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July 17, 2006
Jake Shimabukuro's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'
Topics: Human InterestAs Joseph Bottum says at First Things, It surely means something that we live in an age containing the greatest ukulele player ever born:
More from Bottum:
His name is Jake Shimabukuro, a twenty-nine-year-old from Hawaii, and he can make a four-string ukulele do everything but sit up and beg--and the question, when you hear him, is why: If you are this good on a ukulele, why are you playing a ukulele?Continue reading...Take a look at him here, for example, playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." It sounds good from the beginning, but the moment, I think, when it ceases to be merely good and becomes simply impossible is the second time through the chorus (at 1:40 in the clip), when Shimabukuro starts adding on the rhythm guitar's part--approximating two guitars on his four-string instrument. (On the original Beatles song, as I remember, George Harrison played the rhythm part and Eric Clapton sat in to play the lead.) By the time he reaches the piano-like arpeggios at 3:38, the listener's capacity for astonishment is exhausted: The man is some kind of mad genius, because the ukulele just isn't capable of doing all this.
Hat Tip - Gary G.
Posted by Richard at July 17, 2006 7:45 PM
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