Daniel Ho is Spreading Ukulele Joy Around the World as a Composer, Collaborator, and Inventor

BY NICOLAS GRIZZLE | FROM THE SUMMER 2025 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE

‘At this age, I don’t want to write the same album. I want to feel like I’m growing and I‘m learning.‘

These are the words of Daniel Ho, reflecting on his upcoming release, Gaze from Above, a collection of acoustic instrumental rock tunes with Gabriela Quintero of the guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela that’s slated for release this summer. In addition to Quintero’s innovative guitar playing, it features a collection of instruments from around the world, including an instrument of Ho’s own creation: the three-string ʻEkolu ukulele.

Suffice to say, it’s not the same as anything Ho has done before, and likely not the same as anything that’s been released before by anyone.

This collaboration with Quintero isn’t Ho’s only current project; he’s also been recording with artists from Hawaii, Uganda, Ireland, and beyond. Ho’s positive spirit and natural curiosity make him an affable collaborator, something he’s leaned into in his quest to spread musical joy around the world.

Going His Own Way

A master ukulele player, Ho rediscovered his passion for the instrument about 25 years ago after a career in the music industry led him to strike out on his own path rather than play by the “business as usual” rules set by record labels. 

At the time he was playing mostly piano and keyboards with jazz groups, composing for Muzak (aka elevator music), and had released five albums with his contemporary jazz group Kilauea, making made the Billboard charts. But by the mid-’90s, he was looking for other musical outlets. “You just start paraphrasing yourself and you start paraphrasing others and using the same kind of instruments and same types of rhythms,” Ho says. “In ’95, when I got out of the label, I decided I was just going to do my own thing and not have a manager, not have a record label, an agent. And I’m still doing it.

“It allows me to do a classical album and then a rock album and then collaborate with other projects that are not consistent within a genre.”

His output is so prolific, and so varied, that it’s hard to keep track of all the projects he’s been part of. With a home studio in Southern California and a main instrument known for its portability, he has removed a lot of the traditional barriers of collaborating and releasing music. His musical output has global reach and connects with cultures around the world, and Ho consciously brings ukulele along for the ride.

Daniel y Gabriela

“That’s a loaded question,” says Ho, when asked how he would describe the new album he’s recorded with Quintero. “Working with Gaby, she’s wildly creative,” he says. “My idea was a Hawaiian-Mexican collaboration with ukulele.” But that changed once they started writing music together. There are far more musical elements than just their two respective cultures. “It grew organically without any genre goals,” says Ho.

The two first met in 2020, at the NAMM music convention in Southern California. They were scheduled to perform at a vendor booth together and hit it off during rehearsals. They’ve been working on this album, on and off, for a couple years now.

“It was really comfortable,” says Ho. “She’s a wonderful collaborator, open to ideas, always trying to learn.” The process of recording Gaze from Above went beyond just making music with instruments and, Ho says, tapped into the humanity behind the sounds. “A lot of it was just talking about life, philosophy. We both value nature, the environment, unity, bringing people together through music.”

The music was largely inspired by nature, especially birds, says Ho. The compositions sound like they would fit well as part of the score to a film, as they are highly evocative and run the gamut of emotions. The songs range from playful and fun, to brooding and sad, to serious and thoughtful all in the span of a few two- to four-minute tracks.

Though it is only Ho and Quintero playing on the album, there are many layers to the music. When they play this music live, as is planned for a handful of concerts in August to celebrate the album’s release, Ho plans to play a lot of his signature Ohana ukulele bass and some percussion, as well as his signature Romero Creations six-string baritone ukulele.

As far as the recording process for this album, Quintero brought a lot of the original material to the table. “She has an idea, comes into the studio, and we decide on a tempo and start getting those ideas down,” says Ho. “Then we expand the instruments.” 

That includes guitars, ukulele, and a lot of percussion from around the world. To name just a few: the ipu heke (Hawaiian gourd instrument) as a kick and snare drum; the Udu (Nigerian clay hand drum) as a type of “speaking” percussion; and powerful Japanese taiko drums. Quintero played percussion on her guitar, as she has done on many recordings and performances in her career, as well as ukulele, which was a first for her.

“She has all the percussive techniques,” says Ho. “I’ve never seen those instruments played that way before. And that opens my mind up to thinking like, Wow, what else can we do with this?”

Ho is a master ukulele player and even has his own line of signature instruments with Romero Creations. But the only ukulele used on this album—and there’s a lot of it—is his latest invention, the ʻEkolu three-string uke.

New Sensation

The ʻEkolu uses the top three strings of an ukulele—the C, E, and A strings (cleverly avoiding arguments about high G versus low G). It worked particularly well on this album, says Ho, because it can be played easily in E, a key that is particularly suited to guitar but not so much a traditional ukulele.

