SPOTLIGHT | Ukuleles and the Road (usually) Not Taken
Written by Sanjana Arun aka ashberry, a 20-year-old, queer film student from Pune with inputs from Luv Mahtani, founder of Ukulele With Luv and the Strum Away Collective.
I am often faced with the quandary of introducing myself to new people, whether that be through physical interaction, or online. I’m a 20-year-old film student, and I’m in that phase of my academic career where networking is everything. But saying I am a film student feels imposter-ish because, even though I love film and am pursuing it professionally, I have always felt a deeper love for something else - Music.
So you can imagine my delight when I was put in touch with Luv Mahtani, to interview him about his career as a music teacher and how it took form.
Luv Mahtani is a musician and certified ukulele teacher based in Pune. What started out as lessons given from a friend’s apartment eventually evolved into a community of artists and collaborators across the city. The activities at Ukulele with Luv range from workshops, regular classes at 3 separate levels, and of course the Strum Away Collective, a community of students and enthusiasts who come together to perform and learn together.
Probably Relevant Side-Note: Strum Away Collective is a one-of-a-kind ensemble of 8 ukulele players based out of Pune, India. Led by musician-teacher, Luv Mahtani, the Collective performs pop covers exclusively on the ukulele. The Collective offers solo, duo, group performances, and jam circles and was started with the goal to spread the joy of playing music together. With over a dozen performances under their belt, Strum Away Collective has made its mark in music venues across the city as well as at the Mahalo Goa Ukulele Festival
Luv started his teaching journey in 2018. He was between jobs when he was approached by common friends and people online to teach them to play the ukulele. Back then, there were no proper ukulele classes in Pune, and those who did teach did it casually and not professionally.
In his own words, “Even I started out as someone who had been playing instruments for a while and knew how to play the ukulele with a year or two of experience under my belt. At that time since I didn't have anything else going on, I decided to take on a student or two in a dear friend’s living room, where I started taking classes.
It went really well, I really enjoyed the process of teaching and thought I could do this more seriously. Then I was approached by a friend who owned a cafe in Viman Nagar, to start taking regular classes there. So we put the word out and I got 5 students right off the bat after a few weeks of promotions.
For a while, I did events, organized music gigs and taught the ukulele in the evenings. With the pandemic, the first two activities stopped entirely but inquiries for online classes skyrocketed.
So I started promoting myself on social media as someone who took ukulele courses and held workshops, and that snowballed into what we have now, and probably gave me the biggest boost to take my teaching online.”
Probably Relevant Side Note: If you’re like me and didn’t know the difference between a Ukulele and a Guitar but never really looked into it, here’s a quick link for you to check their origins, similarities and differences.
Image Source: Learn2PlayMusic.sg
A large part of our conversation revolved around what it's like to break away from conventional, mainstream career options and pursue a career in the creative arts. Luv started out in a very different direction, having studied Psychology at Wadia College in Pune.
According to him, “If I learned anything from my psychology degree, it was to have more patience and try to appreciate why people come from a certain sense or a certain space of behaviour. Even in my teaching, I see people behaving a certain way or doubting themselves, I tell them that this is a safe space to make mistakes, anytime you make a mistake, it doesn’t mean you have failed.
With the kind of work that I put myself into, no one asks me for my psychology degree or even cares to know if I passed college or not, no one even asks me if I’m a trained teacher, which I now am! But when I first started I was just teaching out of the knowledge I had and was doing trial and error- oh this is too much to teach too soon to my students, so I will make my teaching content simpler, all that had to happen from trial and error, I didn’t do a teacher training that would tell me what was simple and what was difficult content, I just went with my students liked and I tweaked around that. Then, my teacher training program just gave me a lot of perspective on how to run this more professionally.”
Probably Relevant Side Note: The teacher training program we were talking about is the James Hill Ukulele Initiative. It is an internationally-recognized programme for ukulele teachers and so far, Luv has completed 2 levels of it.
I was curious to know the thought process behind wanting to teach an instrument, as opposed to writing or performing music. I learned that the act of enjoying music can take on different shapes, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Left to me, I’d play covers of my favourite songs over and over, just to get to hear them again, albeit a different version. Some enjoy jam sessions and singalongs, a more social way of doing it. But for Luv, that connection to the medium comes from teaching it to others, whether in his classes or at performances or public events.
He says, “I think teaching is also a performance, you’re really putting your best face out there, and trying your best for your “audience” to pay attention to what you want to say. You can either do that through song or through teaching. I love the idea that I was involved in making someone else appreciate music, the music they can make themselves, giving them the confidence that music doesn’t just have to be consumed, but it can be created by you as well.”
Probably Relevant Side Note: Speaking of performance, On September 1st, 2022, Luv and his friend and collaborator Radhika uploaded a reel to Instagram, featuring the two of them playing (and singing) an original song “A Calendar To Get By”, which has since gone viral. Soon enough, Luv and Radhika’s inboxes were flooded with requests to release the song on Spotify, and A Calendar To Get By is now Luv’s first-ever official release!
Stream it here or check out the video below! Illustration and Animation by Gaurang aka SpacemanStripes.
But music, any creative art really, is not just a skill-based but an emotional practice and that is a key factor to consider when teaching.
Here’s how that plays out for Luv. “I see some people cringe at a mistake they made while playing and really beat themselves up internally, I can see it on their faces, I can sense a certain form of hurt or pain that they’re still carrying. I've seen it in my own behaviour, when I look at my own work and feel like it's not good enough, I get back into negative self-talk. I see it in my own students sometimes, and I say no, you’re not going to do that, it’s not worth it, and you are better than this. Maybe not today, but tomorrow, you will be.”
After talking to Luv, I couldn’t help but feel that if I had teachers like Luv early on, who understood the emotional needs of students just as well as the theoretical, subject needs, I’d be a lot better placed in life now. You can imagine the kind of environment that Luv creates in his classes, and what this mutual appreciation and continuous learning process means for different people. If this article helped rekindle an old passion to learn an instrument, don’t think twice! There is nothing more fulfilling than learning and being able to play music, and it’s never too late to start.
If you’re interested in learning the Uke from Luv, he takes classes on weekdays online from 5 pm to 9 pm. They’re usually group classes for adults, but he is considering starting classes for children as well. On Saturday mornings, he teaches in-person.
For more details, you can visit his Instagram, Ukulele with Luv, or check out his digital business card for more information on what he does, and definitely follow his Instagram to see his day-to-day updates!