Jake Simabukuro – Bluegrass Ukulele – Inspired By Bela Fleck

Jake Simabukuro – Bluegrass Ukulele – Byron Bay 2008

Well I saw the title of this video and thought… wow,  I got to check this out…

The  YouTube description says:

“He introduced this as being inspired by his time with Bela Fleck. There is certainly some bluegrass themes in there but like the great Bela himself, Jake doesn’t allow it to become trite or cliched.”

Okay…

Just this one guys opinion here but it didn’t sound that much like bluegrass to me. Maybe it would have been different if he were to hang around Earl Scruggs, JD Crowe, Mike Lilly or Bill Emerson…  the only part of this that slightly sounded like bluegrass (or should I say a banjo) was the 3 fingered rolling sound he starts at about 26 seconds into it.  He repeats it later and oh boy, there’s some great playing here for sure.

So don’t get me wrong because I don’t mean to cut down this performance-

quite frankly, I don’t think I’ve heard a ukulele player as good as Jake. He is absolutely incredible.

But Bluegrass? Come on… As Monroe would say… “That ain’t no part of nothin,”

or maybe we should rephrase that  (referring to this being bluegrass) “This is a little part of somethin.”