Bill Sevesi’s Dream

It wouldn’t be news to anyone outside of a hermit in a hut in the lonely forests of Fiordland that the most popular musical instrument of the moment is also one of the humblest, the ukulele.

The uke is everywhere. It’s in New Zealand’s schools, threatening the once-deathless reign of the recorder, it’s on stages in the concert halls and pubs and clubs and it’s even in the pop charts, thanks to the extremely popular Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.

Antique pop songs become whimsical or amusing when ukuleles are applied to them and this has been a large part of the little instrument’s recent worldwide popular surge. But, as a new television documentary reveals, there’s a lot more to the little uke than all this sudden popularity.

The documentary is Bill Sevesi’s Dream and it takes the current popularity of the ukulele as the starting point of a journey to the uke’s roots. The piece, made by a team of producer Gayle Hogan, writer Colin Hogg and director Ying Ly, takes its title from the legendary Polynesian band leader Bill Sevesi and his dream of schoolkids all over New Zealand one day playing ukes.

The documentary film finishes with 87-year-old Sevesi and his 68-year-old one-time pupil Sione Aleki playing their ukes together one last time. (Aleki – a virtuoso sometimes billed as the Jimi Hendrix of ukulele – died performing on stage, home in Tonga, only a few weeks after the filming.)

In its telling of the story of the ukulele, how it found its way from Madeira to Hawaii, through the Pacific and out to the world, Bill Sevesi’s Dream effectively uses live music, newly filmed with a wild variety of performers.
The documentary’s presenter Gemma Gracewood also features as a member of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra. Then there’s the anarchic “anti-ukulele” Big Muffin Serious Band playing their tribute to their hometown “Hamilton” and outraged at the uke’s rise to popularity.

In Auckland, The Nukes use ukes for their pop songs, while Cook Island dance combo Fia Musa have a song dedicated to Jonah Lomu. Hawaiian ukulele master Herman Pi’ikea Clark duets with Gracewood on Waikiki Chickadee, a uke classic written by one of his own uncles decades back.

The documentary also makes rich use of archive, stretching back to the landmark Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco in 1915, when Hawaii hosted a hugely popular pavilion, featuring plenty of ukulele music.
As a result, America fell for the little instrument and the world followed. And so it bounced in and out of popularity. In New Zealand, its Polynesian connection kept it closer to our hearts.

And Bill Sevesi, who led popular Polynesian dance bands in New Zealand from the 1940s to the ‘60s, had his old man’s dream about kids playing ukes in schools all over New Zealand.
Which is where Bill Sevesi’s Dream ends.
“Come true,” as he says.

Bill Sevesi’s Dream will screen on January 16 at 10.50pm as part of the TVOne Artsville series. The documentary was made by 3rd Party Productions, who also produce Talk Talk and The Good Word, which screen on TVNZ 7.