My friends Janine and Ryan invited me to join them on July 23, 2025, for “Fuji Rock Japan Kick Off Shows,” one of two evening performances by Jake Shimabukuro and his band. Appearing at the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort venue known as Blue Note, JS was joined by Shawn Kekoa Pimental on drums, Jackson Waldoff on bass, and Michael Grande on keyboards.
I’d seen JS perform twice: first as a skinny, spiky-haired teenager on Road Runner commercials (many years ago, RR was an internet service that promised faster-than-normal connections); and second on video, during the 2012 appearance of the Dalai Lama at the University of Hawaii’s Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu. As a member of the audience at the 2012 event, I watched the video and found JS mesmerizing as he played on the ʻukulele after doing the unexpected: removing one of the instrument’s four strings. His performance was as memorable and transcendent as anything the Dalai Lama did that day, and I was filled with enormous, renewed respect. The beautiful, distinctively Hawaiian melody of his playing stayed with me and became associated with the person I knew as the ʻukulele musician.
As I write this, I am remembering one other time I saw him, though he didn’t perform then. I happened to be in the Red Ginger Cafe—a great place with plant-based menus that catered to health-conscious diners at Manoa Markeplace years ago—when he stopped by to call on one of the owners. As he explained to the person he was with, he and the woman were longtime friends. What I remember about this encounter was his Peter Pan size—barely taller than I at 5’2”—and the immensity of his presence. Out of his small frame came a voice and a self that instantly dominated the space: something phenomenal, extra-ordinary.
So on the evening of July 23, I was expecting music of the kind I associated with him despite the word rock clearly being in the title of the show. (Maybe “Fuji Rock” was a place, I’d thought in my ignorance.) I was not blown away so much as blown up and apart—my expectations hurtling against the dark walls and ceiling of Blue Note at electric speed. I wasn’t expecting what I heard: rock-hard music played on the ‘ukulele by a master musician and the equally masterful back-up team of Pimental, Waldoff, and Grande.
I don’t have the vocabulary to describe this music except to say that I had not heard it before, and from the collision of each song’s opening notes—usually Pimental’s drum beats overlapping with the last of JS’s introductory words—my expectations lay down and kicked up the ghost, utterly overwhelmed.
When the show was over, I jumped up and grabbed the playlist lying on the stage: a sheet with the word “Jackson” and a smiley face in the corner. The list shows what was played, a few of the songs being so new, JS said, that they didn’t have formal titles.
Jeff Beck’s version of Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” was the fifth song and the first I could identify. I’d bought the album years ago (yes, on vinyl), and Wonder’s song was one of my favorites. Another favorite song of mine by Beck is his rendition of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk.” In both of these, Beck introduced dissonant notes, which JS retained in his performance of “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.” This faithful tribute to Beck was very sweet.
For me, the highlight of the show—and the real standout—was JS’s rendition of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Most people know that it was the performance of this song that catapulted JS into stardom, giving it new life in the way that only he could. However, when he performed it live at Blue Note, he presented a version I had never heard—one that I’m guessing few people had. There is a video on YouTube of a Blue Note performance of the song that I watched after writing this, and though I found it disappointing, I’d like to mention it because it made clear the differences between live music and recordings.
First of all, as I’ve said, being in JS’s presence is itself an extraordinary experience. Second, sitting just a few feet from the stage and engaged in the live performance—hearing it and having the sound waves strike my body—was something I was unprepared for. Its effects were therefore powerful, accentuated by being in the presence of the source.
Last is JS’s iconic face. As the son of Japanese-Okinawa parents, he has a face that, in all the instances I’d previously seen him, was calm, almost angelic. During this performance, however, it freely expressed the intensity and strain that characterizes hard-rock music, and I was dazed, shocked by what it revealed. In fact, his wild expressions and frequent leaping and bending to the music often caused me to look away, as if I were a schoolgirl. In contrast, the faces of Pimental and Jackson remained the same most of the time, and because of the band’s positioning, I could only hear Grande playing—a shame because it deprived me of some of the pleasure of his work on the keyboards.
The opening notes of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”—which I’d guess can’t be found in any transcription of the song—were dirgelike, almost flat, summoned out of a very dark place. Pimental’s drums were silent for the moment, and all we heard were those notes coming from JS’s ʻukulele. As the ʻukulele continued and the other instruments joined in, I felt that JS was summoning the significant events of our era and rendering each one in music—drawing on our collective memory to evoke the impassioned places in the song. We were being taken on a vast journey, riding on the back of a whale, a creature made out of music, as it plumbed the depths of grief and ecstasy. The rhythmic movements of the long passages, the deep dives and slow ascents to the top, and the returns to places so deep we could have drowned had it not been for JS’s retrieving us and bringing us back made these moments unforgettable. In a sense immortal, because the music could be replayed, if only later in our private recollections of the show.
My words struggle to represent what I heard, and this exclamatory language will have to do. I am glad, joyful to have been there when JS played the ʻukulele.