“There is no such thing as a sad ukulele”: the sound of the Polynesian islands

What if the secret to living well in Polynesia was not only hidden in its lush environment, but also in the sound of a small four-stringed instrument? This is what Antoine Laguerre seems to demonstrate in his documentary There is no sad ukulele , in which the director highlights the unifying place it occupies in Polynesian culture. A story that dates back to 1879, when the braguinha , the ancestor of the ukulele, landed on the shores of Honolulu from the hold of the Ravenscrag , a ship transporting 423 Portuguese migrants from Madeira.