Four native timbers steamed and shaped into a ukelele by Brightwater tinkerer Dave Gilberd are now a work of art at Tāwhiri Festivals and Experience.
Dave is an engineer by trade but also a keen guitarist who has a passion for making the instruments in his Goldbeard Guitars workshop in Brightwater.
Usually, he is making guitars on commission, but when the former executive director of the Wellington-based festival Meg Williams asked him to make a ukelele from four native timbers, it was a new challenge.
Meg was moving to her new role as chief executive officer of WOW and the ukelele was her parting gift to the festival.
She says the ukelele design was inspired by the values of Tāwhiri. The neck is made of rimu and is the place on the ukelele you hold thoughtfully and that represents manaakitanga or care.
Kahikatea makes up the sound board where tone is created and this represents the value of Tāne te wānanga or excellence.
The sides are matai and hold the ukelele together, so represent the value of whanaungatanga or weaving people together. The back is rata, which is a hardwood that signifies the strength of Tāwhiri’s unity or Kotahitanga. The graphic element of the Ā in Tāwhiri is incorporated into the design.
“The Tāwhiri team regularly performs waiata for ceremonies, special occasions or for fun. My hope is that the ukelele stays with them to enhance their sound and embody their values when they sing.”
Making ukeleles was not new to Dave. They had been trendy some years ago and he has made more than 40 or them, but every timber behaves differently.
“That’s part of the fun. Every timber is different and how they behave.
“Some curve well and some don’t, some machine well and some don’t and some bend and some don’t like it so much.”
Dave not only makes guitars in his workshop but teaches other people to make guitars at the Centre for Fine Woodworking at Wakapuaka and says students can generally make their own guitar in a three-week workshop.
The purpose of building a guitar or musical instrument is to make the most of the wood to suit a specific purpose or sound, he says.
His own skills stem from courses in New Zealand and England and over the years he has veered between his career as an engineer and running his own business creating mainly guitars.
The two are not so dissimilar, he says. Designing and building the wooden instruments are the perfect blend of creativity and physics.
Along the way he even made a guitar as a gift for former Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor when she once came to New Zealand for Womad.
His own passion for music has led him to team up with vocalist Nadia Goranson to write songs under the name Silver Lining as they work towards live gigs.
