After a bit of a hiatus from Shining Stars, I'm thrilled to resume the podcast with a focused on the transformative power of music. On this episode, I (Daedalian) had the opportunity to connect with Ben Hassenger, the founder of Mighty Uke Day (MUD). Moving into its 16th year, this fun event is a celebration of community and connection fueled by the diminutive, yet mighty ukulele. Whether you're a uke virtuoso or just a beginner, the upcoming MUD invites participants of all ages and skill levels to immerse themselves in music-making and communal joy.

Website: Mighty Uke Day, May 8-10, 2026

Website: Music is the Foundation

YouTube: Jake Shimabukuro playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

YouTube: Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole - Over The Rainbow' & 'What A Wonderful World' Medley

Welcome to Shining Stars: Voices of Service, Hope, and Change. A program dedicated to spotlighting the nonprofits and changemakers who are transforming our communities. Each episode shares inspiring stories of the organizations and individuals turning compassion into action.

Thanks so much for taking a listen to Shining Stars. I'm Daedalian. And today. Today's guest is Ben Hassenger. He is the founder of Mighty Uke Day,. A joyful community center event bringing people. Together through the world's happiest instrument, the ukulele. And it's ukulele, correct?

It's ukulele. Ukulele, yes.

I've heard you go on about this several times, so I should know.

Do you want me to go on?

Well, I'm sure we will once again. Now, Ben's work is also connected with Music is the Foundation.

It's an initiative that uses music education and access to instruments to empower young folks and strengthen commun communities through strumming and song. And Ben is helping people of all ages experience connection, belonging, and hope through this. So that's awesome. So welcome, Ben.

Aloha.

As long as I've known you, I have never actually had the chance myself personally, to sit down and talk with you. So this is a great opportunity for me and hopefully for you as well.

That's great. Yeah. It's funny because we've known each other forever.

We have for quite a while. Yeah. Mighty Uke Day coming up. Now, do you usually say Uke day?

So I would say uke, but I say ukulele. Ukulele. And that means In Hawaiian. In English. It's a Hawaiian word. Means what?

You tell me.

Jumping flea.

I did know that. And that's the funny thing is I forgot about it. But now I remember again.

Mighty Uke Day coming up, May 8th through the 10th. And it's going to be in East Lansing now, am I right? Most of this is going to be taking place at the University United Methodist Church.

Right.

Okay.

Right. And then on Sunday, we have a concert at MSU's Community Music School.

Okay. And this has been going on for quite a while now.

16 Years. 16 Years, yep.

What originally got you going? You know what? I want to create this. I want to do a Mighty Uke Day.

Came home. We started the Lansing area Ukulele Group that fall.

And then a couple of Toronto filmmakers made a movie called the Mighty Uke And they were looking for places to show it. So I reached out to them and said, hey, we've got a great ukulele group going on here in Lansing.

And I'm going, oh, this went so well. This is great. And people come up and they go, what are we going to do next year? And I'm like, next year, what? What?

So little by little, we kept building it up into. Now it's one of the premier ukulele festivals in North America, showcasing just the finest of musicians playing the ukulele.

So it sounds like it kind of just happened by accident in a way, more or less.

And it. And it grew organically, you know, it was just little steps little by little and just grew into what it is today.

So once you finally got to the point where you were like, okay, I'm going to make this into an annual event. This is going to be a thing. Who were you really wanting to try to reach with this?

Really?

Everybody. I mean, the ukulele has always been kind of a underappreciated instrument.

Oh, it's, you know, it's a fun little happy songs and, you know, you don't need to know much of anything to play it. And the more I've worked with it, I found the finest musicians in the world that I. I've ever heard are ukulele players. I mean, it's just amazing.

And to bring this accessible instrument to the broad public, show them. Yeah, you can get started pretty easily with it, but you can take it as far as you want to go and use it as an instrument to express yourself.

Do you feel like you pretty much kind of build up a whole ukulele community with this?

Absolutely, absolutely. When we started LAUGH, we were one of two ukulele groups in the state.

And the other one, which was around before us but was kind of dormant, I think, were the. What do you call it? The. What do you call the Starter kitchens. That.

All I can think of is the Betty Crocker.

No, I'm looking for the word that. Anyway, people would come to our LAUGH meetings because we're in the middle of the state.

