Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro plays Poke Bowl fest in Rohnert Park

Jake Shimabukuro, who now may be the world’s best-known touring ukulele player, could barely? contain his glee.

“Fiji’s gonna be there!” he said of the Poke Bowl, a Polynesian music festival at SOMO Village in Rohnert Park on July 13.

“Fiji is one of the greatest singers to come out of Hawaii. I was a huge, huge fan growing up listening to his music,” Shimabukuro said. “He was an inspiration for me.”

Born in Fiji, George “Fiji” Veikoso, 49, moved to Hawaii in his early teens. His music can is often described as island reggae.

Shimabukuro had no idea, until the interview for this story, that Fiji would be co-headlining with him. There were more surprises.

“Anuhea’s gonna be there too? She has an incredible voice,”

Shimabukuro said. “I love her songs.”

And Shimabukuro was glad to hear Kanekoa would be rounding out the bill of the daylong festival.

“They are real high-energy, great ukulele playing,” he said. “They’re super talented.”

And let’s not forget Shimabukuro, who has become internationally renowned for boldly taking the ukulele into sonic territory it had never entered before.

“I don’t think there’s anybody who plays the ukulele quite like he does,” said festival producer Dan Sheehan of Ineffable Music.

“Watching him onstage is so special, the way his fingers move,” Sheehan said. “It’s really quite the sight, quite the art form.”

Sheehan, who grew up in Hawaii and has been “eating poke since before it was cool,” said Sonoma County has a significant “island population” and that he wanted to create a show that would appeal to them.

And for those who enjoy traveling to Hawaii, “it brings them back to being in the islands,” he said.

Shimabukuro noted that the popularity of Hawaiian music has been growing and suggested that could be partly because we’re living in contentious times.

“I’m biased because I grew up in Hawaii, but I think that traditional music we have is some of the most beautiful music in the world,” he said. “I can see why more people gravitate toward that music now with so much going on in the world. This music is almost an escape for me.”

Shimabukuro, who now plays 120 to 140 shows a year, leapt into rock music consciousness when a video of him playing the Beatles song, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” went viral in 2005.

Shimabukuro was in New York playing at a Hawaii festival there, when the producers of a TV show asked him to play a song in Central Park. He’d been working on arranging “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for the ukulele, so he played that; the producers put it on YouTube.

“Back then it didn’t have my name on it,” Shimabukuro said. “It said something like: Asian Guy Shreds on Ukulele.”

In 2006, someone put his name on the video, and soon his booking agent started getting calls asking if Shimabukuro would open for major bands. The video now has more than 16 million views.

Shimabukuro’s music today is a blend of original songs and covers that have a Hawaiian sensibility.

He notes he’s not the first to transform pop standards to island sounds, citing the late Israel ’s Kamakawiwo‘ole’s ukulele treatment of “Over the Rainbow.”

“That made me realize that you can take any kind of song and really make it into something beautiful, but still capture the essence of the instrument,” he said.

Shimabukuro can play with delicacy or can jam at a ferocious pace, and has been called the Jimi Hendrix of the ukulele.

On his most recent album, 2018’s “The Greatest Day,” Shimabukuro covers Hendrix’s “If 6 Was 9,” Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and the Zombies’ “Time of the Season.”

Yet his original instrumentals hold their own.

Asked about his inspiration, Shimabukuro said: “Some days I’ll have an idea right away, and other days it’s like, where is it?”

Changing scenery can help. “If I’m trying to write music in my studio and nothing’s happening, then I’ll go and drive to the park or the beach, and that puts me in a different headspace.”

When an idea comes, Shimabukuro will write it down or sing it into his phone. Yet it’s not always peace and tranquility that spark his creativity. “If I go to a live concert and it’s loud and crowded, but it’s exciting and fun,” that can inspire him.

“It’s the extremes, either extreme happiness or extreme sadness, that’s going to pull very strong creative content out of you.”

Shimabukuro has played Kamaka ukuleles, made in Hawaii, since he took up the instrument at age 4. As a teenager he saved $2,500 over the course of a year to buy his first custom ukulele.

But he doesn’t believe a ukulele needs to be crafted in Hawaii to sound true, and praised Petaluma ukulele maker Kala.

Shimabukuro is married to a Hawaiian physician. They have two young sons, and he fervently believes kids should be exposed to music during their first years of school.

Last year he helped create Jake’s Clubhouse at Ala Wai, the elementary school he attended in Honolulu during the 1980s. Working with the Music for Life Foundation, he equipped the school with 100 ukuleles, 12 guitars, four pianos and more than a dozen percussion instruments.

“Everything in there belongs to you. Get in there. Get inspired,” Shimabukuro told students gathered for the opening of the clubhouse, according to Ka Wai Ola, a local newspaper.

“Whether or not we know it, we are all musicians,” he told the kids, holding a banner that read: “Music is P.E. for the Mind.”

Music, he told the students, is the “language of the universe. It helps us to communicate with each other. It helps us to connect with each other.”

During these fractious times, that’s something that can benefit us all.

Michael Shapiro is author of the forthcoming book, “The Creative Spark.” He covers travel, the arts and environmental issues for national magazines and The Press Democrat.