Above The Basement - Boston Music And Conversation

We met up with Jake Shimabukuro before his concert in front of a sold out crowd at Cary Memorial Hall in Lexington, Massachusetts. Jake became an international sensation in 2006 when a YouTube video of him playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps in Central Park - without his knowledge - became one of the very first viral videos on that site with millions of views. Jake plays the ukulele (which we also discovered can be pronounced "ookelele") - and has performed at numerous festivals including the Stockholm Jazz Festival and Blue Mountains Music Festival and has appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel Live, A Prairie Home Companion, NPR’s Morning Edition and World Cafe, and has spoken at several TED conferences. In 2012, an award-winning documentary was released tracking his life, career, and music, titled Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings. Jake is the founder The Four Strings Foundation, which creates music education workshops nationwide and provides ukuleles and other materials and training