In Subway Platform, These Musicians See Their Stage

[Jahness]

In Subway Platform, These Musicians
See Their Stage

By COREY KILGANNON

Balla Tounkara, a player of traditional music from the West African nation of Mali, came to New York several years back to spread his country’s sound to the world.

He had been taught as a boy by his grandfather, who lived to be 117, how to make and then play the kora, a 21-string instrument fashioned from a large gourd wrapped in cowhide, with a wooden neck and handles. He has recorded several CDs, teaches kora to a diverse range of young people, and plays concerts across the country.

To reach the widest audience, though, Mr. Tounkara wants to make the New York City subway system his stage.

“You have the whole world in New York, and everyone rides the subway,” he said Thursday as he auditioned at Grand Central Terminal to become part of the Music Under New York program, which assigns preferred — and lucrative — spots in the subway system to selected performers and invites them to play at special events. “When you play the subway, you see thousands of people every day who you’ve never seen before, and they can all see my music, my culture.”

Mr. Tounkara, 37, was among 200 people who applied for this spring’s auditions, about 70 of whom were selected to play Thursday before a panel of 40 judges that included music industry professionals and transit employees. The judges were looking for perhaps 20 people to add to the subway soundtrack’s current roster of 100.

Each musician got five minutes on the upper level in the main concourse, across from the New Haven Departures board. One after the other, they pulled their battery-powered amplifiers up on wheelies and tried to impress the judges. Periodically, a transit police officer walked through with a bomb-sniffing dog.

Sandra Bloodworth, director of Arts in Transit, the cultural arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said, “This isn’t a stepping stone to some other gig or a path to fame,” as a mariachi guitarist, a theremin player and a man with a modified electrified cello strapped to his chest played nearby. “This is the gig, this is fame, becoming one of our musicians.”

The M.C., Bob Holman, nodded.

“The subway is the greatest stage you can have — you reach so many people,” he said. “People from all over the world haul their instruments here. You get the music of the world for the price of a subway ride.”

Kip Rosser played the theremin by moving his hands around its electromagnetic field, tossing off Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” for the judges.

Dan Stevens, a 50-year-old guitarist from Old Lyme, Conn., wore a black bowler and played “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do,” with a bluesy finger-picking style.

“Anytime you’re playing in New York City, it’s good exposure,” he said. “Plus, playing in the subway is good for the blues. It’s the real deal.”

A well-known street violinist, James Graseck, who can jabber with train riders as he plays the Paganini caprices or “Flight of the Bumblebee,” said, “Playing Carnegie Hall has its place, but you’re so far from the audience.

“As a street or subway musician, you have the listener right next to you, and it’s hard not to feed off that energy.”

Mr. Tounkara, who lives in East New York, Brooklyn, said his grandfather told him to spread the melodies to as many listeners as possible, but also never to profane the music. So it was difficult at first to take the kora underground and rest it on the grimy concrete where its sound would often be ignored by rushing commuters and interrupted by roaring trains. There, his grandfather’s music often reverberates off dirty walls and is sometimes heard by more rats than people.

“This music has been passed down through my family for 40 generations to me,” he said. “This is a sacred instrument in Mali, played for kings and queens. If my ancestors and the people back in my country knew I was playing it in the subway, they’d be upset. So New York is lucky to have it in the subway.”

If it makes Mr. Tounkara’s ancestors feel any better, he may well become subway musician royalty.

“The judges liked him,” Ms. Bloodworth said after he played and sang a song about a hippopotamus in Mandingo, his native language. She said performers would be selected on the basis of three main factors: “Quality, variety, and appropriateness for the mass transit environment.”

Mr. Tounkara said that he grew up in an area known for storytellers, known as griots, and that the family patriarch, Magandianyoule, was instrumental in founding Mali 800 years ago.

Both his grandfathers were famous kora players, and his uncle, Djelimady Tounkara, is a prominent guitarist. The aspiring subway musician learned to play as a young boy and fashioned his own kora by 14. Eager to develop a style that would appeal to listeners beyond West Africa, Mr. Tounkara began adding the music of Bob Marley, John Lee Hooker, James Brown and the Beatles to his repertoire. He emigrated to the United States as a young man after a rich man in his village heard him play and gave him money for travel.

