Research Paths in the Ukulele

Overview & Synopsis

This book is the result of the First Ukulele International Conference (UIC 2021) – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Performance, Composition, and Organology (December 3-4, 2021), the first academic event ever dedicated to the instrument. The edited volume collects selected essays and contributions by authors with different (or with multiple) professional backgrounds: researchers in the ukulele’s cultural history, musicologists with scholarship in performance and instrumentality issues, composers (or composer-performers) of music for ukulele, performers engaged in scholarly research and in popularizing the instrument, and professionals involved in the technological innovation of the instrument. The purpose of this book is to provide a sample of possible questions related to the instrument, with the awareness that many others may only be fully formulated in future research. In addition to the general tenet of interdisciplinarity—crucial for addressing an instrument endowed with such high and intrinsic "plasticity"—the book presents a further challenge: extending research on the ukulele to research with the ukulele, namely understanding it as an instrument (in a more etymological sense), a scientific tool to investigate different topics in music-making.