who knew?

this was in the courant a little over a week ago. i am just getting around to posting it.

i am indeed a fan of hawaiian music. i tend to lean more to the slack guitar side though. making ukes in connecticut is rather unusual and rather cool though

The Uke Movement However Unlikely, Connecticut Becomes A Center In The Ukulele's Resurgence

By WILLIAM WEIR Courant Staff Writer January 10 2007
To stand in the Clinton home of Jim and Liz Beloff is to find yourself in an unofficial Ukulele Information Center.The husband-and-wife team, both in their 50s, have carved out a rather singular niche for themselves as experts on all things to do with the plucky four-string instrument. They're widely credited within the ukulele community (indeed, there is one) for the recent resurgence in uke activity.Their ascent to uke gurus started in 1992, when Jim Beloff, then working at Billboard magazine, came across a ukulele at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, Calif. He gave it a few strums and loved it."I couldn't understand why it had fallen off the pop-culture radar," he says. If other people knew how fun and easy it was, he figured, they would also want one. The Beloffs soon decided that their future was in ukuleles and started Flea Market Music Inc."In 1998, we quit our real jobs and went into the ukulele business full time," he says.And they seem to be having a blast doing it. "We made our own reality. It's much more fun," says Liz Beloff.Jim Beloff has written songbooks, released instructional DVDs and written a history of the ukulele. Liz, who previously worked on graphics for movie trailers, is in charge of design. And they both perform and record ukulele music. Asked for a succinct job description, they offer "ukulele popularizers."Hawaii, no surprise, is still the hub of uke activity. But when the Beloffs moved from Los Angeles last year to Connecticut ("That's the great tropical state of Connecticut," Nutmegger ukuleleists are wont to say), they greatly ratcheted up our state's uke cachet to a close second...........

flea market music

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