Ukulele Playing World Record Set in London

Before anyone complains (and a couple of you commenters are a bit grouchy, aren't you?), I absolutely refuse to make apologies for a post about ukuleles. Ukes are fantastic little instruments, can be played by virtually anyone who puts their mind to it, and generally are totally without any pretensions.

Anyway, to get to the point, yesterday - Saturday 20th June 2009 - in London's Devonshire Square, a gathering of 851 ukulele players set the new world record for the most ukuleles playing the same song at the same time, with a 5-minute rendition of "Sloop John B".

I was there with my baritone ukulele, and have to say that it was a fantastic and very entertaining day out. I met and spoke to lots of people and even swapped uke with a few people. It's unusual in London to be able to converse with strangers as people are usually very unfriendly and will rarely give you the time of day, but you could say that everyone at this event was united by the common bond of the ukulele.

Kudos to the organisers for putting this event together, and to all the attendees who together raised funds for Cancer Research UK.

Some YouTube videos HERE.

GLWilson
(I'll hand you back to Bertram following this post, as I'm supposed to be busy writing a book at the moment...)

Now it's India's turn: Over 2,000 guitarists will gather at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, for The World Record Guitar Ensemble during the autumn festival on October 26. For this attempt at the record, the song they will be playing is Bob Dylan's "Knocking On Heaven's Door". The existing Guinness Book of World Records' guitar ensemble stands at 1,721 guitarists from Kansas City, US performing the rock classic "Smoke On The Water" on June 4, 2007.

Guitarists smoke the world record: Here's a story I missed from earlier this month. The world record for the greatest number of guitarists playing "Smoke on the Water" together has been broken AGAIN. Blimey, how many times is that now? (Or has it been broken again in the last week). I reckon it'll almost certainly be out of date again by the time The Guinness Book of Records publish the feat in their annual book.

Deepest Purple: 1,800 Guitarists Set World Record Playing 'Smoke on the Water': Blimey! The record's been broken again already. It was only earlier this month that the previous record was set in Kansas, but now it's the Germans who are in the lead. So, where next? I'll be up for participating in a record attempt here in the UK. How does that riff go again?

Guitar Record Set to Smoke On The Water: More than 1,680 guitarists broke a world record by playing DEEP PURPLE classic SMOKE ON THE WATER simultaneously yesterday (03Jun07).