Constructing Space and Reality through Sound: Subway Musicians at Downtown Crossing and Park Street Stations
This research project and experience began to unfold and develop as I weaved between the tunnels, stairs, escalators, and halls of the orange, green, and red subway lines in Boston. The Park Street and Downtown Crossing stations transform from a busy, commuter space to a stage for local Boston musicians during the less busy hours. I made the mistake of stumbling around and dodging commuters during rush hours before I soon realized that musicians knew better than to play in all that chaos. Trains passed raucously with each minute and busy people scurried from one destination to the next, blind to the surroundings that they see every day and numb to the packed sea of people, waiting for their stop, their train, their cue to snap into action.
As a biker and a newcomer in Boston, I found the subways to be somewhat overwhelming so I automatically strained my ears to any seemingly out of place melody that took me away from the height of city consciousness to one of the basics of human pleasure: music. I’d catch a faint whisper of song and follow if off of the bus or platform or around a bend like a dog with a scent and all of a sudden, I’d see the source of that little bit of joy down in the subway. Somehow it was always a surprise to put a face and instrument to a sound that had sounded so mystical and removed just seconds before. With a few small bills in hand and genuine compliments, I’d start a conversation that opened up new opportunities and possibilities that were completely surprising, exciting, and enlightening. Those conversations and experiences are the foundation for the documentation and insights within this ethnography.
Through interviews, observation, casual conversation, and participation, I studied the motivations that lead musicians to play in the subway. Questioning, conversing, and playing led to and uncovered diverse, complex lives. Each musician had a unique relationship to music along with their own mission and distinct way that music brought meaning to their lives. I try to answer the following questions through ethnographic fieldwork: Is there a subway musician scene or community and what does that identity mean to those who find meaning in it? How do subway musicians identify with their roles as musicians and performers? My goal is to gain a better understanding of the individuals I’ve met playing saxophones, guitars, and singing in the subways even on the coldest of days for economic, spiritual, social, and moral reasons.
Mike Rock playing Fly Away
Based on my fieldwork, I maintain that subway musicians create alternative atmospheres and possibilities for people to look up and connect in a space where commuters are preoccupied with where they are going by default. I see the subway musicians as disrupting the status quo and the busy, directed hustle of the everyday lives of Boston subway commuters. I’m curious about what constitutes the subway musician scene because I haven’t witnessed any interaction between performers. The topics of constructing physical and emotional space and creating meaning in life through music are important for commuters who unknowingly interacted with subway musicians daily or less often They’re important for the musicians who deserve recognition for the valuable work that they do. And they’re important for all people interested in how their presence and actions can have an effect on their surroundings.
Initial Findings
During my fieldwork, I noticed that those who participate in the interactive, performative, and musical subway scene include instrumentalists, dancers, and singers. The instrumentalists included an acoustic guitar player, a Chinese erhu (2-string bowed instrument) player, electric guitar players with tambourines taped to their ankles, saxophone players, and a person simultaneously playing the harmonica and a small guitar-like instrument. Singers accompanied themselves on stringed instruments and the saxophone player performed along with pre-recorded tracks.
Excerpt from interview with consultant in the field
Anonymous: ...And then other times, I feel I help people, relieve people of a hard day at work.
Me: Mm, yeah.
Anonymous: Cause when you play at people, a lot of things come at people and I know that because I am a human being as well.
Me: (chuckles) As it turns out.
Anonymous: Yeah, as that turns out, right? That a lot of things come at people: their jobs come at them, their days, they’re working, it’s early. People don’t like to talk to nobody early in the morning cause they just wanna get to where they going, that’s it.
Me: Yeah, yeah.
Anonymous: But sometimes you, you change, like you change people’s day doing that.
Me: Yeah.
Anonymous: Like, I’ve had people (laughs) write me notes that said: sorry I don’t have no money, but you changed my day (laughs).
…
Anonymous: But you know, like I said, it makes me feel good to know I’m doing something good.
Here my informant is expressing an intimate relationship between a musical performer and a commuter that maybe wasn’t expecting to be an audience member that day, subject to an emotionally and intellectually transformative experience in which the trajectory of their day was shifted. This exchange of an intersubjective musical and emotional experience goes both ways, a few times: first when the subway musician performs and sends out their intention through music, second when the commuter is impacted and sends appreciation back to the musician in the form of a note, and third when the musician receives the notes and feels good knowing that they’ve positively affected someone. It’s almost as if they are receiving the positivity back that they initially sent out; full circle.
