Recycling Souls

When I arrived at the Music Under New York busking spot at the 14th street subway station Salieu Suso, the kora player from Africa, was there. As he was packing up his busking gear and I was setting up mine, he told me about kora playing in Africa. I saw him taking money out of…

Read More

Without Them I Can’t Smile

It was 99 degrees. I was sweating buckets just walking to the subway. A nice guy helped me carry my busking gear all the way up the four flights of stairs to the train platform. He told me that he is a musician, too – he plays guitar, and he knows how hard it is,…

Read More

Udderbot

As I was playing at the Music Under New York spot at the Grand Central Station’s Shuttle, a guy named Jacob stop to listen. It turned out that he is a busker himself and he plays…a bottle with a rubber glove attached… It’s called an ‘udderbot’. He told me he just finished playing down the…

Read More

Like Magic

Like many New Yorkers, I know the exact spot on the subway platform to wait for the train, so that when I get to my destination station I will exit the train exactly where the elevator/stairs out are. I usually wait at that spot, but today was so hot that I decided to wait at…

Read More

It’s a Unicorn

When I got to the Music Under New York spot at the Times Square subway station Salieu Suso, the Kora player from Africa, was playing at the spot. There was a guy with a long beard sitting on the floor, leaning against the other column from the one Suso was by. As I was waiting…

Read More

The Three ‘H’s

As I was playing at the Music Under New York spot at the 59th street & Lex subway station, Bob from the Historical Society stopped to tell me of a cool fund raiser the Historical Society is doing: there is a pizza place where every time someone buys a pizza there, the place donates a…

Read More

Missing in Action

As I was playing at the Music Under New York spot at the Union Square subway station, Zina, the painter, brought me a large replica of the caricature she made of me. Painter: © Zina Saunders Arnold, the messenger guy, told me that Albert, the other guy who works as a messenger and who is…

Read More

Lady Steps Out of Limo to Put $300 in Buskers Hat

As I reached the subway station, on my way to playing in the subway, a lady looked at me and said “I saw you on channel 13!”. That’s so nice. When I got to the Times Square subway station there were two hoofers (tap dancers) on the platform. Each one of them had their individual…

Read More

Don’t Swipe

I was away from playing in the subway for 3 weeks (on account of playing at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC). As I got to the turnstile at the subway station today, I took out my Metro Card and was about to swipe it to go into the station. An MTA worker wearing an…

Read More

Working on Co-existing

Salieu Suso, the African kora player, was playing at the Music Under New York spot at the Times Square subway station when I got there. Salieu told me that a lady from Arts for Transit was there this morning. She told him to point his amp away from the record store. Salieu told me that…

Read More