He had the idea for the ʻEkolu 10 years ago, while working on Between the Sky and Prairie, an album he composed and recorded in Mongolia with a group of musicians of Mongolian, Manchurian, Evenk, Daur, Russian, and Han Chinese origins. (See the Spring 2020 issue of Ukulele for a tutorial on playing the title track.) “I fell in love with the sound of the doshpuluur, a traditional Mongolian three-stringed instrument,” says Ho, who notes that there are many three-stringed instruments from cultures around the world, including the phin of Thailand, the shamisen of Japan, and the balalaika of Russia. 

 “I thought I should have a three-string ukulele, too! So I came home, took off my low G string, and realized that strumming with three strings is so fluid and melodic.”

 It worked for him as a professional musician, and he also saw the potential for use as a student instrument. “It opens up all these different shapes and the ability to get all over the neck,” says Ho. “It’s easy to play in any key because you can find the six primary chords in three positions on the neck quite easily with just three fingers at most.” 

After playing his G string–less ukulele for a couple of years, he asked his business partner with Romero Creations, Pepe Romero, Jr., if it was possible to make a three-stringed ukulele. “He said, ‘The answer is yes. I don’t get it, but we can do it,’” says Ho.

Ho went to the Reno Ukulele Festival soon thereafter with two prototypes and ended up selling ten pre-orders. “People were just like, ‘I just want to strum songs and sing, and this is the easiest way to do it,’” he says. It’s now in production at Romero Creations in Tiny Tenor and Vintage Soprano models, with a student model being made by Ohana.

In 2024, Ho released a classroom method book for the ʻEkolu called Ukulele at School, which isalready in use in some schools. “The three-string ʻEkolu makes it possible for a much broader range of students (to play),” says Glen Kamida, who teaches ukulele to 500 children per year as an elementary music specialist in the Torrance Unified School District in Southern California. “Those with smaller hands, like those in second grade and younger, will be able to play this instrument because the neck is 25 percent smaller. Students and seniors lacking left-hand dexterity will find this instrument easier to manage and maneuver.”

Professor Helen Rees, director of UCLA’s World Music Center in the Department of Ethnomusicology, sees the ʻEkolu as a useful tool for beginning musicians of any age. “The fact that students can see such fast progress will build musical confidence,” she says. “It’s also a great way to learn some music theory organically, as the chords fall under the fingers naturally and students will learn chord progressions intuitively as they go. Later, they’ll be able to apply this knowledge to other music classes and music making.”

Other Worldly Ensembles

There’s more to Ho’s world than just recording with other Grammy-winning artists, inventing instruments, and writing musical curricula for elementary schools. He’s also been combining ukulele with music from around the world, including Ireland, Uganda, and Hawaii.

In August, Ho will release a song and video called “Ríl Dé Máirt” (“Tuesday Reel”) with the Irish group Ukulele Tuesday. “I first met them in 2023 at the Monopolele Ukulele Festival (in Italy) and wrote the piece to debut with them at Ukulele Hooley a few months ago in Dublin.” He wrote the composition and lead ukulele part of the tune, and Ukulele Tuesday added Gaelic vocals, recorder, percussion, and other fun bits to the piece. “I’m not trying to do a sound-alike and copy it . . . I try to evolve it in some way and put a flavor to it,” says Ho. “They weren’t teaching me but I learned from what they contributed.”

In 2023, Ho released a song with Ugandan musician Eddy Kenzo called “Ukulele Essanyu (Let Us Be Instruments of Joy and Love).” The pair met a few years back when Kenzo was nominated for a Grammy. The awards ceremony was Sunday, and by the next Friday they were in the studio with a handful of instruments and a whole lot of joy. Five hours after they began, the song had been written and recorded. “I don’t usually work like that,” says Ho, who notes that he prefers to write out his compositions completely before recording. The lyrics are in Ugandan and English, and celebrate the ukulele and its joyous sound. “His message is just about love, and he has a good vibe about him,” Ho says of Kenzo, with whom he has continued to collaborate. “He wanted to write a song about the ukulele because it was new to him.”

Bringing it back to his native Hawaii, Ho recently released an album of choral music with Hālau Hula Keali‘i o Nālani titled Lōkahi—Colors in Harmony. He reunited with his songwriting partner Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman, with whom he won Grammy awards for ‘ikena and Huana Ke Aloha, to set her poetry to choral music in the style of J.S. Bach—with some modern twists. For example, Bach never set music to Hawaiian language, nor did he sneak jazz harmonies and world rhythms into his music. “I’m so proud of the way the album turned out,” says Ho.

A highlight is the swooning, uke-led choral mash-up of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with Hawaii’s state anthem, “Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī.” Ho and the group performed it in 2024 at a home game for the L.A. Dodgers.

He performs all these songs regularly in his shows now, “just to open the breadth of what the ukulele is capable of and how it can function in different cultures,” he says. Taking a look at Ho’s career so far, it’s evident that the ukulele is capable of much more than it may seem at first glance.