The Los Angeles International Ukulele Festival returns to the Torrance Cultural Arts Center this Friday through Sunday for its 10th anniversary. The three-day event at 3330 Civic Center Drive features concerts, hands-on workshops, jam sessions, ukulele vendors and Asian and Pacific Island cuisine, with free parking available throughout the weekend.
Mitch Chang, a University of Hawai‘i music major who moved to Southern California in 2000 and studied jazz ukulele with Bill Tapia, founded the festival in 2015 for families and ukulele players of all ages, according to the Los Angeles International Ukulele Festival. The Long Beach Post reports that Chang has described the event as family-friendly and broadly accessible. The COVID-19 pandemic paused the festival for a couple of years, but it has since returned as a gathering built around live performance, instruction and community participation.
The weekend opens Friday at 7 p.m. with a solo concert by internationally acclaimed ukulele sensation Feng E, with tickets listed at $40 including fees, according to Patch. The main festival day follows Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with admission priced at $29 for the day or $59 for an all-access pass that includes ukulele workshops for all skill levels. Children 17 and younger are admitted free with a paid adult, the outlet notes.
Saturday's Headliners and the Free Marketplace
Saturday’s lineup includes Abe Lagrimas Jr., Cali Rose, CC Strummers, Craig Chee, Sarah Maisel, Conrad Cayman, Ian O'Sullivan, Karlie Goya, Sho Humphries and Ukulele Bartt Warburton. O'Sullivan, a classically trained guitarist, composer and educator from O‘ahu, is the first Hawaiian guitarist accepted into the Yale School of Music. Zoë Bestel, an award-winning Scottish nu-folk singer-songwriter, is also scheduled to perform.
Running alongside the main stage, Saturday's Ukulele Marketplace is free and open to the public, featuring instruments and accessories, an open mic, food and shave ice, the station's report states. Vendors include Ohana Music, a Signal Hill-based shop selling instruments and accessories, and the marketplace also offers free introductory ukulele classes. The setup reflects a pattern found at international ukulele festivals generally, where, according to Ukulele Magazine, the line between pro and local evaporates at these boisterous blowouts, with jams popping up spontaneously in hotel rooms, restaurants and sidewalks.
Why the Festival’s Access and Setting Matter
The festival’s introductory classes, workshops and group jams reflect a broader pattern in arts learning. National Endowment for the Arts data show that most adults who learned an arts subject between July 2021 and July 2022 did so through friends or family or by teaching themselves, placing the weekend’s informal instruction and peer music-making within a documented model of self-directed access. The event also takes place in a city with a longstanding Asian American presence. According to Discover Torrance, the city’s large Asian-American community dates to before World War II, when Japanese-American nurseries operated in Torrance and nearby Gardena. That local history provides context for a festival that combines Hawaiian music and traditions with a broader Pacific and Asian cultural offering.
A Brunch Finale With the Langley Ukulele Ensemble
Sunday brings an intimate festival brunch from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., priced at $69 and including food, small-group workshops and jam sessions. The weekend closes at 2 p.m. with a performance by the Langley Ukulele Ensemble, a Canadian group known for transforming the ukulele into a dynamic concert instrument through classical masterworks, jazz, swing, global folk traditions and contemporary favorites, per Patch. Tickets for the ensemble's set range from $25 to $35.
Chang has said he wants people to rediscover the ukulele, music and its community. The festival's artist programming is curated by invitation to maintain the unique spirit and musical diversity of the event, according to the festival's own artist listings, and it features Hawaiian music, rhythms, authentic harmonies and songs in the Hawaiian language alongside its broader global lineup.
Roots Tracing Back to 1880s Hawai‘i
The ukulele is a small, four-stringed guitar-type instrument whose name translates roughly to “jumping flea.” According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the instrument developed in Hawai‘i from Portuguese instruments brought by Madeiran immigrants, including craftsmen who arrived aboard the SS Ravenscrag in 1879; Miguel Nunes opened a workshop in Honolulu in 1880. King David Kalākaua championed the instrument before his death in 1891, helping cement its place in Hawaiian music and culture.
Torrance's festival is one entry in a broader circuit of ukulele gatherings worldwide, including Monopolele each May in Monopoli, Italy, roughly 300 miles southeast of Rome, and the Festival Brasileiro de Ukulele held each January across a historic Brazilian municipality, according to Ukulele Magazine. Locally, the festival's growth echoes its own recent past: in 2022, its sixth year, the event featured about a dozen professional musicians alongside a marketplace, Hawaiian food and workshops for aspiring players of all skill levels, as the Daily Breeze reported at the time, when the festival also extended to a San Pedro show at the Grand Annex.
