Island Paradise In Bismarck, North Dakota

Imagine yourself in paradise. You’re probably picturing swaying palm trees, sparkling turquoise water and soft, white sand. If you were there, you’d feel the warmth of the tide winds, the cool ocean lapping at your feet, and the sun beating down on your face.  

If you’re lucky, you might actually be experiencing all of this right now. But if you’re like most of us, sitting at home wishing we were sipping Mai Tais on the beach, there’s a trick that will have you feeling like you’re on the shores of Hawaii in no time: Join a ukulele club.

If you focus on what paradise sounds like, waves crashing onto the shore, birds singing, and ukuleles playing in the distance probably come to mind. Nothing compares to the sound of the tropics quite like a ukulele does (just look at the soundtrack for Blue Hawaii and 50 First Dates), and with the instrument’s recent boom in popularity, there’s no shortage of ukes and uke clubs in the United States.  

North Dakota in particular has plenty of uke-related events, and its capital Bismark, even has a ukulele group.  

The Ukumondays, the state capital’s main uke club, meets on, well, Mondays (if you hadn’t already guessed that from their aptly titled name). The local jam session is made up of beginner and intermediate members who simply enjoy playing the ukulele and sharing its sound with others. They meet weekly at the Walrus Restaurant in Bismarck, with summer jams typically beginning at 8:00pm and winter meetings starting around 9:00pm. Ukumondays encourages all new and returning members to check their Facebook page for weekly updates.  

While the group seems to be Bismarck’s only fervent uke meetup, there are on occasion other meetings that happen around the city – like the Bismarck Acoustic Jam Meetup. For its first get together on June 10, 2018, guitar, ukulele, bajo, violin, harmonica, and other wind instrument musicians were invited to lead their favourite songs and sing along to others during a Sunday session. As, at the time of writing, nearly 50 people were interested in the first meeting, it seems the opportunity for other similar meet-ups in the future is quite likely.

Sure, North Dakota may not look like an island paradise (it’s known for it’s Great Plains, bison, and wheat, after all), but you don’t have to listen hard to make it feel like one.