So you come from Grand Rapids or Clare. Incubator! That's what is was. We're the incubator for ukulele. So people would come to Lansing and then they'd go home and they go, man, I really like doing the ukulele stuff.

It's like, well, start a group in Grand Rapids, start one in Clare, start one at Traverse city. Now there's 25 to 30 ukulele groups across the state.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Do you go to visit these other ones or not?

I have. Not all of them, but quite a few of them.

In fact, I've got my family homes in the Upper Peninsula and there's a couple groups up there that I always make it a point to go up and play some ukulele with.

It sounds like it does a great job, actually building a community of people that just all kind of come together for that thing.

That's the whole thing about the ukulele to me.

Yeah, yeah. So service, if I say that word. How does music, in your opinion, not just the ukulele. Ukulele, but how does music service people?

Well, music in general and the ukulele in particular, I think brings folks together. You know, this is a time of a lot of division and to have something that everybody can put this and that aside, get together, make some music.

I call it the most folk of folk instruments because it brings folks together.

That makes sense. Yeah. How long have you been a musician? And was ukulele always a part of what you did or.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I was, you know, the typical parents had me play piano, which was fine. I was teenager.

I'm getting an electric guitar and we had some pretty crazy bands. One that got arrested in the cafeteria here at lcc. That's a whole nother story. But, yeah, I played a lot of weekend warrior bands.

That might be the after show conversation.

That's right. But of course I was aware of the ukulele. But I really did get, after that trip to Hawaii, it was just like, man, this is it.

Everybody's having a great time. They got smiles on their faces. They're all playing together, you know, like the beginning.

People that just picked it up to people that have been playing it for years. And it just captivated me.

Very cool. And you've recorded a couple albums, haven't you?

Yeah, we've got a trio called the Ukulele Kings and we've recorded one album. We're trying to get another one done, but you know how hard that can be. And then, of course, for years I was in a band, Mystic Shake.

Yeah.

And we had three or four really fun albums, a couple of which had a little ukulele in them too.

Getting back to the reason you're here is Mighty Uke Day. I feel like you're not just creating an event, it's an experience. So tell us, what can people expect from this? What is it all about?

It's all about the people and the ukulele. So what we do is we start off Friday at noon and we have a group strum.

So a group strum is where you get a group of people together and you all play songs together. So that's the way we kick it off. That'll actually be in the Trowbridge Plaza at noon on Friday the 8th.

And then during the afternoon we have workshops, and then we'll have another group strum. And then at evening we'll have a concert featuring three of our featured performers, our teaching artists and performers.

And then Saturday, everything goes totally crazy. We start off with another kickoff strom. We have workshops all day long. We have a lot of kids activities, including the 10 pound fiddles.

Fiddle scouts is going to be part of Mighty Uke Day this year. A lot of free things like beginning lessons and strums and then the workshops, the concert, you know, which you pay for.

And then on Sunday, we have something called the Acoustic Afterglow, which is kind of the time to sit back and let everybody informally kind of jam together as far as our teaching artists. And there's some incredible collaborations at that. And I just can set up a small PA and just sit back and enjoy it.

Oh, and the other cool thing is too, in the evening after the concerts are over at the Spring Hill Suites Hotel, which is our official hotel there in East Lansing, everybody gets together and plays ukulele until the wee hours of the morning.

Very cool.

It's crazy.

And I heard you mention kids, I heard you mention the performers I heard you mention. I mean, it sounds like this is pretty much open for anybody and everybody, even if you've never even played the ukulele.

Absolutely, absolutely.

You know, we have packages which include all the workshops and concerts, but we also have a lot of free activities that certainly we encourage donations. But I like to get people who are just kind of thinking, well, I've kind of heard about the ukulele.

I don't know if I can play well, you know, and they can come and enjoy it without any commitment, you know, and then I get them hooked. Right?

Yeah, there you go.

You know, you kind of mentioned getting kicked out of the LCC cafeteria, and I really do want to hear that story, but because we're talking about Money Uke Day. Give me a story. What's One of your favorite stories about mighty ukeules ever since you've put it together.

Well, there's so many different ones as far as, you know, just all the incredible artists we've brought in. One thing that really struck me, I mean, here again, I'm deep into the ukulele world. But we had Peter Luongo, who's Canadian. He's the one that.

Actually, I saw him lead a group of, like, a teenage high school choir playing ukuleles at this festival in Hawaii.