He can play the blues on the kora, as well as Afro-pop, and has composed a song in the memory of Amadou Diallo, the West African immigrant from Guinea who was killed by a fusillade of police gunfire in 1999.

“My music comes from the great kingdom — the Mandingo empire — and I’ve made it my mission to show it to the world,” he said. “Every day I am meeting thousands of people in the subway who have never seen or heard it.”

“I’ve learned how to play jazz, funk, reggae, anything on the kora,” he added. “You can do O.K. in the subway with tips, but it’s still very tough to make it here as a musician, unless you’re a big star like Snoop Doggie.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/ny...hp&oref=slogin

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Sourakhata]

Desacralizing the sacred that's how capitalist do!

Kora is such a wonderful instrument, its melody & sound are so hypnotic, soft and subtle but yet aggresive.

As rightly said in the article it was played for Kings and Queens, long before any chalk-head ever figured out our Greatness..!

Toumani Diabaté is one of the best if not the best actual Kora player.
No instrument better embodies West Afrikan history & culture than the Kora to me, even the Talking Drum.

[tyydae]

I'll be sure to keep an eye out for this and the talking drum.

[Jahness]

Greetings Sourakhata & tyydae!

It's all about the money for the capitalist. The subways was used as a way for struggling poor people to make a decent dollar by showing their talent in different ways to the people of New York as well as the visitors of the city. They didn't want charity, they wanted to work for pay no matter how small the pay was.

They used to be chased and ticketed and all types of abuse put on them because they were trying to survive. Now some capitalist decided they would regulate and find a way to make a community effort a corporate franchise for big profits. They make me sick with their greed.

Sad to say it will be a monopoly as to who can play where, when and how often. The rich folks will get in on the deal and the everyday folks who started this form of self help will end up losing out. The mafia is back on the block with a new look and the same old habits of their predecessors.

Sourakhata they will never know the true value of any of our sacred instruments. To them it is just a money making object. That is why we as a people have to make sure and teach our youths the true history behind all our artifacts, musical instruments etc.

Much appreciation to everyone who took the time to respond to the article.

[Jahness]

M.T.A. Picks 23 to Perform in Subways

By The New York Times


It’s the New York City subway’s version of “American Idol”: an annual competition among musicians for the right to perform on platforms and in subway stations under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Music Under New York program. Today — two weeks after about 55 acts performed before a panel of judges in the 21st annual auditions — the authority’s Arts for Transit program announced that 23 of the acts had been selected.

The annual auditions are for spots on the permanent roster of musicians entitled to take part in 125 weekly performances at in 23 transit locations around the city. Arts for Transit, which is part of the authority, has managed the program since 1985.

The 23 acts include the Baby Soda Jazz Band; the harpist Hugo Barahona; the singer-songwriter Heidi Burger; the Cantonese Trio, a Chinese classical music trouple; Leah Coloff, a “classical punk” cellist and singer; Gibran Soul, a self-styled “ghetto folk singer”; Halcones de la Sierra, a “Tex-Mex” duo; Colin Higgins Band, a classic-rock group; the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a New Age jazz group; Jami Jackson, a rhythm-and-blues singer; the jazz band Kragh-Miller; La Strada, an orchestral indie-folk ensemble; Sean McCaul, a vibraphonist; Movimiento, a Latin fusion group; Billy Rogan, a “finger-style tap guitarist”; Kip Rosser, who plays the early electronic music instrument known as the theremin; Sidetrack, a dance act; the country singer Ray Starr; the finger-style acoustic blues guitarist Dan Stevens; Joe Taylor, a pop rock singer-songwriter; Tin Pan, an old-style New Orleans jazz and blues band; Balla Tounkara, a Malian kora player; and the Ukuladies, a “sister act” who use ukuleles and tap dancing.

Jigar Mehta, a video journalist for The Times, shot the accompanying video this afternoon when the M.T.A. announced the selection of the winning acts at Grand Central Terminal. Several of the musicians performed.


http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...rm-in-subways/