Street Music

Since I only work part-time, I obviously think a lot about picking up another job. But my weird hours are a challenge, especially since I also want to get more involved with my community and a couple of other things.

One of the most obvious choices would be if I started working as a street musician. I've busked a few times before, in Canada and Germany mostly. Sometimes it was fun, and sometimes I made a few bucks, but often it was not fun and not lucrative either. The most fun and lucrative street music sessions were when I was making music with one or two friends and we knew the music and were having fun with it.

To tell you the truth, my dream in my early twenties was to be a modern-day troubador. But the troubador vocation is pretty much dead (in the West at least). Yes, you could argue that today's touring rock stars are the the carriers of the troubador tradition, but there are big differences. Like, there's an entire entourage involved with the bookings, the transportation and the PR and all that. It's no longer like you can just stand somewhere in town square and start singing, and draw a crowd that will pay you enough for a decent living. Medieval crowds didn't have much entertainment, this might have been the highlight of their week. Crowds today have internet and TV and wii and all that.

I sometimes look at the street performers here in Amsterdam and I think, "isn't this just panhandling?" Sure there's some amazing artists, guys who juggle burning sticks or accordion players who can play Bach Toccatas, but for the most part, it's really pretty pathetic. There's a guy in a gorilla suit. That's it, no further twist to the story. Just a guy standing around in a gorilla suit with a box in front of him for you to throw money in because he's, uh, wearing... a ... gorilla suit...

And then there's all those Eastern European women with a broken accordion playing THE SAME MELODY FOR HOURS ON END. And they're ALL playing that same melody. And they play it with one finger. There's no accordion skill here, there's no music to brighten the day, it's just a simple ditty (I don't even know what it's called) that is most likely the only thing they can play on their instrument.

OK, so this is one step up from panhandling. Some Eastern European woman acquired an accordion and learned to play a tune on it, and plays it for hours on end, and at least doesn't end up destitute, or prostituting herself, or panhandling WITHOUT an accordion. Fair enough. But it's not the same thing as, you know, a STREET MUSICIAN. A street musician is someone who adds music to your day, someone who provides you with a free open-air concert if you feel inclined to stop and listen, and you can return the favor by giving him a coin or two. I see street musicians every so often, and if I'm not in a hurry I'll stop and enjoy the music, and I'll gladly give them a bit of money.

But my problem is that I'd be simply another guy with a guitar singing Bob Dylan songs. Who wants to give money to a guy with a guitar singing Bob Dylan songs? This isn't enough to make a passerby turn off their iPod to take a listen.

Once I teamed up with an attractive girl who played the fiddle, and we just raked in the cash. Once I teamed up with two saxophone players during the Christmas shopping rush and we played carols at passersby, and made $60 in about two hours. But when it was just me and the guitar, I felt indifference and even a bit of hostility from the people passing by.

So I'd need something a little more than a guitar and a repertoire of Dylan classics. I'd either need a more exotic instrument, or more insteresting music (not that Dylan isn't interesting, but who wants to listen to me singing Dylan when they can just YouTube the man himself?) or one or two bandmates to help with making the music more interesting, or all three.

But that is only Part I of the problem. Part II is context, in this case the difficulty of performing for people who don't want to be performed for.

One of the most revealing experiments in street musicianship was when world-class violinist Joshua Bell spent an hour playing in a D. C. subway station. He played the same pieces (on a Stradivarius) that you would normally have to slap down a good $100 to hear him perform in one of the world's great concert halls. There was a Washington Post article going into this experiment in detail, about how indifferent most people were to this world-class performance they were being given for free, and concluding that context is a huge part of art appreciation.

Sure, sometimes good street musicians brighten up my day, but sometimes they're also a bit of an annoyance. Sometimes I prefer the tune in my headphones, or sometimes I'm trying to listen to something else. It can be awkward to walk past them if you know you're not going to give them anything. Do you acknowledge their presence, or do you just ignore them? Unlike most people, I've been on both sides of this equation, and I still don't know. The line between a street musician being an unexpected enrichment or an unexpected annoyance is very fine, and it's not even necessarily connected to how good the music is.

Why does this matter to me? Maybe I'm too self-conscious about imposing myself on others. Larry Norman once said (and these words have haunted me like few others) that if you're called to make music, you'll make music, and you won't care if anyone listens. After a few years of thinking about that sentence and how I feel about music, I concluded that I'm not really called to make music, because I DO care if anyone listens.

No doubt being a street musician could be fun at times and, like any job, would also be annoying at times. I still think about doing it in my spare time, once I find something I really want to go on the streets with, and hopefully one or two willing partners in this endeavour.