Well, I've had him come and play at Mighty Uke Day with an adult group that does very sophisticated arrangements of songs like Toto's Africa and things like.

Wow.

And people just aren't used to this. They'll go, wow, I didn't know you could do that on an ukulele. It just really opens their eyes to the potential of this little instrument.

Yeah. Yeah. That is cool. I think probably Uncle Iz, of course, is somebody that you're probably familiar with.

And that's how I became probably, like a fan of it, of the sound.

Yeah.

Because it was just. It became popular. The song did Somewhere over the Rainbow. Yeah, it was really cool.

Yeah. I mean, what happened with that is, you know, the ukulele became kind of a joke.

Tiny Tim, bless his heart, he was a total musical historian and he did faithful versions of those songs. Yeah. But he was a little odd.

And so when Bruda Iz did that Somewhere over the Rainbow, which really was totally improvised, it was over the Rainbow, Somewhere over the Rainbow and what A Wonderful World, he didn't really know all the words, but he went in the studio and it was just beautiful. It's so beautiful. Everybody's heard that.

And then soon after that, a young man, Jake Shimabukuro, did a version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps in Central park that went viral, and that really took it to that next level. So the instrument that used to be a joke is now the most popular instrument in the world.

Really? Very cool. A lot of the times, anything like this requires volunteers. Am I correct?

Yes.

Yeah, I've heard that.

Yes.

So are you still looking for volunteers at this point?

Right now, we don't really need volunteers. We've got a good group, the PD Strummers senior group that I run, about 35 people strong. We get a lot of volunteers from them and others.

And I've got a good core group, of course, which we all need when we're organizing things like that. But I would ask people just come out and see what the ukulele is all About.

Okay, so what if they weren't able to attend? Is there other ways they could support what you're doing?

Yes.

They could go to the MightyUkeDay.com website, look for the Music is the Foundation page, and we have ways for them to chip in online if they'd like to.

And all the money from Music as a Foundation goes not only to support Mighty Uke Day, proceeds from Mighty Uke Day help support Music is the Foundation, but then those funds go to establishing ukulele programs in local schools and in libraries, senior centers. We've sponsored over 40 programs with Music is the Foundation. Yep.

Do you want to elaborate any more on that?

Well, a little bit.

And a friend of mine, Larry Cooley, and I thought, well, why don't we start a nonprofit that helps support ukulele programs in schools, libraries, things like that. So we started this small nonprofit. It's grown little by little.

And like I said, over the years, we've done programs in schools, libraries, senior centers. We've supported musical theater programs in the summer. Anything music related, music education related, we like to swap.

Well, the beauty of it is, I mean, if you expose a child to like music early on in life, it can kind of change their trajectory as to where they're going in life.

Absolutely can. And you know, it's such a shame that music programs are sometimes the first things to get cut from budgets of schools.

But, you know, if you're kind of a at risk kid, maybe kind of, you know, right on the border there of dropping out or getting kicked out or whatever, music is something that can really make you want to stick with it.

Right, right.

And it can give you that sense of confidence, a sense of achievement, sense of pride. You know, your. Your buddies are like, hey, that was pretty cool. You're up there playing the ukulele.

And then what I love with the kids is peer to peer teaching. He's learned three or four chords. He can teach the kid next to him that's just learned.

Yeah, yeah.

And then combine that with intergenerational learning with the adults.

It was a bonding experience.

It really is.

Yeah, it really is.

You know, since we're on the topic of kids, you know, like, as far as them attending Mighty Uke Day, have you got any stories to share where you went, oh, wow, this is fun.

Here again, I think the absolute wonder of it all, like a lot of the kids maybe over Covid, they started learning the ukulele online and they've never really played so much with other people. You know, there's a lot of YouTube stuff out there. Some great.

Some is like, yeah, but so they get in a group and they see all these people playing ukulele together. It's like, oh, this is really cool. And they just jump right in and they can sit with, you know, like their grandma or something and play.

And every year we try to do something a little fun. These last three years, we've had a mascot now. So the first year we had Frets, the ukulele playing dog, which was a Jack Russell terrier.

It wasn't a real dog. No, just to tell you. And then last year we had Melody the kitten and we had Pete the cat come and represent Melody.

And this year we have backbeat bunny, who's a hip hop ukulele player. Very, very smooth, very smooth.

