Suddenly, everyone`s ukulele crazy

Musique
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[88]
Suddenly, everyone’s ukulele
crazy
RETOUR EN GRACE. Quatre cordes, une petite caisse de résonance, un prix modique, une prise en main facile… le ukulélé
a tout pour plaire. Depuis son invention à la fin du 19ème siècle, cet instrument a connu des hauts et des bas. A la mode en
1915, puis à nouveau dans les années 1950, il remporte à nouveau un franc succès, comme en témoigne le nouveau disque
d’Eddie Vedder, le chanteur du groupe de rock grunge Pearl Jam !
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Suddenly, everyone’s ukulele
crazy
L’engouement pour le ukulélé
string corde / to catch, caught, caught s.o.’s eye
attirer le regard, l’attention de qn / out-of-the-way
à l’écart, peu connu, peu fréquenté / nearby tout
près / to pick out ici jouer / case boîtier.
2. trend tendance, mode / to release sortir / fortunes destin, sort / endangered species (inv.)
espèce(s) menacée(s) de disparition / to encounter rencontrer, connaître, ici considérer / exotica
objet(s) exotique(s) / prop accessoire / to permeate (s’)infiltrer dans, imprégner, envahir /
extent ampleur, mesure, importance / to turn
up apparaître / indie indépendant / commercial spot publicitaire / definitely indubitablement.
i
3. decade décennie / to fuel (fueled, US= fuelled,
GB) alimenter, nourrir / director réalisateur / corporate d’entreprise / advertiser publicitaire /
aim but, objectif /
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, an
ukulele player, in an undated
handout photo. (THE NEW YORK TIMES)
22 • VOCABLE Du 26 mai au 8 juin 2011
BY BEN SISARIO
ike everybody else, Eddie Vedder was
shocked by what the ukulele could do.
It was the late 1990s, and Vedder was
in Hawaii, decompressing after a tour with
his band, Pearl Jam, when one of those modest, four-stringed instruments caught his eye
in an out-of-the-way drugstore. He bought it,
sat down on a nearby case of beer and picked
out a few melodies. It felt good. “And then a
couple of tourists came by and threw 50
cents in the ukulele case,” he said. “And I
thought, ‘Wow, there’s something going on
here’.”
L
A new trend
2. Vedder’s new solo album, “Ukulele
Songs”, will be released May 31. But in the
years since his first beer-case serenade, the
ukulele’s fortunes have changed. Not long
ago it was an endangered species, usually encountered as cheap exotica or a comic prop.
Now it permeates the culture to an extent
that it hasn’t in more than half a century,
turning up in Top 10 pop songs and fashionable indie-rock bands, in television commercials by the hundred and YouTube videos
by the thousand. There definitely is something going on here.
3. The trend, building for a decade and now
reaching a saturation point, is being fueled
by a mix of Hollywood directors, corporate
advertisers, professional musicians looking
for a new sound and amateurs who have discovered how easy the uke is to use. Their
aims may be completely different – selling
deodorant and cars versus thrumming in a
Brooklyn bar – but they are united in recognizing that the ukulele offers a folksy,
hands-on kind of musical humility that’s
hard to find in an age in thrall to “American
Idol” and “Guitar Hero.”
Easy learning
4. One of the ukulele’s great advantages
is it’s so easy to learn that it’s said to be almost impossible to play it badly. Even when
slightly off key, it serves as a blank canvas
that can accent the character of any voice.
And in the right hands, it can strip a song
to its skeletal core. “Nobody picks up the
ukulele who is later going to go back and
Auto-Tune their vocals,” said Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields, whose 1999
triple album, “69 Love
Songs,” featured the
ukulele extensively and
was a landmark in its revival. “It definitely sounds
untrained, and therefore
goes with untrained vocal styles.” Vedder has a
tidy summation of its advantages: “Less strings,
more melody.”
Back and forth
5. The ukulele craze of the 2000s is only
the latest in its long history. The ukulele, a descendant of a four-stringed instrument called
the machete that Portuguese laborers brought
to Hawaii in the 19th century, first made a
mainland splash in 1915, at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
It had waves of mass popularity in the 1920s
and the ‘50s, but by 1968, when Tiny Tim’s
“Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips With Me” became
a novelty hit (No. 17 on the pop charts) – and
condemned the instrument to punch line status for years – it was already fading.
6. Its journey back from oblivion began in
the mid-1990s, led by a revival among musicians in Hawaii, and since then it has followed parallel paths in independent and corporate culture. In 1999 a spare and wistful
version of “Over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole was used in a commercial for
eToys and sparked a ukulele ad frenzy. The
recording has been licensed more than 100
times to sell food, software, paint, bank serv-
ices, lottery tickets and plenty else, and it
shows no sign of slowing down.
