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MACOMB, ILL. -- It's become the lastest trend at the Western Illinois Museum. Take a step inside and you'll hear the sounds of the ukulele.

"It was a group of three or four professors who got together to play a church talent show one time, and we enjoyed it so much and started playing. They're kind of magnetic, when people find out that you play and they have an interest. From that, the group kind of grew," said Mike McGowan.

The group called Ukulele Macomb is made up of local community members and meets every Saturday morning to practice at the Western Illinois Museum . They may not consider themselves professionals, but they have publicly performed.

"We play at a lot of local health care agencies. We play for nursing homes on occasion. But then we've also played for fraternal organizations. We've done a couple of legitimate gigs, that sort of thing, but we're strictly amateur," said McGowan.

What was originally a casual jam session is now turing into a Macomb craze.

"One of the local music stores told me that they sold over 30 ukuleles in the month of December. So I think it's pretty popular," said McGowan.

The Western Illinois Museum hosted Ukulele University, a instructional workshop open to anyone. It's so in demand, people are on a waiting list.

"I think one of the reasons people like ukuleles so much is that, while it's a serious instrument, it's not a real serious instrument. So you can pick it up and play with it, have a lot of fun with it, but then you can get pretty down with it as well," said McGowan.

These workshops and jam sessions are used to introduce players to ukulele basic, but there are some that take away more than that.

"People enjoy it, they like to get together and sing communally. I think this has a lot to do with building community around music," said McGowan.

McGowen says that a lot of people from University Ukulele end up joining Ukulele Macomb.

*By KHQA's Kristen Aguirre