I moved to Brooklyn from Austin, Texas,
where there are at least 150 live music venues not even including small coffee
shops, cafe brunches, and live-music dancing at grocery stores on weekends.
A lot of it is free with the meal (or the grocery shopping). I never
saw anyone playing on the street. It just wasn't necessary.
New York isn't really a city with
available music. There are famous clubs - Birdland, Cafe Wha?, Blue
Note, Smoke - but they aren't cheap, not remotely. You have to buy
your tickets in advance and
the shows are an hour long usually and
then you are expected to leave to make room for the audience at the
second show. There are a couple of accessible places in Brooklyn,
but this blog is about subway music, which I consider the best New
York City music venue.
I just finished reading Underground
by Matthew Nichols about the five years he spent as a subway busker.
Taken from diaries he kept, the book is a raw, passionate view of the
life of an artist and an interior view of the mind of a musician.
Anyone who's experienced the struggle of trying to make a living as a
musician, painter, dancer, actor, writer, potter, can relate to
Nichols' story. There's the passion for his art form which is what
keeps him going amidst the frustrations of dealing with and competing
with other musicians, the mood swings from elation to despair, the money shortage, and the
hassles from the police (You aren't supposed to use an amp in the
subway stations, but how else will anyone hear above the din of the
trains and people?).
It's an amazing book because not only
do you get a sense of Nichols' life, you get to see what the subway
is like for the commuters, which is far different from the tourists who are only around for a week or so and miss a lot of the drama. Be prepared for strong emotion
- particularly toward commuters who listen for a long time and don't
put money in the hat - and strong language, which you're used to if
you ride the trains, but might not be so common in other towns. And
the book is not politically correct either.
The stations I most frequented in Manhattan were
Canal Street and Union Square. There was an Asian man who used to
play the ehru really well on the 4-5-6 platform (upstairs from
the Q and N platform where I caught the train). Nichols lets you
know he hates the sound of the ehru, but I like it for a couple of
reasons. First, my acupuncturist used to play ehru music while I was
zoning out, and second, a study of music and it's effects showed that
ehru music is the most relaxing to the human body. Classical
music is next - that's what Nichols plays on his guitar.
Union Square had a lot more variety.
There's the main "stage" on the first level. Musicians
have to be approved to play there and can use amps. I listened to Peruvian flutists
there for an hour once. I also danced salsa in that station last
Christmas to the music of some Spanish musicians. They
clapped for us. I've heard country western, jazz and, somebody
please explain why, a woman playing the saw. Perhaps if there was
some accompaniment, some rhythm or even someone playing the kazoo.
But a saw? It's like a weird smell.
Other musicians are on the lower (train) levels. They don't have to be approved, but they aren't
allowed to amplify the music. There were people playing drums
sometimes. They used overturned plastic tubs and if you tip them up
a little they amplify quite a lot. These drummers were always great.
There were folk guitarist/singers, steel drum player, and
occasionally, doowop singers. I also found sax players at the
Broadway-Lafayette Station on the B-train track in Manhattan and at
the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.
Nichols writes about the musicians who
played on the trains. This is against the law. You can't even play
a radio on the trains. But it happens and as Nichols writes, some of
the players knew one song and played that song badly. It was
pathetic and annoying. Sometimes on the weekends, you'd get a
3-piece mariachi band on the train - usually good. And sometimes there were
male pole dancers with boomboxes. Crank up the music and they were
tumbling down the aisles and swinging around the poles. Obviously,
this was not at rush hour.
I was once invited to a private concert
that would be performed by a very A-List musician. There was a sort
of gathering before the concert and when I entered that, I recognized
the room was filled with musicians. I can't say how I could tell,
but it's something there in the body language, the appearance,
something. These were the working studio musicians, the influencers
in their field. The musicians who were invited to play, not begging
to play. No more hat in hand for them. How they made it and not
someone else is the book waiting to be written. Was that body
language and appearance there before or after they became successful?
Matthew Nichols website here: http://www.matthewnichols.com/
You can find Underground online, and
Nichols has a YouTube video interview here:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=matthew+nichols%2C+underground&t=ffab&ia=videos&iai=gRZlec1ZNNo