So we have custom ukuleles with their image on them and everything, and we sell those to help raise money for the foundation as well.

Well, it sounds like you're really encapsulating the goal of this show, and that's taking compassion, turning it into action. You're doing a great job with that. A lot of people feel intimidated by music, myself included.

So how do you create a welcoming space in this situation?

There's really no pressure, no judgment, you know, the ukulele is an instrument. If you have really no musical background, you can pick it up and learn to play a chord or two fairly quickly.

Like I said, you can take it as far as you want. Some of the most incredible musicians I've ever seen are ukulele players. There's not much of a steep learning curve to get started on it.

The instrument itself is quite accessible. It's small, easy to carry around. You can get a decent ukulele for a relatively low price, 80, 80 bucks or so.

And it's easy to play, easy to carry around, easy to get started with. And you play with other people. I think that's.

Oh, there it is. There it is. I did bring it. I brought mine. So I've had this for quite a while.

A good friend of mine gave it to me and it's just kind of hung on my wall. And kind of like I was telling you, I feel intimidated by playing any instrument because I love music so much.

I want to inherently just be able to do it, and I don't seem to be able to. You're going to try to teach me to do the Ukulele.

Okay.

The ukulele. I said it correctly. Ukulele. The ukulele. All right. You ready to teach me how to do this?

Of course.

Because I have no clue. Okay, you got, like, a big old ukulele.

This is a kamaka ukulele. It's made in Hawaii. It's pretty. It's made out of koa wood, which is a native wood to. To Hawaii. And this costs about $2,000.

Wow.

Yeah.

I don't imagine mine cost that much.

No, it doesn't. Even though it says diamond head on it, which, of course, is the famous band.

Yeah.

Hawaiian.

All right, what do we got?

So. So the strings. So we have four strings, and from our head to our toes is G, C, E, and then the up string. A bad joke, but good children eat apples.

That's a good way to remember it.

Good children eat apples.

Yes. So if you want to play the first chord to play, you can play with just one. One finger on the strings.

So if we take the string closest to our feet, which is. What string was that again? A.

Okay. And if we take our left hand, we count up 1, 2, 3, and get our ring finger right by the third fret on that. A string. You should have that note.

That's a C note. So if you strum across all the strings, we can play a song. This is a song.

Now, do you traditionally strum with your thumb? Correct.

I strum with my index finger. But most people look at you. You've been sandbagging on me here. So here's a great song I wrote. I don't know if you've ever heard it before.

It goes like this. [Singing] Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream Merrily, merrily me merrily, merrily Life is but a dream. Big finish. There you go.

You know, I have heard that you can't really play ukulele without smiling, and that is true. I was smiling through that whole thing. I was smiling.

You were? It showed. Even through on the podcast. It did.

All right, we got a little time left, so let's revisit the LCC story. What happened?

Well, I mean, for you to get.

Kicked out of the cafeteria.

No, we got arrested.

Oh, you got arrested?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so what happened was my buddy Eugene Hayhoe and I, we had a group called Utter Chaos.

That's U, D, D, E, R. And, you know, we were a little mischievous back in the day, and we thought, well, what if we went in the cafeteria and played quote, music unquote? So we decided we put Posters up all around the Gannon Building and said, utter chaos. Live in the cafeteria at noon.

So we brought in an accordion and a trombone, neither of which we knew how to play. Eugene, this was the day of platform shoes, you know, the disco era.

So Eugene, he made his own platform shoes with some two by fours nailed to his tennis shoes. And we got up and we played. It was amazing. So we walked in the cafeteria. We had a whole bunch of friends there.

And there were also six Lansing policemen there. And they said, are you utter chaos? And we go, yes, sir. And well, if you play, we're gonna have to arrest you for disturbing the peace. Really? Yeah.

So he said, oh. So of course we played and we played. We did Smoke on the Water in Animal Sounds, you know, like.

But they let you play like.

Well, they didn't arrest us right then, okay. And we played Sweet Jane, the Lou Reed song. Okay. And then they arrested us.

Now, they didn't handcuff us or anything, but they brought us downtown and to the police station. We had to fill out all this stuff. And then it became a cost celeb of the LCC lookout. We were in the paper like all the time.

And then it got picked up by the college newspaper press. So it kind of spread around the country. And then we had to go to court.