7. At the same time that Hollywood and corporate America began turning to the ukulele,
a grass-roots uke revival gathered steam. Local strumming societies emerged around the
country, aided by the Internet. And the instrument began popping up throughout the
indie-rock world: Mirah, Beirut, Dent May,
Noah and the Whale, Buke and Gass, TuneYards, even a Neutral Milk Hotel tribute band
called Neutral Uke Hotel. From there it
spread to the mainstream.
Strength and weaknesses
8. For most of its history the ukulele has
tended to be defined by its limitations: It
lacks the resonance of the guitar,
‘Wow, there’s
something going
on here’.
Eddie Vedder
the bark and twang of the banjo, and one result is a narrow range of performance styles.
In some ways that’s the ukulele’s strength,
a simple, effective strum that anyone can
learn. But is that all there is?
9. Vedder’s album is halfway between the
standard uke style and something more idiosyncratic. Respecting one of the instrument’s
unwritten rules, he plays antique songs like
“Dream a Little Dream of Me” and “Tonight
You Belong to Me” (you may remember Steve
Martin and Bernadette Peters singing that
one in “The Jerk”). And he exploits the sentimentality of the instrument for all it’s
worth, singing lines like “For every wish
upon a star that goes unanswered in the
dark/There is a dream I’ve dreamt about
you.” But on songs like “Can’t Keep,” he
seems to be trying to cram an angst-y Pearl
Jam song through the tiny instrument, attacking the strings.
10. As Vedder explained: “My inspiration was
to wrestle with the thing, to give it something different from the way it’s been played
before. Can I make this happy little instrument as depressed as I am?” ●
SOCIÉTÉ
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versus contre / to thrum pincer, gratter, jouer
(guitare) / folksy sympa, simple / hands-on pratique, pragmatique, ici artisanal / in thrall to
sous l’emprise de, inféodé à, obsédé par.
4. slightly légèrement, un peu / off key faux
(fausses notes) / blank blanc, neutre / canvas
toile, support / to accent accentuer, mettre en
valeur / to strip dépouiller / to its skeletal core
pour n’en garder que l’essentiel (lit. jusqu’à l’os)
/ Auto-Tune logiciel correcteur de pitch (hauteur
et/ou fréquence) de la voix (correction des fausses
notes de l’interprète en temps réel) / vocals
chant, paroles / to feature comporter, inclure /
extensively largement / landmark point de
repère, référence, ici événement marquant,
moment décisif / revival renaissance / untrained inexpérimenté, ici ne requérant aucune formation, simple / therefore donc, par conséquent
/ tidy propre, net, précis, concis / summation
résumé.
5. back and forth va-et-vient / craze folie, engouement / laborer (US)= labourer (GB) travailleur,
ouvrier / mainland continent (ici américain) /
to make, made, made a splash faire sensation /
wave vague / chart hit-parade / punch line chute
(d’une histoire drôle), ici condemned... punch
line status et condamna l’instrument à être le
sujet de blagues, objet de risée (punch line chute
d’une histoire drôle) / to fade disparaître (peu
à peu), décliner.
6. journey back oblivion réapparition, retour
(oblivion oubli) / path chemin, voie / spare sobre,
dépouillé / wistful mélancolique, nostalgique /
to spark provoquer, susciter / ad pub / frenzy
frénésie, folie / to license octroyer une licence
d’exploitation.
7. corporate America grandes entreprises américaines / grass-roots (de la) base, ici populaire /
to gather steam s’accélérer, s’intensifier / to
strum jouer de la guitare, ici du ukulélé / to pop
up surgir, apparaître / throughout dans tout /
tribute hommage / to spread, spread, spread
to the mainstream devenir populaire (ici dans
le milieu musical), gagner le grand public.
8. strength force, ici atout, point fort / weakness
faiblesse / to lack manquer de, être dépourvu
de / bark aboiement, ici son sec, percutant /
twang son de corde pincée, vibrato / narrow
étroit, limité / range variété, registre / effective
efficace / strum jeu (guitare).
9. halfway à mi-chemin / idiosyncratic particulier, distinctif, singulier / for all it’s worth pour
ce qu’il vaut / to cram entasser, bourrer, faire
entrer, faire passer (avec difficulté) / angst-y
anxieux / tiny minuscule.
10. to wrestle se battre / depressed déprimé,
triste, cafardeux.
Du 26 mai au 8 juin 2011 VOCABLE • 23