General belief is that if you want to make it as a rock musician, you must play either electric guitar, bass or drums. I am not speaking about singing, that’s an other story. The fact is that indeed, general belief is …generally right, you have way more chances to succeed when playing one of those instruments. But of course, there are bands like Apocalyptica…

Other musical styles are more permissive and allow you to make a name for yourself in a less than classical way. When I say this, I am thinking about Jake Shimabukuro and his ukulele music.

His interpretation on ukulele of some widely known melodies, like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” puts the instrument under a special light. Also, with songs like “Let’s dance”(see video below) he takes the instrument out of it’s usual musical area and this is exactly what makes it interesting.

Here he plays a flamenco-like song. While played on an acoustic guitar it would not make that a big impression, on ukulele it made me smile and listen it all the way to the end.

Of course, when you decide to try standing out from the crowd in a place where you would not normally belong to, like playing cello in a rock area or flamenco on ukulele you take a risk, people may reject you from the start.Or if you break the resistance and if you really have something to say, a consistent and unique musical presence, then you stand out from the crowd for good. You find your niche.

There was this joke with the 2 shoes salesman sent to sell shoes on a jungle village. The first one says “man, I don’t stand a chance, nobody here wears shoes I won’t sell anything” while the second says “what an opportunity, nobody here wears shoes yet!”

I think that it is not about what you do is more about how you do it and of course, what’s your unique point of sale, about how you identify your opportunities and the ways to exploit them. Nobody here plays cello in rock music?!What an opportunity! I’m in!

It is marketing if you think about it. Music nowadays is nothing but marketing.

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