So we had a list of about 20 witnesses that said we weren't disturbing the peace, that we are contributing to the cultural vibe of the Calvin. That's right. That's right. So they set a court date and every time it would get canceled.

And finally after about three or four times, it became kind of a part time job for our friends because they'd all get gas mileage for coming to court. But finally the court date arrived.

We get in front of Judge Giddings, which this was kind of early on in his career here, and LCC presented their case, we presented ours.

We had Zoltan Ferency as our attorney and Judge Giddings looked it all over and goes, you know, as a judge here, I have a lot of really important cases that I have to decide, and this is not one of them.

And he dismissed it.

Dismissed it.

So basically you were punished through a lot of paperwork and time.

It was a lot of fun actually.

Did you do it again?

No, we didn't. How are you going to top that?

Is there anything we didn't hit on that you absolutely would want to talk about before we go?

Well, you know, one of the things you had asked before is like if you were going to describe mighty Yukete. What's one word you could use? And my word is aloha. Aloha. Yeah. And aloha is this whole feeling of love and togetherness and peace.

And I think that's what the ukulele really encompasses.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Saying hello and goodbye.

Right. And it means hello and goodbye as well.

If you want to get more information, mightyukeeday.com is where you want to go. It's going to be taking place May 8th through the 10th, various locations, but primarily at the University United Methodist Church.

And I do have one more question. I almost forgot because it's been so long since I've actually done this show.

If you had the ability to strum a chord and put one thought into the collective consciousness of the entire human race, wow.

No pressure.

What would it be?

I would say peace on earth.

All right, strum that chord. Peace on earth is always a good thing, isn't it?

More than ever.

All right, Ben. Aloha.

Aloha.

Thank you so much for listening to Shining Stars: Voices of Service, Hope and Change. If you'd like to recommend an organization or an individual to be featured on this program, I'd love to hear about it. Please let me know, lcc-connect@lcc.edu. You can listen to this episode of Shining Stars along with other programs featured on the LCC Connect Network at LCCconnect.com thanks so much for listening and sharing your time with me today. I'm Daedalian. And remember, we can all contribute something. Good to this world. A simple smile, a kind gesture. That's all it takes to expand the power of positivity one inch further. I encourage you to find your shining star within and be the change you want to see.

Jake Shimabukuro. Who is the guy? He's. He's probably the most famous ukulele player now.

He always said if more people played the ukulele, the world would be a better place.

Well, that's awesome. And you know what? You. You already strummed one chord. And now I'm gonna have you strum more so we can bring out some more of that world piece.

What are you gonna play?

Well, this is a song. My father's side. The family's from the Upper Peninsula. Ishpeming by Marquette. And this is a song about going up visit my grandparents.

Alright, take it away.

[Singing] Long ago we were kids. We drive north to the Mackinac Bridge. We cross that span and pay our toll. Keep heading west to Deer Lake Road. Everything is different up there.

The crisp smell of pine and the fresh air. The roads are red from the iron ore. You never worry about locking the door.

My grandparents lived up on a hill Just down the river from the old saw mill. A fine little house, sturdy and warm Kept us sheltered from the winter storms. Things seem so simple and I'll never see those days again.

Life gets complicated when you're old. I wish I was back Dear Lake Road.

My grandma made the best pasties around Sang in the choir at the church downtown Grandpa fixed motors for the road commission Sold worms and minnows to the Deer Lake fishermen Behind that house was always parked that old Chevy truck it never did start at Grab that wheel with both my hands and take a trip to far off lands on that flexible flyer we did glide it was our chilly magic carpet ride Straight down the hill into the trees we were covered with snow from our heads to our feet. Things seem so simple and I'll never see those days again. Life gets complicated when you're old. I wish I was back Deer Lake Road.

Then grandpa got the cancer, lost an eye. He shot himself in the barn and died. Grandma, she carried on but nothing was the same after he gone.

I get a tear in my eye, a lump in my throat Thinking bout fishing in that old wood boat the time has come and gone so fast I wish I could have made it last Cause things seem so simple and I'll never see those days again Life gets complicated when you're old I wish I was back on Deer Lake Road.

Well done, sir. Very bittersweet.

It is, you know. And it's a house my mom and dad moved up to after they both retired as Lansing School teachers.

And now I own that house, so it's a real special place.

Well, you get extra props for getting pasties in there. Pasties? Pasties.

Pasties are something totally different. Pasties.

Yeah, right.