After a few months without it, the Ukulele Club has strummed its way back onto campus, and this time, it’s here to stay.
With the club once again being officially recognized, President James Acord, senior in biology, intends on reigniting the student passion that created the club in the first go-around, so it can return the club back to its former glory.
“When it first started, it was a really small group, then it grew into a pretty large group with [number around] 20 active members, doing events,” Acord said. “Now we’re back down to a small group, and we’re trying to pull everyone in whether they have experience or they just want to learn how to play.”
The Ukulele Club has resided on campus since 2012. Early in the mornings, club members could be heard strumming chords as they sat cross-legged on the black-iron benches outside of Haley Center. On colder nights, the musicians performed together on Samford lawn or on the downtown street corners, taking song requests from the night owls and bar patrons or playing songs of their own choice.
The club even held events at local retirement homes and the Early Learning Center on campus — teaching songs and performing their own for eager audiences.
Yet with drops in leadership and an inability to meet other club requirements such as finding a faculty advisor for sponsorship, the Ukulele Club fell through the cracks of campus in the last year.
“I was really sad when everything dropped off, and we weren’t really a club anymore,” Acord said. “If you looked us up on Auburn’s website, you couldn’t find anything about it, and I just wanted to make sure we were back to the status it was when I joined.”
Taking on leadership this year, Acord approached multiple faculty members for sponsorship. Yet he found they had limited time to assume another obligation like the clubs.
That was until Acord approached his biology professor, James Richard Owens. Despite no connection to the instrument, Owens felt compelled to ensure the club remained at the University after seeing the other club members’ passion.
With a faculty advisor and Acord in leadership, the Ukulele Club is back with 10 active members and full intention of finding more individuals who hold a passion for music and amity.
“There is a community there, and we’re just trying to reunite everyone who is at the University,” Acord said. “We offer a platform for people to have fun and make the club whatever they want to make it and also a platform for people to perform, which is not something that everyone has or can have.”
Students don’t need any prior experience nor do they need to own their own ukulele to join the club, as they have loaners for beginner members. Accord said half the members who join have never picked up the instrument before, but by the third practice, they’re able to play the song they learned at the first meeting.
Members also aren’t required to play the ukulele. Acord keeps practices and events open for all musical endeavors, evoking a garage-band ambiance. Some members have brought bassoons, violins, saxophones, melodicas and even their own voices to sing over the songs. If the musicians know the song and how to score it, Acord said they’re more than welcome.
For Acord and the members, the Ukulele Club is more than just an opportunity to learn an instrument.
“It’s more of a way for people to take a step back from how stressful their schedules are,” Acord said.
Only one club member is majoring in music. The other members are majoring in engineering, chemistry, micro-biology, applied mathematics, liberal arts and forestry. With the club’s array of majors, Acord said most time away is spent studying, but designating just two hours on Wednesday evenings makes all the difference.
“I kind of want to call it a morale boost, but at the same time, most people have a really great time when they’re there, so it’s more something to do and have fun and spend time with friends,” Acord said. “I would say that most of the people in the group are pretty tightly knit now.”
The club meets every Wednesday in Haley Center from 7–9 p.m. A typical meeting begins with introductions for any new members and an ice breaker followed by an opportunity for what the club calls a “uke-off,” in which club members are given a topic of any sort and must perform a song on the spot about the topic in a competition with another member.
“As funny as it sounds, we like to push people out of their comfort zones, not in an uncomfortable fashion, but when I first joined, I never thought about writing a song or anything like that,” Acord said.
Acord owes this empowerment to the club’s intimacy and focus on the group’s desires for companionship rather than to simply learn a song and adjourn until the following week.
“Whether you just want to get involved, or maybe you feel like you haven’t hit a stride or hit a point where you thought you’d be introduced to new people and you haven’t met them, come out,” Acord said. “We’re a really accepting group of people. We’re a group from all different backgrounds with a love for all different things coming together and playing and having a good time.”
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