Dublin plays host to international ukulele festival

Dublin’s Meeting House Square is to play host to the capital’s first international ukulele festival.
Taking place on August 16, the line-up features such giants of the genre as as Ukulelezaza, The Uke Box, Peter Delaney, Gus & Fin, Winin Boys, Vertigo Smyth, Steven Sproat, The Ukuhooleys and more to be confirmed.
Along with the main Ukulele Hooley gigs, which will cost €15 to attend, there are musical workshops planned for August 15 in the Odessa Club, an Open Mic session that same night in Shebeen, and other fringe events which are listed on www.ukulelehooley.com.
"There has been a huge upsurge of interest in the ukulele over the past few years, and so we're hoping to build on that," says Tony Boland of Ukuhooley, the Irish Ukulele Club. "It's going to be a great fun weekend, but the music is going to be special as well. We have some of the best ukulele artists in the world coming in, including these guys from Scotland, Gus and Fin who do punk songs adapted to ukulele and who are absolutely brilliant – so from that point of view the festival is going to surprise a lot of people."
As a man who once ran beat clubs in Dublin in the 1960s and later booked all of the music for the Late Late Show, Boland – who, it may surprise some people to know, plays ukulele himself – knows his musical chops.