Jonathan Shuster

Honors Ethnomusicology
Friday, December 12, 2014

Seattle Street Musicians: A Recorders Account

On any given day in major cities across the world, one can hear music be
played. Whether blasted through huge speakers, performed in a symphony hall, or
simply a man on the street playing his saxophone, one cannot avoid the sounds that
play some part in everyones lives. Today I would like to focus on the man playing
his saxophone. Street musicians are often everyday people with a musical talent
and a desire to share that talent with the rest of the world. Many of them have other
jobs and play music on the side to help support themselves and/or their families.
Some of these performers have no way of sharing their music with the world other
than playing it once or twice a week, (no CDs, no performances), while others do
have recordings that help them obtain some public recognition. Despite the
difference between these two types of street musicians, almost no street musicians
have had their music stored or categorized in any collective sense. Street music is
an imperative part of the Seattle Sound and the Puget Sound Archive at the
University of Washington has done little to document and preserve the music of
people performing on the streets of Seattle. This paper will describe and discuss my
attempt capture the essence of street musicianship in Seattle while also providing a
plan to continue to archive these live performances.
In all I recorded two performers down by the stadiums, one at Husky
Stadium and three at the Pike Place Market. I started my search on a very grey
Seattle day in early November. A friend and I (he was looking for rap CDs) took the
bus down to Century Link Stadium before a Seahawks home game to find some

music to put in the archive. As we approached the stadium the first thing I notice is
a live rock band. Hired by the Seahawks, their music was blasted by a few enormous
speakers to everyone near the stadium. With little luck finding street musicians near
the live band, we walked along the side of the stadium where most of the fans were
and where I have scene street performers in the past. Finding nothing nearby, we
moved further and further away from the stadium hoping to find a musician not
blared out by the live performance, but to no avail.
Finally, after a full loop around Safeco field (the nearby baseball stadium) did
we come across a musician. His name is Morgan and he was playing an old, golden
soprano saxophone. He had a medium length white beard, some rundown clothes,
and looked like he might not have slept inside for a few nights. He was incredibly
chatty and quickly started talking about how street performers are literally dying
off, citing the horrible death of Tuba Man. If you dont know the story heres the
quick version: Edwin Tuba Man McMichael played rock songs on his tuba at Seattle
sporting venues and around downtown. He was loved and respected by many
Seattle sports goers. In the fall 2008 he was beaten and mugged at the Seattle
Center, and although he was hospitalized, he died a few days later from his injuries.
His loss was hard for the people of Seattle to grasp and as Morgan explained even
harder for the street musician community to deal with. He sort of shrugged it off
and began to play, his tone a little harsh and his notes detached but lively all the
same. Only one person stopped to put money in his tin. After a few minutes I
thanked him, tipped him, and went on my, left with the feeling that there was more I
couldve done for him.

Next, we walked back past the stadium towards Pioneer Square in an effort
to get me a second recording. Thats where I ran into Anthonio. No not Antonio,
Anthonio. He was a big black man playing the alto saxophone, sitting in plastic chair
he had brought with him. He had his old phone hooked up to a portable speaker,
which played the background music while he played over it. After he agreed to be
recorded, he put on some John Coltrane and began to play a sweet, full tone that
made my body feel sluggish and relaxed like Jell-O. He played in perfect
synchronization with the background music and with outstanding passion. The
most interesting thing he said was before he started playing, he said, Im an artist
man! You know we broke as hell!... No, No I have a real job too though. After
prompting him further I leaned that he works in construction and is also a licensed
butcher. This man has to work two jobs and play music on the weekends to keep
the lights on. Theres a lot of socioeconomic information I could assume from the
fact that he was black, middle aged, and playing in the central district, but the simple
reality that he has to be a butcher, construction worker, and musician just to
support himself and whatever family he might have says a lot about what kind of
people are forced to play on the street just to get by. After I finished recording, I
walked around the area for a few more minutes before conceding to the fact that I
wasnt going to get any more recordings, and that the street musician presence was
the weakest I had ever seen it down by the stadiums.
I was next planning on making recordings at the Market but I made an
unexpected stop at the UW football game the weekend after I went to Century Link.
I was with my friends and noticed a man playing his accordion and only after five

