Jake Shimabukuro

Jake Shimabukuro was born November 3, 1976, in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, into a family of Japanese and Okinawan descent. His mother, a player herself, gave him a ʻukulele at age four and was his first teacher, and he later took lessons for several years at Roy Sakuma's studios in Honolulu. He first drew wide notice in Hawaiʻi in the late 1990s as a member of the trio Pure Heart, whose debut album won four Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards in 1999.

Shimabukuro's solo career developed in the early 2000s, and he gained international recognition in 2006 when a video of him performing a solo ʻukulele arrangement of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in New York's Central Park was posted to YouTube without his knowledge and became one of the site's early viral clips. The performance had originally been filmed for the New York show Midnight Ukulele Disco. His playing draws on jazz, blues, funk, rock, bluegrass, classical, folk, and flamenco.

His albums have charted on Billboard's world and jazz listings: Peace Love Ukulele (2011) reached number one on the Top World Music Albums chart, and Trio (2020) reached number one on the Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. His life and music were the subject of the 2012 documentary Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings, which aired on PBS. On June 23, 2021, he was nominated by President Joe Biden to be a member of the National Council on the Arts.