During the early days of COVID, Melanie Lawson Kareem found the Topanga Canyon Library closed. She was scheduled to teach the ukelele in the library. So she called her students and said, “Don’t come to the library. Try to figure out how to join a Zoom session on your computers.”
About 30 of her students were able to do it, and at the end of the Zoom session, according to Kareem, “We all looked at each other and said, ‘Well, what are we doing tomorrow?’”
They were all locked down in their homes due to COVID. Kareem reached out to her students and said they should join Zoom for the ukelele class.
So they all agreed to join the Zoom session again the next day, and they kept going every day.
Melanie Kareem, of Topanga, teaches Hayden Jiang, of Northridge, how to play ukulele at Topanga Farmers’ Market on Friday, January 23, 2026. She teaches her “Melanie Method” to adults who want to learn songs quickly. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Laurie Ginsburg, of Santa Monica, and Kate Nasuti, of Topanga and Florida, play Melanie Kareem’s ukuleles at Topanga Farmers’ Market on Friday, January 23, 2026. She teaches her “Melanie Method” to adults who want to learn songs quickly. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Melanie Kareem, of Topanga, arrives at Topanga Farmers’ Market on Friday, January 23, 2026 with her wagon of ukuleles and the music to “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie. She teaches her “Melanie Method” to adults who want to learn songs quickly. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Show Caption1 of 3Melanie Kareem, of Topanga, teaches Hayden Jiang, of Northridge, how to play ukulele at Topanga Farmers’ Market on Friday, January 23, 2026. She teaches her “Melanie Method” to adults who want to learn songs quickly. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Expand“When we got to Day 100, we thought it was a huge accomplishment that we had joined each other on Zoom continuously,” said Kareem. “We chose songs that day that had the number 100 in the lyrics.”
Now almost six years later, the group is on its 1,917th Zoom session of her online ukulele school, “Get Started Playing Ukulele.”
“There are lots of us mature adults who’ve dreamed our whole life of being able to play an instrument,” Kareem said. “We went through life and it just never happened for different reasons. Both for myself and everyone who feels like me, I was determined to invent a system that would be both effective and so much fun learning our favorite songs together. My dream is to spread as much ukulele joy as possible through teaching and creating community through music.”
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