Internationally acclaimed ukulele virtuosi Azo Bell with
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THE UKI-LELE FESTIVAL Harris Smart tells the story of the Uki-lele Festival (Patron Saint: St Tiny Tim)
The kids from the Perch Creek Jug Band performed at the Uki-lele festival, undeterred by the fact that dad had been sent to jail.
About a year ago I moved to Uki. There was already a group of Subud members there, mostly old friends such as the Wyllies, the Jenkins, the Barnetts and the News, small in number but very friendly, active and community-minded. My move to Uki was attended by various “signs and wonders”. For instance I dreamed one night that I was wandering around Melbourne where I was living at the time and everything was closed to me; there was nothing for me to do. Then Freeman Wyllie appeared in the dream welcoming me to Uki. So I moved. I knew that my move had a purpose connected with cultural activity, particularly music and performance. Uki is a wonderful place. It is situated about 40 km to the north of the coastal resort town, Byron Bay, and about 20 km inland. It is only a small village, perhaps 300 people. It is in a beautiful setting where there are still forests, streams and spectacular mountains. The area retains a strong feeling of aboriginality in its trees and rocks and waters. There are many aboriginal sacred sites. Uki is at the foot of a most important landmark, the mountain called Wollumbin in the aboriginal language. This is the cone of an extinct volcano which juts up in the middle of a caldera or volcanic basin about 60 km across. Wollumbin means cloud catcher and indeed spectacular cloud formations are to be seen almost daily. Sometimes the peak is shrouded in cloud. Sometimes the cloud tumbles down the sides like a waterfall. Sometimes cloud encircles the cone like a big fat doughnut. Sometimes spectral wraiths of cloud drift by. Sometimes fierce electrical storms explode on the summit; according to aboriginal mythology this is warriors at war. The mountain is also significant in European history. It was none other than Captain Cook himself who named it Mount Warning on his voyage of discovery down the Australian coast. Even though it is 20 kms inland, it can be seen from the sea. Cook named the mountain to warn other mariners of dangerous reefs in the area. There is a real, tangible power in this area. Whether it is connected to the mountain or to some other geomancy in the area, who knows, but power there is. It is witnessed not only by the Subud members who could be expected to be sensitive to this sort of thing, but also by many others who live there. Processes of spiritual transformation are speeded up here. This can be good or “bad” depending on your point of view. People feel that their spiritual life becomes more intense, but on the other hand if something is intended to fall apart, it will possibly fall apart even faster and more dramatically than it otherwise would have done. So watch out for your cars and your marriages. Culturally the town is rich. The area was originally opened up by timber cutters who came in to log the cedar forests. (One of the explanations for the town's name is that the timber cut here were sent to England marked “UK1”, meaning first quality timber destined for the UK. Other more likely explanations are that it is the aboriginal name for the tortoises that are found in the streams; or that it is the aboriginal name for the fern roots that the tortoises like to eat.) Once the forests were cleared, the farmers moved in and for several generations it was a dairy farming area. The town still retains many positive aspects of this foundation of Australian rural life stretching back to the 19th century. Many of the institutions of Australian country life are still alive in the town. In some ways it is like walking back into the world described by writers like Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson. But this has been mixed with the “new settler” culture, the “hippies” who began to move into the area in the 1970s and are particularly identified with the nearby town of Nimbin. They of course bought a completely different culture with new lifestyles, values and interests. They bought a flowering of artistic activity in forms like music, dance and architecture. After some initial suspicion and mutual mistrust, the two cultural streams seem to have “married” pretty well. The area is full of all kinds of artists, writers, philosophers, self-appointed gurus, hermits, odd-balls and eccentrics. Every kind of healing modality and spiritual movement you ever heard of, and quite a few you never heard of before, flourish here. Your neighbour is likely to tell you that the night before she had yet another visitation from the aliens, fortunately they were the good aliens. Sightings of spaceships, angels and flying saucers are common on the summit of Wollumbin. The area is alive with grassroots music. There are more singer/songwriters to the square hectare around here than there are cows. It is a rare event that you can walk down the main street of Uki without someone pressing their freshly minted CD into your hand. Is a very community-minded town. In particular there are a lot of strong women who organise community events such as the monthly food and craft market and activities in the Uki community hall. There are good community assets including a lively pub, a cafe, a guesthouse, a new-age shop and health Centre, and the renovated “Buttery”, the factory which used to be used for making butter back in the days when this was a dairy farming area. This now contains a new technology centre and craft shops.
