{"id":262896,"date":"2017-10-24T06:06:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T20:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=262896"},"modified":"2017-10-24T06:06:30","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T20:06:30","slug":"ukulele-fest-draws-number-performers-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/ukulele-fest-draws-number-performers-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukulele festival draws most number of performers so far"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_262897\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-262897\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Ukulele-pix.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Ukulele-pix-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-262897\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-262897\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Male dancers of the Rafaluwasch Warriors teach Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese tourists how to perform a cultural dance at the 4rd Annual Ukulele Festival at the Garapan Fishing Bass. (Kimberly A. Bautista)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The third iteration of the annual ukulele festival in the Commonwealth over the weekend managed to attract its largest batch of off-island performers so far.<\/p>\n<p>The 3rd Annual Ukulele Festival was held last Saturday at the Garapan Fishing Base, featuring visiting performers from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Ukulele Festival Association chair Larry Lee, the festival originally started with just one visiting performer in its first year. This year, that number has grown to 18.<\/p>\n<p>The performers were brought to Saipan at the expense of the association.<\/p>\n<p>The association reached out to many off-island performers for the very first ukulele festival on Saipan, but only one individual from Japan responded, Lee recounted. The next year, that same performer told a colleague from South Korea about the festival and the number of on-island performers continue to grow. <\/p>\n<p>In this year\u2019s edition, the festival featured five Japanese performers, 12 Korean performers, and one Taiwanese performer. Among the notable off-island performers were JazzoomCafe, Mariko Uchiumi, Yusuke Saito and Nanaco from Japan; Blues Lee, Vivian Kim, and the Ukulele Ensemble from Korea; and Vanessa Ding from Taiwan.<\/p>\n<p>Local CNMI performers, meanwhile, included the Saipan Community School, Alana\u2019ia, Tata Lino Olopai &amp; Ray Tebuteb, Sunset Cruisers, FESTPAC Warriors, Da Kine, Demalyn Pagarao, Jose Carreon &amp; Juan Ichihara, and the Ukituki Band, among others.<\/p>\n<p>According to Lee, the festival highlighted the exchange of music and the exchange of culture among the islands\u2019 and visiting performers. <\/p>\n<p>The festival showcased numerous performances that started from 12pm until 9pm. <\/p>\n<p>Lee believes that future ukulele festivals will only get bigger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The third iteration of the annual ukulele festival in the Commonwealth over the weekend managed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":262897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[18779,170,1241,513],"class_list":["post-262896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-annual-ukulele-festival","tag-japan","tag-south-korea","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}