The other main shift in space that I noticed was the reaction of parents to encourage their children to pass dollar bills to musicians or listen and interact with the music. Although I reckon there are a lot more adults than toddlers riding the subway in Boston, some of the most engaged audience members were given a nudge from their parents or wandered over on their own. Some even elicited encores and specially-curated serenades from the musicians, including a particularly moving rendition of ‘Baby Shark,’ a classic, if I do say so myself.
Contextualization of Findings
Identity and space are salient themes that persist throughout my fieldwork with musicians playing in the subways. None of the musicians I spoke with played full time in the subway. Some were in bands, some were teachers, and others were retirees choosing to do something fun and positive with their time. Although this ethnography is technically about subway musicians, it is important to understand that subway performance is only a facet of their current everyday lives and only a blink in their long-established musical or otherwise related careers.
As far as situating my informants within a particular Boston scene, I can say that they participate in the performance of subway music, but that community is not necessarily intra-communicative, consistent, or discrete.
The strongest effect of subway musicians that I witnessed was the construction of physical and emotional space with their music, like in the examples mentioned in my initial findings. Performers take up physical space and they are mobile, which means that their presence recreates the physical layout of space and the distribution of people in that space. Furthermore, their creation of organized sound through the artistic force known as music provides a sonic, emotional, and intellectual experience for commuters in need. The sound creates an experience that otherwise wouldn’t be there, inspiring thoughts, emotions, and even interaction that are new, spontaneous, and surprising each day.
Research Methods
Every ethnographic interaction required different research methods. Sometimes I entered the field with a DSLR camera around my neck, which prompted people to ask me if I was a photographer. Sometimes I was interviewing a musician consultant at a coffee shop. At the beginning of my fieldwork, I would enter the field tentatively, asking questions and being surprised by how much original insights people had to impart. By the end, I was a participant-observer, as I mentioned before, singing sets and improvising with a guitarist on the fly. Sometimes I was sitting on the subway platform with my laptop out, recording audio and cheering at the same time. After these inspiring interactions, I usually made time to debrief and jot down everything that I could remember so that I wouldn’t forget later on. These fieldnotes served as an anchor of observations and reality for my ethnography.
Looking Towards the Future
The subway musicians who informed my ethnographic research were highly seasoned performers by their years of experience in various venues or by the challenging conditions of playing with and around train schedules and rush hours. The work they do is integral to the constitution of Boston's cultural fabric. Their music uplifts commuters and provides a space of positivity, creativity, spontaneity, engagement, and connection that is valuable in a technologically entwined city with such a diverse and fluctuating population.
In the future, I would love to see more economic support from state and local institutions to help sustain this skilled community and organized concerts that showcase their abilities. Such concerts could expose them to crowds that can appreciate their work and provide a community for networking, as well as provide compensation for the performers' important work.
This research can continue through the engagement with musical communities that play in the subways for years to come. I think a long term ethnography in the same geographic location could reveal a lot about the developing values and experiences that Boston citizens embody. Just by sticking with the same stations or city over many years, I think I could learn an immense amount about Boston as a city and its musical cultures, considering the diverse group that I’ve interacted within just a few months.
The next time you pass a subway performer, please ask yourself about the quality that they are adding to your day. Is it worth a few bucks that something beautiful or different made you look up? Did their music encourage you to make eye contact with someone or smile in an otherwise listless commute? They know that coins and 1$ bills are just you being nice while $10s and $20s are for when they really do a good job, but support in any way is appreciated. It's easy to take for granted the musicians who've made themselves so accessible to us on the subways, but it is also our responsibility as community members to support their valuable contributions to society.
Acknowledgments:
Special thanks to Mike Rock and all of the incredible musicians that lent me their time, energy, insights, and music.
Endnotes:
Bywater, Michael. “Performing Spaces: Street Music and Public Territory.” Twentieth-Century Music, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, pp. 97–120., doi:10.1017/S1478572207000345.
Colman, Dani. "The Real Hidden Dark Sides of Life as a Street Performer." Human Parts, 21 July 2014, humanparts.medium.com/the-real-hidden-dark-sides-of-being-a-street-performer-2a27b11aca5.
Minton, Anna. Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First-Century City. London: Penguin Books, 2009. Print.
Simpson, Paul. “Street Performance and the City: Public Space, Sociality, and Intervening in the Everyday.” Space and Culture, vol. 14, no. 4, Nov. 2011, pp. 415–430, doi:10.1177/1206331211412270.
Walker, Jonny. "The Rules of Freedom: The place of street music in the life of our cities." Live Music Exchange, Nov. 2013, livemusicexchange.org/blog/the-rules-of-freedom-the-place-of-street-music-in-the-life-of-our-cities-jonny-walker/.