minutes of debating and kvetching did I convince them to let me go back and talk to
him. His name was Greg Blackstock, an old man dressed in UW gear sporting an old
accordion, sitting on a plastic chair a short distance from the stadium entrance. He
smelled like tobacco and a nearly empty music case was sparsely filled with money
and low-quality business cards. Taking one of the cards, I noticed it was for a
gallery. Later, I looked Greg up online and found that he is a professional artist who
also plays music on the side. As he agreed to play for me, he stuttered, making him
difficult to understand. He broke into the UW fight song adding his own quiet
vocals, his music speaking smoothly for him. He stuttered a thank you as I tipped
and thanked him back. An email to the address on the business card didnt warrant
a response so I dont have much more information on Greg, but his music deserves
to be documented in the archive as much as anyone else.
The next place I recorded was downtown at the Market. I recorded three
musicians while I was there, and the vibe was different from near the stadiums.
While the music made the market vibe festive, the musicians themselves were more
uptight. They were arguable better (in a musical sense) and most of them had CDs
of some kind. They were more professional and less loose, more introverted and
less talkative. The first person I recorded was a young man (late 20s) named Lohan
Prado, playing by the golden pig. He had tan skin that matched his dark leather
jacket, complimented by jeans, a flannel, and boots to complete the outfit. His guitar
case was open with his contact and hiring information. He agreed to be recorded
and told me that he asked his dad to teach him how to play guitar at the age of eight,
and has been playing ever since. He started to strum his guitar and sing a love song

with a slightly strained voice. In the recording I submitted to the archive, the guitar
overpowers his voice by a fair amount. That is my fault as I held the recorder much
closer to the instrument than his voice. All the same, I was off to a good start at the
market.
Then something happened that I knew was going to happen at some point,
yet was not completely prepared for: I was shut down. A professional looking
fiddle/banjo duo was playing at one of the market spots and as I asked them if I they
minded if I talked to them one of them said Yeah we do, because were kind of in the
middle of something and sent me on my way. This is just a quick example of how
the atmosphere at the market varied from that of the other two places I recorded.
A little shaken I next approached a man named Jonny Hahn. Jonny had the
most interesting street musician set up Id seen so far. He has a medium sized
wooden piano that he had wheeled down to the market and was playing on.
Attached to it was a big red umbrella to prevent rain from reaching piano, but Jonny
promptly took it off after I asked to record him as the sun came out. Jonny himself is
an old white man with long white hair and a short beard. He was wearing a blue
rain jacket and jeans with his CDs laid out on the top of his piano. Before he started
playing a woman came up to him and said that shed heard him play last week up in
Shoreline and thought that he was amazing. From this and the CDs I gathered that
Jonny was the most professional musician I recorded and that he was actually
played music for a living. He began to play a quick yet relaxing song, clearly just
playing what came to mind in his head with no recognizable melody or structure.
The best way to describe it was the mind of music you would want to get a message

to just slightly more upbeat. The quality of the recording is very good, probably the
best out of all the recordings, but he played continuously without breaks (other than
the one to remove the umbrella which I quickly jumped on) so the original recording
ends abruptly, but in the version I submitted to the archive I fade his playing out at
the end. Without interrupting his playing a quietly said thank you and moved on
down the street.
After playing phone and email tag for about two weeks, I interviewed Jonny
over the phone to get a better idea of his music history and what its like to play at
the market. Jonny learned to play piano at a young age and was motivated by his
older siblings, who were also taking lessons. In his late teens he was playing at
coffee houses in Champagne, Illinois and was inspired by people like Neil Young to
become a professional musician. At one point he tried to play at the Northwest
Folklife Festival and was denied, so he decided to play at the University Street Fair.
Although he no longer plays there, it is what got him into street performing. When I
asked him how playing on the street was different than a scheduled gig he said that
people on the street are not there for the performance, so performers have to hope
to grab their attention with their music. The Market itself is a highly regulated
environment with scheduled time slots and permits required to play. Other places
are less regulated but its just part of what it is playing in the market. When asked
what music meant to him Jonny cited the era he grew up in. Growing up in the
1960s, music was Jonnys way of taking part in the social change that was occurring
in America. At one point he said that music was "a vehicle for me to express how I
felt about the world. It was how he made the world a better place.
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The last musician I recorded was a woman named Julie. She had a violin
cradled against her neck and short hair and glasses. She wore black striped pants, a
zip up fleece, and a kind of corduroy hat with a small brim. Playing in front of the
original Starbucks, she talked absently to the line of people gathered outside. After
agreeing to be recorded, she played an Irish song that made me wanted to break
into dance. She was precise with her notes and her tone was excellent. The quality
of the recording is good but there is an awful lot of background noise, more than
another recording. A car with incredibly squeaky breaks was passing by as I
recorded and a high-pitched screeching can be heard in the background of the
recording. That being said, the violin is still louder than everything else and
dominates the recording. Through email, Julie to me that she staring playing in
1986 and moved to Seattle from Fairbanks, Alaska in 2001. She has a special
interest in Irish Dance music and currently plays in many bands around the Seattle
area. She described the market as an ideal environment for live music, a vibrant
community of musicians inspired by their colorful and fragrant surroundings.
One thing was different about Julie compared to any other musicians I
recorded: She is a woman. In addition to the musicians I recorded at the market
there were three additional musicians that I didnt have the time to record, and only
one of them was a women. Granted that I have a small sample size but in other
expeditions I have noticed the dominance of male street musicians. I argue that a
large part of this has to do with the economic factors that govern family life in the
current day and age. Even today, males in a family tend to earn more income than
females. The men provide for the family while the women are in charge of taking

