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By Emily Greffenius
Hometown Weekly Intern
On June 21, the longest day of the year, the Westwood Library hosted The Happy Strummers, a senior ukulele troupe based in Dover, to lead a sing-along celebrating the summer solstice. The 14 players – 11 women and three men – meet to practice once a week on Wednesdays, simply for the fun of making music together and sharing it with their community.
With the chairs set up in a rough circle around the room, the gathering emulated the summertime vibe of sitting around a campfire, singing songs that everyone knows. Including ditties like, “You Are My Sunshine,” “Clementine,” “On Top of Spaghetti,” “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and “America the Beautiful” on the set list, the Happy Strummers ensured that the audience barely needed to look at the lyric packets they’d been given at the start of the concert.
Even singing such classic, well-known songs, the group still brought personality and enthusiasm to the show. Many players improvised with their chords during the last verse of “Clementine,” and songs like “BINGO” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” progressed solely from audience involvement and suggestions.
The kids present were happy to make themselves a part of the event. Several children took the opportunity of the cleared floor in the middle of the room to show off their dance moves, and during “Wheels on the Bus,” one young boy took on the hand movements while keeping hold of the two plastic dinosaurs he had brought along.
When the group introduced “On Top of Spaghetti,” a boy from the back of the room shouted out: “I love that song! I like that the meatball turns into a meatball tree!”
The audience simply laughed and did not seem to mind that the end of the story had been revealed before the song had even begun.
The Happy Strummers brought more than just songs with them, though. Early in the evening they provided a brief interlude to the music by performing the poem “Honeybees” from Paul Fleischman’s “Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices,” a book available for check-out at the Westwood Library. Two members of the group stood, dressed in costumes, and delivered the two-part poem together. It made the evening’s event a diverse and wide-ranging program, while showcasing an interesting book that is available so close to home.
The evening ended with a rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The Happy Strummers end each of their weekly meetings with this song, so they decided to end their sing-along in the same manner.
The Happy Strummers will be performing the same sing-along program later this summer at the Dover Town Library, on July 12 at 6:30 p.m.
