I love good street music. Like street food, it can really add to the local flavor of a place. It’s a hardscrabble way to eke a living and not what you’d call glamorous. But for visitors to a new place, it can really help bring out the local culture. Of course, sometimes street music can be pretty dismal (another solo rendition of Jingle Bells on an out-of-tune alto saxophone, anyone? And I personally think there should be a law against Andes-style pan flute anywhere other than the Andes and especially when it has synthesized backing music) but every now and then you’ll come across something quite extraordinary. I’ve heard some superb Tchaikovsky performed by a string quintet in one of Moscow’s metro stops, some great bebop jazz jamming in New York’s Central Park, and some scorching blues guitar in London’s Underground. And some performers, like Rodrigo y Gabriela and Ted Hawkins eventually after years of toiling on the streets get discovered and build successful recording careers that turn them into world-renowned musicians.
Here are a few shots of street musicians I’ve come across on my wanderings. I’ll be adding to these from time to time.
Watching some of the superb series Treme recently, I was reminded of taking this photo of a jazz trumpeter busking on the street a few years ago and decided to dig it out of my archive. It's not from steamy New Orleans, where Treme is filmed and set, but rather on a chilly winter morning in downtown Washington, DC. I don't know his story, but I bet it's an interesting one.
Street musician busking with an accordion in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, Turkey.
A row of trumpet players that form part of a Latin band playing at an evening street festival in Valladolid, Yucatan, Mexico.
A young musician plays a kind of keyboard that was also a wind instrument in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, Turkey.
Orquesta Marimba Maria Guadalupe, a band playing in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, during the evening festival of the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. (David Coleman)
A musician playing the sousaphone as part of a procession at the Iglesia San Francisco (St. Francis Church) in downtown Guatemala City.
