Simple Gifts

The Black Swedes band

The cool-looking young guy second from the left is my music instructor, Matt. The other day I asked what he does when he's not teaching senior citizens to play the ukulele.  He smiled (it's hard to make Matt laugh-- he's very serious) and said he's busy performing and recording with several bands, one of them called the Black Swedes.

I looked them up of course, and see that Matt is a rock guitarist and songwriter-- no wonder he can strum a lively Oh, Susanna with one hand tied behind his back. The Black Swedes perform at night clubs and music taverns around Seattle and Portland. The kind of places we never go, because they're just setting up about the time we're going to bed.

Matt and I obviously live in parallel Seattle universes, although at the most basic level music boils down to just one language: notes on a page. So I take him folk song books and YouTube clips of songs I'm yearning to play. Sometimes he doesn't immediately recognize a famous tune like Fur Elise (which makes me secretly smile.) BUT if he has the sheet music, he can work almost anything into ukulele tablature.  (For novices, tabs are much easier to read than music notation.)

That alone is worth the price of a lesson. He's already done Ode to Joy, Amazing Grace and Scarborough Fair, and this week I'll take in the old Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts.  

Simple Gifts is lovely on the ukulele but it isn't "simple" to play at all. Getting the right rhythm and timing is difficult no matter how many times you've heard it. Practice, practice, practice.

The photographs on this beautiful video remind me of the Pennsylvania farm county where we grew up.  Our wonderful dad in Colorado looks at the blog first thing in the morning, and he would love this if he could only see it today. Please hold him in your thoughts and prayers.  Dad is in the hospital this week in Colorado Springs, but we're all very hopeful after rest and therapy he can be back home soon with mom in Cripple Creek.