jazz: October 2010 Archives

There are amusing animals—ducks come to mind—and there are amusing words, words I just like, and one of them is "busker." You've probably seen a busker, even if you didn't know it—buskers are musicians who stand on the street to perform. They usually have a hat or guitar case open in front of them, and people put in money if they're so moved. Most buskers aren't that great, frankly, but sometimes you can be amazed. I saw a very cool gypsy-klezmer band called Gadji-Gadjo playing on the street in Montreal once, and years before, also in Montreal, I saw a group of Andean pan-pipe players in traditional costumes. I don't want to listen to that for hours on end, but they were interestingly alien—when you see a group of colorfully garbed Peruvians piping away on a city street, you feel like they might as well have dropped from the moon, and you can't help but check it out for a minute. Then there was the time in Washington that I heard a kid on the street playing drums on those white plastic containers they use for construction materials and the like, and he was really good too. You just have to listen for a few seconds, and sometimes you'll be surprised at the music you can hear for free.

Joni Mitchell was a busker once, before she was famous. Can you imagine? You're walking down the street in Toronto, and here's this young woman on the sidewalk playing guitar and singing, and she just happens to be one of the greatest artists of her generation. Maybe she wasn't then what she would become; maybe she was mostly a kid who sang and played folk songs better than average. But maybe she already had that enchanting poetry in her, and it was there, on the street, not a commodity, but a phenomenon before you, as mysterious and magical as the northern lights.

Or maybe not. They did an experiment a few years ago—the Washington Post sent the famous violinist Joshua Bell into a subway station to play and see if anyone would stop and listen. Few people did, and the columnist Gene Weingarten reacted by basically saying people are pigs. Me, I pretty much think people are pigs too, but I'd be willing to give them a pass on the Joshua Bell in the subway question. Of 1,097 people, seven stopped to listen, and one recognized him. First of all, most people aren't that crazy about classical music. Second, there's a smaller percentage that have a good enough ear to tell an outstanding player from a merely competent one. Seven out of 1,097 isn't bad, actually. It's more than I'd have guessed. And third, a subway station is, by definition, a place you go the hell away from as quickly as you can. Very few people go there ready to be enchanted and you can hardly blame them for that.

All this is a lengthy preamble to the latest news—I suppose that I'm a busker myself, now. I offered my services playing piano in front of one of my town's art galleries during October's First Friday art stroll. And when I told the bass player in the trio about it, he wanted to busk too, and when the drummer heard he signed up as well. So the other night we lugged our stuff in front of the gallery, strung all the wires, and started playing. For a joke, I put the bass case in front of the drums, opened it, and threw a few bills in.

There weren't as many people out that night as there sometimes are, because the local creek was flooding, but there were enough. The evening was crisply cool, pleasantly autumnal, with clear skies that went from blue to indigo to black as we played. Passersby would come into our sphere and their faces would light up—not, I think, because we're so awesome, but at least in part because you just don't hear jazz much on the street or anywhere, really, these days. Also, there was another busker up the street singing and playing guitar who served as a foil for us and made us sound good by comparison. He had a powerful public-address system, certainly, but his sense of pitch and his taste in music were much weaker. He sang songs by Journey and the Monkees, for Christ's sake, in a way that hurried people down the sidewalk to where we were, sort of like the beaters who chase the tiger toward the hunter's elephant.

At any rate, people would smile, stop, applaud, say nice things, and in several instances they dropped a dollar on the velvet lining of the bass case. Each time I looked over at the drummer, who happens to be an architect, grinning and shaking my head at how funny and strange life is, with strangers dropping a dollar in front of three middle-aged men with houses and day jobs and all, but that's busking, isn't it? They aren't paying you a dollar so much as they're paying you a sincere compliment, and even if we thought it was funny we thought it was awfully nice, too. People who were dining al fresco across the street strolled over to say they liked the music, and again, we were flattered.

And a singer the bass player knew stopped by to see us, and she sang some tunes with us and was great, which just made it all the better. It struck me how she was singing on the sidewalk, for free, simply because she liked to sing and was good at it. It was refreshing—it's the kind of thing that makes you think the human race isn't entirely awful.

The folks at the gallery kept sending us glasses of wine to keep our spirits up, and when we were done and packed up, we divided up the dollars we'd earned and then retired to a bar to eat and drink and have a convivial time. We had fun, everyone agreed. And we felt, if not exactly paid, certainly well enough compensated. I just may be a busker again some time. I probably won't play in the subway, or in the lobby of a burning building, say, but if you pick your time and place—I'm talking to you, Mr. Weingarten—people can, in fact, be pretty appreciative.