Kealakekua Ukes

 
 
Celebrate! Sing or encourage others to sing or just sit back and listen. Music is the universal language of joy and love. Music is healing. This handy little instrument is your happiness buddy. Everyone who sees an ukulele smiles and knows a humble song may be shared. It carries easily. (Please, don’t leave it in a hot car. It will warp and unglue.) It is considered a party instrument. (I’ll drink to that!) It is small enough for a child and is easily learned. There is so much on the internet that will teach you how to play simple Holiday songs or complicated classical pieces. Kealakekua Ukes are handmade by Claudia Suen and Billy Ralph. Each instrument is totally unique. Wait a minute..... Shhhhh....Holy Cow, Koa is trying to speak! “I remember when I was just watching the seasons go by up on the cool wind swept hills of Hualalai on the Kona side of Big Island, Hawaii. I remembered looking up at the other Koa trees towering over me. I would be wondering when I would grow big and strong like them. This went on for hundreds of years your time. Although I caught up with them, I never thought about it. I never though about time. It just went by. I grew and got stronger with each storm and drought. Many seasons passed without concerns. I just was. Then I noticed it was easier for birds and bugs to nest inside me. During a storm one of my limbs broke off. Things were changing fast. My body swayed more easily in the wind and my roots didn’t hold as strong. It was time for a change. I had matured enough to be reborn into another form and show my inner beauty. One day, my quiet home became very noisy. The humans who use to just sit under me for shade now came with metal. All of a sudden I was laying close to the ground again. This one human took a small part of my heart wood, the part closes to my center. and gave it as a gift to these two people.That was how a part of me ended up in Claudia and Billy’s house in Kealakekua, just south of where I grew up. Billy could see my beauty and wanted to make me into a table. I was so smooth and beautiful. My grain was straight, colors rich and polished smooth. I was beautiful. But his eyes were bigger than the house could hold. I was too big. What a shame. He worked so hard. So I rested for twenty years under the house drying and deepening in color. Occasionally I would notice Billy digging around under the house, but he never really spent any length of time with me. Then, out of nowhere, Billy is looking at me again! He had this huge smile on his face and twinkle in his eyes. I have never seen him so excited! He pulled me out from under a bunch of other wood and dusted me off. He touched me like never before and looked at me with such hope and desire. (Don’t tell Claudia.) Next thing I know, I am in their living room! I could hear them playing music with these boxes. It was so beautiful. I could tell those instruments were made out of something like me!. Little did I know I was going to do more than just hold stuff up. I was actually going to sing! As I listened to them playing music, I could tell the box sounded better and better, sweeter and fuller. There is so much more about me than I could ever have imagined. There are places I could never know about by sitting on top of that hill, in a world of timeless peace and beauty. Now that peace and beauty can be shared around the world.”