Genesis of the Project One day I was standing in the centre of UKi and I looked around at all these community assets, the cafe, the guesthouse, the Buttery and so on, and I thought there are a lot of good things here, but there is something lacking. This town needs something to bring together all its elements and to add a bit of a “buzz”. We don't want too much “buzz” because we don't want to spoil the town, we don’t want to turn it into another Byron Bay, but just a little bit more of a “buzz” would be good, and something to enable all these separate elements to work together. So then I thought how could you do that? And I thought, a music festival. Then I asked myself what sort of music festival. I did not want to do just another music festival because every town has one now. I wanted a theme that would really be relevant to this town in this area, something that would really be meaningful. First I thought a singer-songwriter festival, because there are so many singer-songwriters in the area, and I hadn't heard of another singer-songwriter festival anywhere in Australia. But finally I settled on doing a “Uki-lele” festival. One reason for this is that there is a worldwide resurgence of interest in this instrument largely because of George Harrison who championed it because of its democratic qualities. He used to travel with half a dozen ukuleles and give them away. And the instrument was featured in the famous “Concert for George” which was held after his death. A number of people including Paul McCartney played ukuleles in that concert. Since then there has been an explosion of interest in the instrument. I also knew there were some world-famous players in the area, particularly a man called Azo Bell who is an internationally renowned virtuoso; he can play anything on the ukulele. There was also a duo who used the ukulele to play the traditional Australian folk repertoire. The uke also reflects the spirit of this area. It stands for homemade, homespun, backporch music. It stands for do-it-yourself, fun-for-the-whole-family music. It is in innately humorous and goodwilled. There is no way you can be too solemn, pompous or pretentious around a ukulele. In these respects, the uke stands against the current abominable trends in popular music and "entertainment" generally. It stands against abominations such as “Australian Idol” which erase originality and individuality to produce mass market pap. Programs which encourage a competitive spirit and which promote the philosophy that there must always be lots of losers. A lot of conspiracy theories abound in Uki. One is that reptilian aliens from another galaxy have gradually been taking over our planet. They have succeeded in infiltrating the souls of people in important positions such as politicians, the CEOs of big companies, and leading figures in culture and entertainment. Well, I am not sure I entirely buy this theory, but if you look around the world today, at politics, business, culture, economics, you would have to say it is not implausible, at least as a metaphor. Almost single-handed, the brave little uke stands against this hellish and reptilian takeover of our planet. A final reason for doing the uke festival was the irresistible pun which was available on the name Uki. In all the world there is not another town so perfectly named in which to hold a "uki-lele" festival. Community Development Soon after I got it going, Freeman Wyllie came to support me. I do not think I would have been able to do it without him, or certainly it would not have been so enjoyable. It was a very good working relationship particularly in that his energies came in to carry the project along when mine were failing or exhausted. Although we had not organised a festival like this before, we used what experience we had of organising cultural projects such as concerts and music cafes. We put a lot of work into getting the support of the people and entities in the town, such as the Sunday market. We decided to hold the festival on the market weekend so that the two events would support each other. We made an arrangement with the woman who ran the hall to hold the main concert there, and we decided to do a children's event in cooperation with the local primary school. We wanted to make it a real community festival. We defined the scale of the festival. Some people wanted to do another Woodstock. We decided it would be better to have a modest success first time round than a spectacular catastrophe. We kept it manageable. We booked the artists, including the headline act of Azo Bell and his band the Old Spice Boys. We figured out what you needed to do to make a festival work and we did it. We found sponsors and advertisers to cover our fairly modest expenses and we began to market and publicise the festival. All was going fairly smoothly until a couple of weeks before the festival when a bit of panic began to set in because very few tickets have been sold. Some people began to behave rather strangely, as people do when they are stressed, suddenly backing out of the arrangements we thought were in place, or suddenly tossing about nasty accusations. In a Subud sort of way we were purifying the town. We were injecting a new kind of energy into the place and while many people enjoyed the energising experience and saw it as a positive thing, it also stirred up some dirt. Inevitably some people grumbled about “these new people in town big-noting themselves”. There was resentment and envy. At one point we were dragged up before a “kangaroo court” and required to justify ourselves. I got abusive telephone calls late at night. The festival enabled me in a very short space of time to become deeply involved in the community and its stories. One of the acts we had booked was the Perch Creek Family Jug Band, a great band featuring a local eccentric “Hillbilly Bob” and his children ranging in age from about fourteen to five. A few weeks before the festival, I heard that Bob had been put in jail. Like a lot of people in this area he didn't bother too