care of the children. Some may argue that this is not the case in a society where
women are quickly climbing socioeconomic ladder, but they are still not as high up
on the ladder as men. Much of street preforming is monetary based and although
almost all the performers are passionate about their music, nobody played just to
play and not earn any money. The fact that males are still the main breadwinners in
todays society results in more male street musicians than female ones.
In addition to the anecdotes I have just described there are a couple quick
things I want to note about the project. When I was at the stadiums people gave me
incredibly dirty looks while I was recording Morgan and Anthonio. You can actually
here me getting called out in the middle of recording Morgan. At the Market
however, I barely received any negative looks and certainty nobody called me out.
Im not sure if this was because at the Market people were more distracted by the
surrounding atmosphere but I felt more confortable doing fieldwork at the Market
than either of the other places I recorded. Also, in general I would say most of the
people at the Market are tourists and thus know less about the culture of the
market, and didnt see anything out of place. On the other hand, most people going
to the Seahawks games are natives and know that street musicians arent recorded
very often. On a separate note, because I recorded musicians outside in a nonregulated environment, there is a lot of background noise in most of my recordings.
This is essentially unavoidable because its impractical to get all the musicians
contact information, contact them, and have them come to a quieter place to record.
Also, I feel that taking musicians off the street would detract from the candidness of

the music, and recording the performers live maintains a high level of authenticity in
the recordings.
After completing all the recordings, all the files were in place on the
recording device. Another student needed the device so I received the files through
a web link. When I went to edit these files in Adobe Audition, I was unable to do so.
Only after downloading the files to my hard drive and some confusion was I able to
put the files into Audition and edit them. For the most part, the editing consisted of
making the recordings louder and touching up the ends of all the recordings. The
recording device I used didnt record at a very high volume so I simply turned the
decibel level up before I submitted the recordings to the archive. Many of the
recordings have long sections at the beginning where theres no music and just me
conversing with the musician. While I couldve edited this part out, I opted to leave
it in for consent reasons. None of the people I recorded signed a consent form
saying that it was okay for me to put their music in the archive and the audio
confirmation is all I have. By erasing this consent I would be creating a potential
copyright problem so I left the conversations in the recordings to avoid such a
dilemma.
To maintain an archive of street musicians is a long and arduous task. There
are so many different locations and people to record that complete continued
documentation of street performances is almost impossible. This is how I see the
continuation my project in a perfect world. As part of a class, or music internship of
some kind, students would be sent out within city limits to look for street musicians
and record them. They would only record audio, and they would record live on the

streets in .wav and get consent of some kind form the musicians being recorded.
They would document the name of the musician, where they recorded and any other
information they could get about the musician, either right there or with a follow up
email or phone conversation. It would be difficult to train many people to make
good recordings and edit them so most of the recordings would be raw and
unedited. The people recording would then enter the information online where it
would be displayed to the public through an online interactive map. Visitors would
be able to zoom in and out on the map searching for where street musicians were
recorded within Seattle city limits. Little dots would represent each place a
musician was recording and visitors would be able to click on a location and see all
the information gathered about the musicians who have performed there. A search
would also be available to find both locations and people. The scene is everchanging so new recordings would have to be taken often, and some type of small
monetary compensation would probably be expected by most musicians.
As far as copyright goes, the library should be safe under the fair use clause
but there will certainly be musicians who refuse to have their music put in the
archive. Since most musicians would not get to record in a studio, it might be easier
to get most of the musicians to consent to have their music put in the archive
through verbal commitment instead of a written one. A few sentences would have
to be developed in order to insure that both the library and the artists are protected
under copyright law. The recordings would all be digital so it would be important to
have a back up on a hard drive both on location and at a separate location. Grants
are the most obvious way to fund the project but often fall short of demand and are

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unsustainable. Selling access to the archive is another idea but the music is not
desirable enough to make that work and I hate to charge the public for access to
something that they can get for free on the streets. Also, it is possible to have local
musicians advertise for shows, CDs or, online music on the site, which could bring
in some money. So university grants and online advertising are the most reasonable
way to fund the project. For outreach, the UW library website could have a box on
the front page that take visitors straight to the archive and posters in the library
itself would also be helpful. Ideally, musicians that were recorded would wear a pin
that says something about the archive and mention it to people to listen to their
music on the street. I understand that this project is slightly unreasonable to
maintain due to monetary and manpower restraints but I maintain the position that
it is vital to record street musicians in order to archive a complete Seattle music
scene.

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