Friday, August 29, 2008

Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen!

I spend a good deal of my time en route - five days a week to and from work, as well as the various expeditions in the evenings and on weekends. On days when I drag myself out of bed for yoga before work at 7:30, I'll end up on two downtown 1 trains in two hours. At least an hour every day is spent beneath the gridded earth, speeding down tunnels and finding ways to avoid physical or visual contact with my fellow passengers.

Sometimes I read, sometimes I people-watch, sometimes I zone out. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, I'm entertained by the myriad performers who treat the MTA as their stage.

They're everywhere - on the platforms, in the trains, in the passageways between the 1 and the F. And what is wonderful is that there are just so many kinds and varieties, so many ideas of how to make money, ranging from the quite talented to the truly bizarre.

There are the standard four part gospel singers, who get onto a specific car with a call "Hello Ladies and Gentlemen! We're here to sing you an inspirational song. God Bless You All!" and in they start with "Mother Mary Don't You Weep No More" or "The Gospel Train is Coming". Yesterday morning, four men got on with a call of "Good Morning!" and I thought they might get assaulted by the uncaffeinated lot, but usually they are well received and frequently quite good. They're friendly and open and sometimes even get applause.

Then there are the one-man mo-town singers, who have no money and very little hope, but would prefer to get on a subway car and sing for money rather than just beg. My brother saw the same guy every day one summer, who would get on with the same speech and then start singing/speaking "My Girl".

Of course, there are the acrobats, who get onto emptier subway cars and dance or flip their way into passing the hat. Their less courageous counterparts clear out big sections in Grand Central and Times Square to perform their high showman hip hop break dancing - these involve a lot of calls to the crowd and panning to the audience, with loud music from a boom box and four or five guys in great shape playing to the women.

Then there is the man who plays the Chinese flute/guitar instrument down on the 1 platform at Times Square. He's been there forever, playing strange songs in minor keys while I wait for my uptown train. He was recently usurped, however, by some woman with a portable karaoke machine who sings pop star diva songs into a microphone over piped in music.

Of course there are a variety of standards, like the theme from The Godfather played on the violin, which crops up everywhere in anonymous tones which echo around the station. Recently I've heard multiple renditions of "Jesu, Lord of Man's Desiring" which seems like an odd choice, but hey whatever.

And then there are the truly weird - like the guy on the 7 train who played such classics as the Pink Panther theme song and "Hava Nagilah" on a hand-held keyboard with a tube that he had to blow into in order to play. Or the guy playing classical flute with his eyes closed while the express train tried to throw him off balance. Or my friends and I singing "Let's Open Up a Restaurant in Santa Fe" while dancing through the train one drunken night.

What is kind of astonishing is that many of these people are actually musicians. Many of them have real talent, and possibly a degree from Juilliard, or at least enough to make them worth paying attention to. There were street performers in the BART station in San Francisco, but with the exception of the guy who sang "Cocaine" and really sounded like Johnny Cash, they were crazy and terrible - like the guy I saw playing the three string, out of tune violin. I say playing, but what I really mean is attacking it with his bow. Or the guy who mumbled/sang/threatened as anybody walked past. Most of the street artists here are better than the people I saw at an open mike in SF. After all, it must be incredibly difficult to get up in front of a group of angry communting strangers at all, let alone perform, that the standard, as with so many things here, is incredibly high.

I'm grateful to them - I usually don't have any money to give, but I try at least to pay attention.

2 comments:

Angela said...

I had a friend who played his guitar at BART when he needed extra cash. He did pretty good actually-made more than I did.
Damn this world.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lilian - what an interesting read! We have good Tube buskers here in London, including some real pros from the Royal College of Music and the like. Penny wants to pass on one of her favourite Tube stories: her friend Genevieve bent down to pick up her evening paper just as the train doors were closing and got her skirt caught. Try keeping your dignity in that posture until the next stop. Might inspire a good song... xx Penny & Martin