Confession: Once upon a time, I thought a ukulele was merely a diminutive, albeit decorative, toy guitar. I did not realize it was a bona fide musical instrument unto itself.
It was 1964, the Beatles were all the rage, my best friend and I were seven years old and both madly in love with Paul McCartney. One afternoon, in what can only be described as a fit of pre-adolescent Fab Four swooning, my best friend snatched her dad’s uke from its hallowed stand on the built-in living room bookshelf, hopped atop her mother’s coffee table-turned-stage, pretended to be McCartney playing his guitar, and lip-synced every song on her older sister’s Meet The Beatles record album blaring from the hi-fi. I might have grabbed a hairbrush microphone and joined her had her mother not interrupted our rock ‘n’ roll role play with a firm reprimand that the ukulele was not a toy, let alone a guitar.
At first blush, this might not seem the kind of story one should share in a magazine article about HP Newquist, founder and executive director of The National Guitar Museum, and his traveling exhibition, “GUITAR: The Instrument That Rocked The World,” currently at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. And yet, just moments into the interview, I sensed that if anyone could appreciate a Baby Boomer waxing reminiscent about a ukulele being mistaken for a toy guitar while swooning over The Beatles, Mr. Newquist could.
“Everyone above the age of 12 has been exposed to the guitar in an overwhelming number of ways because of the music they love – from rock to blue grass, country and jazz – but also visually and spiritually if they grew up with albums, CDs and posters, and MTV.” Newquist said. “It’s the first instrument to ever define a generation of people, starting with teenagers. No other instrument has been such an important part of a generation, so emblematic of who they are and the music they listened to.”
From royal courts to dingy dive bars and sold-out concert venues, this instrument made of wood and steel, in one form or another, has entertained a vast array of cultures for thousands of years. “GUITAR” explores and celebrates this most enduring American icon, presenting close to 100 artifacts – including more than 60 instruments – tracing the guitar’s evolution.
The ukulele, as the exhibition highlights, is one of the instruments that has played a part in that evolution. Still prominent in Hawaii, the ukulele was introduced in 1879 as a four-string instrument from Portugal. Hawaiians embraced the ukulele, giving it its name, which I now know translates as “jumping fleas,” referring to the way a person’s fingers jump along the fretboard when playing it.
Long before the ukulele, however, there was the nyatiti, one of the first stringed instruments which originated in the upper Nile Valley in 3000 BCE; the lute, prominent in the royal courts of the Renaissance; and the banjo, popular among Bluegrass musicians, and said to have been created by slaves landing in the Caribbean in
the 1600's.
Other “GUITAR” points of interest include the Gibson J-200, introduced in 1937 in an attempt to change the shape and sound of acoustic guitars; the Fender Telecaster, the first mass-produced six-string solid body electric guitar, dating back to 1949; and the Fender Stratocaster, introduced in 1954, shaping the image of early rock ‘n roll and now deemed the most popular electric guitar ever.
Another exhibition highlight is the world’s largest playable guitar – 43 feet long and 16 feet wide – certified by Guinness World Records (clearly, too big to be mistaken for a ukulele).
And if you still, on occasion, like to rhythmically fake chord changes on the neck of an invisible electric guitar while wildly bobbing your head and sporting a pained, tough-guy or tough-gal grimace, listen up! This exhibition also pays tribute to the air guitar – the instrument of choice for teens and rock star hopefuls since the 1970s – and it just might fire up your inner Pete Townsend or Jimi Hendrix.
Using interactives to delve into the science behind the sound, “GUITAR” demonstrates how strings resonate on wood, and how the resulting vibration creates the music people love to rock out to. Displays show how an acoustic guitar’s hollow body and soundboard enhance the strings’ vibrations, and how the magnetic coils used in an electric guitar capture vibration, turning it into amplified sound. Guests are also invited to literally peek into the physics of amplifiers by looking into an amplifier stack to better understand how sound louder than that of a jet engine is produced.
Also on hand – three playable guitars for visitors to strum, pluck or jam, so feel free to rock on with your bad self. And Cincinnati Museum Center, to showcase local musicians’ talent, is kindly providing a performance stage (a real one, not a coffee table) for live performances throughout the exhibit’s run.
What is it that makes the guitar so universally appealing?
“It’s one of the most portable instruments ever created,” Newquist explained. “Minstrels carried it through Europe and Asia. Cowboys carried it across the United States. It’s something you can always pick up and have with you. You can take it on a plane, across campus, or to a campfire. And it’s one of the only instruments you can play and sing at the same time. You can’t do that with a flute or horns or woodwinds or the violin. You can do that with keyboard and drums, but they don’t
offer portability.
“And the guitar is the only instrument you have to hold close and embrace in order to play it,” Newquist noted. “The vast majority of instruments you have to reach out to play. The guitar requires you to hold it close to your body, and that creates not only sound waves you can feel against your chest but through your bones, creating an intimacy you don’t get with any other instrument.”
Newquist, an author of numerous books including “Legends of Rock Guitar” and “The Blues-Rock Masters,” began playing the guitar when he was 15, inspired by guitarist Jimmy Page and the English rock band Led Zeppelin. “And I haven’t stopped playing since,” he said. He performed with several bands in college, and still plays guitar in a band called The Distractions that performs in the Greater New York City area. Not a day goes by that Newquist doesn't play the guitar for at least
20 minutes.
“If it’s in your blood, you don’t want to stop,” he added. “It’s like painting, writing or gardening. It just makes your day.”
Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal is located at 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45203.
For more information, visit www.cincymuseum.org