Street Music!

I feel obliged to do a post on street music, since it is so popular in Europe and seemingly better than in the U.S. My experience in the U.S., though, has been a homeless person in D.C. beating on a traffic cone like a drum, so I might not have a complete picture of America's scene.

The most common place to see street music is on the metro, and the most common instrument is the accordion. I'm not a big fan of the accordion, so I never really thought to give one of them a coin.

In Paris, I saw many traveling groups on the metro, usually a combination of a small drum, an old fashioned string bass and a singer with an accordion or tamborine. These little troops were entertaining for sure, but also the most annoying, carrying around little buckets while shoving them in your face asking for money.

The one type of street musician that I would cross the street to get away from was the guy with the South American pan flutes:
They would usually play some background music, a practice that I don't believe belongs in street music, and just play some simple notes to accompany the background music. Any fan of south park will know that the pan flute bands are necessary though.

In Madrid I saw a couple of saxophone players that I thoroughly enjoyed. Some great hits like Rockin' Robin really enhanced the atmoshpere in the large city parks.

The rocker with the large white sunglass destroyed the competition for greatest street musician viewed by me.





Lauren and I were in Barcelona, touring the Parc Guell, a huge, sloping park with many attractions. Among these attractions, at the top of a great hill overlooking the city, is the Torre de las Tres Cruces. The reason I appreciated this guy so much was that he contributed to the atmosphere of the area. You are sitting on a great hill overlooking Barcelona and the Mediteranean and, if that isn't enough, you have great accoustic rock music in the background. That and he played continuously for the 15 minutes that I was there, not to mention however long he played before I arrived. All of these reasons combined to give me the urge to give this guy all the coins in my pocket at the time, maybe 2€25. I imagine he makes a nice living up there, as you can see in the movie he customizes his songs to requests and names from the audience. Hope you enjoyed my amateur filmmaking.