Jake Shimabukuro's Mad Ukulele Skills

Sylvie Kim
February 27, 2008

The innovative Shimabukuro is dubbed as "The Jimi Hendrix of the ukulele," blending the sounds of a Hawaiian instrument with American jazz, rock, pop, soul, and even traditional Japanese music on his most recent album Gently Weeps.

After his performance, Conan said, "We've been doing this show a long time, ladies and gentlemen. That's one of my favorite things I've ever seen."

Check out Shimabukuro's official website and watch the YouTube video to see him channel his inner George Harrison.

Contributor: 

Sylvie Kim

contributing editor & blogger

Sylvie Kim is a contributing editor at Hyphen. She previously served as Hyphen's blog coeditor with erin Khue Ninh, film editor, and blog columnist.

She writes about gender, race, class and privilege in pop culture and media (fun fun fun!) at www.sylvie-kim.com and at SF Weekly's The Exhibitionist blog. Her work has also appeared on Racialicious and Salon.

Comments

Comments

Diane Lee wrote on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 2:36pm
I remember meeting Jake in Hawai'i, where I'm from. He played a free concert for my community college, which he also attended. He gave us a free performance, and even dedicated a song to our voice instructor. The youtube video doesn't really do it justice, because you can't see his whole body. He moves and flows with his music, even tapping his feet. It's kinda cool to really see his passion shine through his performances, I'd recommend people seeing him live.Oh, btw, here's a much better video:http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZqaYmQZgrB4