “bring it!” We also noticed some people in the audience sporting some shirts from Jake’s new charity organization , “Peace, Love, and Ukulele,” another inspiring example of the ukulele’s role in bringing laughter, love, and hope to the world.

One of the moments that captured the Festival for us happened near the end, when we all joined hands to sing “Hawaii Aloha.” A few of our performers returned to the stage to strum along. KYAS, one of our guests from Japan who played an impressively accurate medley of “Super Mario Bros.,” knew the song well and was calling out chords to Nico so he could play along too. There was something so neat about an ukulele player from Japan teaching an ukulele player from France how to play “Hawaii Aloha,” both following the lead vocals of the Danny Kaleikini, and everyone surrounded by hundreds of ukulele fans all linking hands. The ukulele truly has a unique ability of bringing people together.