The social media blog Mashable snagged a pretty cool interview with Hawai’ian ukulele maestro Jake Shimabukuro at the annual TED conference (TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and it’s a chi-chi invitation-only think-tank gathering of great minds) after his performance yesterday, which drew a standing ovation.
I’ve written about Shimabukuro before, and I’m glad he got to play in front of such an august audience. Good for him — I hope it sends him to superstardom status in all of pop music, not just ukulele fanatics.
I’m embedding both parts of the video interview, plus the very popular video of Jake creating new and amazing art out of the old George Harrison chestnut, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” There are tons of Jake Shimabukuro videos out there on YouTube. Check em out:
Gil,
Thanks for posting this! That’s an absolutely awesome interview. You can tell how much he loves the instrument and how much he loves playing for audiences.
Agreed. And I liked that the interview was for a tech site, not a music site or an Asian American site. Jake deserves to be a household name….
I’m a fan of both Jake and TED – there are some fascinating presentations on TED’s website. Thanks for sharing this!
Hey Casey, I’m going through and finding comments that I missed and didn’t approve. Thanks for commenting — hope you guys are well!
Hi, I’ve been a long time lurker, first time commenter. Jake also came and performed at this year’s TEDxTokyo, and the videos are online already(although not yet subtitled).
Thanks for commenting! Feel free to add links to the videos when they’re posted…
Actually, the videos are already available online at http://www.tedxtokyo.com