Venezuela was present at the Global Game Jam 2026. Between the 26th January and 1st February this year, Venezuela had 5 venues: Caracas, Valencia, Barquisimeto, Maracaibo y Maracay. I wrote about this in my Spanish-written gamedev blog, El Chigüire Literario.
In Caracas we had 70 participants, and they made 20 games, made in a variety of platforms and technologies, including one board game. You can watch here the gameplay summary.
I’d like to present El Ukulele Veneco, a Venezuelan songbook for ukuelele, with more than 270 entries. The songbook covers a wide variety of genres and decades of Venezuelan popular music. Your voice, a ukulele and this book is all you need to play. The songbook, for obvious reasons, is fully written in Spanish.
The songbook can be downloaded from https://elukulelevene.co, where you can also sign up to the mailing list to receive updates about the book. The songbook has 3 indices for searching songs: by artist, by title and by number of chords.
My name is Ciro Durán, and for years I’ve been playing ukulele with a group of friends, and we call ourselves The Pandemic Pluckers. We play in pubs and at ukulele festivals. Almost everyone in the group learned from songbooks that circulate on the Internet, very similar to the one you’re looking at right now.
As a Venezuelan migrant to the United Kingdom, I was able to meet a part of the culture that’s not obvious, but that it’s certainly present. I’ve also been able to socialise with others, and I’ve got friends throughout the UK.
My wish with El Ukulele Veneco is that you’re able to share a part of the Venezuela oral tradition. As it’s true in karaoke, it’s all about singing and playing together. In the website you’ll find links to playlists so you can listen to the song.
If you know someone that has a ukulele, or who wants to know more about Venezuelan music, send them the link to https://elukulelevene.co so they can start playing.
Venezuela is present at the Global Game Jam 2025! Between the 20th and 26th of January. I have a writeup of the 4 sites that we’ll have this year: Caracas, Barquisimeto, Maracaibo and Maracay. More about this at my Spanish-only gamedev blog El Chigüire Literario.
I’ll be travelling to Eastnor this last Thursday of May to be at Electromagnetic Field 2024. If you are there too, please give me a shout!
Apart from stumbling around and see the lovely people, inventions and sights, I’ll be running a ukulele jam on Sunday 2nd June, from 12:00 to 13:30 at Workshop 0 (Drop-in). Chord sheets are provided on display, and you can download them to your tablet. If I see lots of newbies we can dedicate the first half of the jam to simpler songs, and then go on to more complex songs at the end. All skill levels are welcome. Please bring your ukulele. We have a very small stock of ukuleles for drop-ins.
See you there!
As in previous years, I’ve posted all the music I made as part of our Tuesday Tunesday thing we do among friends each week. Please go to Music in 2023 to listen to it.
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