Save for the amateurs who bang tonelessly on empty pickle barrels, I'm a fan of street musicians. Fond, lasting memories have been acquired listening to them.
My dad and I once saw two cello players dueling across the subway tracks in New York city. I heard a woman sing a slow, mournful, haunting version of a Sex Pistols song in London. Here in Paris, in the tourist heart of Montmartre, there was a woman singing traditional French folk songs while grinding a small player piano (only a stuffed monkey, I'm afraid).
A week ago, I was sitting in my one-room flat just before sunset. Music wafted through my open window -- a trumpet and an accordion carried much of the tune before a piano joined in. And just as fast as it started, it ended ... one song to usher in the night.
Today, I treated myself to a sit-down lunch in the Place du Marche Sainte Catherine, a quaint little square of maybe 50-feet square to the east of my flat in the Marais. The square is boxed in by seven-story beautiful apartment buildings, 100-to-150 years old I would guess. It has seven or so cafes around it, all with a smattering of tables outside.
As I dug into my entrée (to the French, the appetizer), a man with a saxophone started to play. He stood on the edge of the square itself, across from the next restaurant over, the Bistro de la Place. Before he can complete a single song (and mind you, he wasn't that great, but it wasn't dreadful), the restaurant owner quickly leaves his establishment. I didn't hear the conversation but the hand gestures said it all -- "Get out of here, you're not welcome at my restaurant ... or that one, or that one, or any of them." The musician makes a feeble attempt to stay, but the owner is adamant, so the man takes his saxophone and slowly slurks out of the square.
A few minutes pass, and a man with a violin appears in front of the restaurant at the south-east edge of the square, Le Marche. He nearly gets done with one song, but the pattern is repeated ... the manager of Le Marche steps out and gives the musician the same message -- "Get out."
This one has more persistence, however. He moves in front of my restaurant, the Rouge St. Catherine. He plays a collection of French songs, tunes I've heard countless times as they are the cliché of what French music is, yet I don't know the names of them. He strolls from my restaurant to the café to the right, only stopping once to snatch up a small luggage cart that some garbage men are about to take away.
Then I see a woman enter the square. A handsome woman in her mid-50s, her steely eyes lock onto the violinist. She marches into the Rouge St. Catherine, has a few words with the waiter, storms out and goes into the building next door. I didn't need a translator to understand the woman thought the café should be patrolling the square.
The violinist was not dumb. He stopped and quickly made his way among the tables of the restaurant with his change purse out. He wins tips from 1/4 of the tables. Me, I give him two .50 euro pieces -- one for the music, one for his persistence.
Minutes later, an old beggar woman makes the rounds. No one gives. Nor do I. No music.