much with bureaucratic trivialities such as registering his car or paying his speeding and parking fines. The law decided to make an example of him and all his misdemeanours were added up together and he was given a savage sentence of 15 months in jail. Bob was OK, he had plenty of time in jail to work on his guitar playing, but the sentence impacted harshly on his wife Mitzi, left to fend for herself and six children. I went out to see Mitzi and the kids and I said, “I guess without Bob you won’t be able to perform at the festival?” “Oh no,” they clamoured, “we can do it, we want to do it, we have to do it. We need the money now that dad’s in jail.” I wondered if we might be able to spring Bob from jail to the festival, get him out for the day on compassionate leave. It turned out not to be possible but the kids gave a great performance both at the primary school and at the Sunday market. St Tiny Tim The week before the festival things were not looking good. We had sold about three tickets to the concert and people were really panicking. Some desperate last-minute move was needed. I wrote a press release saying that along with all the usual aliens, spacecraft and mythological beings the famous, deceased ukulele player Tiny Tim had been seen on Wollumbin. I wrote that these were the first authenticated sightings of the novelty singer since his supposed death in 1996. This was in marked contrast with the singer Elvis Presley of whom there have been thousand of sightings since his alleged demise. I was quoted as saying, "There is no doubt in my mind that Tiny Tim has chosen this time and place to manifest because of the Festival. He feels a close connection to us because he is Tiny Tim and Uki is a tiny town.” I reported that I had canonized St Tiny Tim at a hasty secret ceremonyand declared him the festival’s Patron Saint. Questioned about the singer’s qualifications for sainthood, I referred to his “sweet nature, unfailing courtesy and services to popular music”. I said that I had been “channeling” the long-haired crooner - famous for his rendition of "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" and said to be the repository of some 20,000 popular songs. I said that the saint had told me he would definitely be at the festival. “However, there is some question as to what form his appearance will take, or whether it can even be properly described as an appearance, since he may be invisible. “It is possible that only the most sensitive New Age souls will be able to see him. “But I would suggest that even if you can’t see him, you should say you can, because otherwise your friends will think you are spiritually thick.” Just for fun I sent the press release out all over the world. The London Times, the New York Times, the Tenneseee Chronicle, Pravda in Moscow etc. It was picked up by the media in Brisbane, Byron Bay and Sydney and helped to bring a good crowd into the festival. But I had not anticipated the calls from Tennessee wanting to interview me on morning radio about the miraculous apparitions. And who would have thought there was interest or knowledge of Tiny Tim in Moscow? Of course not all the calls were friendly. One caller even questioned my right to canonise people. “Well, I was bought up a Catholic,” I explained. And then the marriage proposals started the come in. It appeared there were quite a few women prepared to marry the saint even if he was a ghost. There are a lot of desperate women in them thar hills.
And in Conclusion The festival went well. It was a fine day and the people came. About a thousand people passed through the market as opposed to the usual 150 or so. The hall was absolutely packed for the concert. The primary school event also went well with the Perch Creek kids performing to an audience of 200 children. The festival was opened by an aboriginal elder, so all the layers of culture were present. Aboriginal, rural Australia, new settler. Many buskers came to town and there was lots of spontaneous country style music-making. There was a really good feeling. Freeman and I didn't make any money, but the festival's books balanced. Everyone got paid. Nobody lost money. We did not advertise it as a Subud event although some people wanted us to. I didn't feel right about it. I hate it when churches give something to the world with the agenda that this is going to lassoo people into the church. I think you should just give. Give to the universe and see what comes back to you. Many people knew that Freeman and I were in Subud and I am sure that the festival created goodwill towards our movement. The festival was part of a network of cultural activities that Subud people carry out in this area. There are Hamilton Barnett's movement performances and workshops, and Epiphany, a monthly music cafe run by Freeman and his wife Lena and another couple Dave and Elenor Weir. Subud is well known and liked in the area and sometimes people are attracted to it and decide they want to join, without anyone being heavy about saying, “this comes from Subud”. So that was the Uki-lele Festival, generally speaking a good experience for everyone. Of course it was only modest, but it seemed to me in many respects to be a good model for what can be done by Subud members working together. An important aspect was that fundamentally we did it for fun and to give something to the community rather than out of self-interest. I have become convinced that altruism is a powerful force. If you begin in this spirit, rather than hoping for personal profit, the universe givess back a thousandfold. I also believe that when you embark upon an activity of this kind you a beginning the process of “opening”. At some very deep level the festival shook the community to its foundations. Vibrations were felt right through to the foundations, and purification began to occur. Dirt and rubbish that was stuck in the old cracks were shaken loose. In other respects the town was energised and shone on festival day with a golden light.
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