I don't know whether it happens elsewhere - but here, in my part of southern England, ukuleles are suddenly the 'in thing' in communal music making!

A friend recently invited me to accompany her to a regular session that she'd been attending for some time. So I went along, taking the cheap baritone uke that I acquired a while back. (The baritone uke has the same chord shapes as the top 4 strings of the guitar, so nothing new to learn.)

And I was amazed, that there were almost 100 people there in the hall! A real balance of ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds - all having great fun, as far as I could tell, playing their ukes and singing along with gusto!

It didn't suit my personal musical taste. The great majority of the songs were pop and rock numbers from the past 30 years.

But I couldn't find any fault at all with such a phenomenon, that encourages so many people to come along, make music, have fun, play to the best of their ability and sing their hearts out!

Beginners were really welcome too; and they even have a thing they call the 'X chord', which means if you don't know a particular chord in a song, you just damp all 4 strings with your left hand and strum along with everyone else, while not actually making much sound.

My experience of that evening left me wondering ... how could we make folk music this attractive again, so that people of all ages and backgrounds want to come along and join in? That's what folk clubs used to be like!