Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

Jeff Peterson, the slack key musician from Maui, a tall white dude, led a ukulele workshop here in Eugene last year. We were on a back porch, rows of folding chairs nested us elbow to elbow, smiling at each other, ukuleles nudging each other. He has an easy teaching style, encouraging and flexible. He passed out simple sheet music with the tabulation for a well known Hawaiian song. He played the simple version of the song a few times, and then taught it to us piece by piece, with the tab. I hadn't read tab before, but I caught on pretty quickly, and Jeff explained things clearly. He was encouraging to the audience of middle aged, mostly white Oregonians, gradually added new and challenging chords, while telling us about his slack key teachers-- famous Hawaiian names and beloved Hawaiian musicians, like George Kahumoku Jr., and Keola Beamer.  I took home a new tune, pretty well mastered, three new jazzy chords, a stack of sheet music, and puzzled over how different this workshop was...