Street Performer Gets Joy From Music, Not From Money

By: BROOKE NIEMEYER

A young man carries four plastic buckets and a worn wooden drumstick with him whenever he walks the streets of Manhattan. The buckets vary in size and are placed within one another when he is on the move. The largest one has a white plastic piece on the top of the metal handle. The plastic has a splitting crack in the middle that is filled with a bit of dirt. Black scuffmarks scatter the sides of the buckets showing the wear and tear that they have gone through during their journeys.

This man, who refers to himself only as Thomas, stops at the intersection of two streets, looks out into the road and changes his mind. He then turns around and walks back a bit so he is under scaffolding that covers the sidewalk. He goes close to the corner building and takes out each of his buckets and places three in a row, with one further behind the rest. He removes his cap, turns it over, and places it on the ground before he sits down on the largest bucket. He begins to play what he calls his “musical craft.”

Thomas is a street musician and has been practicing his craft for 12 years. He started by playing for fun on the stairwell in his apartment building because of the great acoustics there. He says this is where he taught himself to play and learned what sounded good to him. He started playing on the buckets just as a way to relax at the end of the day.

He eventually got complaints of the noise from neighbors, so he moved to the stairs in front of his building. He later had to move out of that complex, he moved into one without stairs. After that, he started playing on a nearby street corner, but hasn’t stuck to just one location since then.

“I like to move around to find me new people to play for,” Thomas said. “My music comes with me no matter where I am so I can go wherever.”

Since his days on the stairwell, Thomas decided that his music could not only be a stress release for him, but also possibly help other people slow down a bit in their busy days. He says this is why he picks busy areas and also stays near the corners of streets.

“When people have to wait to cross the street, they can listen to me,” Thomas said.

Thomas bobs his head along with the beat of each song he plays and seems un-phased by the people going by, whether they rush by or pause in front of him. Some people throw coins into his hat as they pass by, while a few others stop and listen to him play.

One woman took a dollar bill out of her pocket and bent over to place it into his hat. Her foot tapped as she watched him.

“I like to see these people who just do their thing along the road or under at the subways,” Stacie Nielson said.

Nielson said that Thomas was one of the better talents she’d seen in a while. She said she stops to listen to the street performers when she has time.

“It can’t be easy for them to be ignored when they’re performing a talent,” Nielson said. “But they keep doing it and I admire them for it.”

Thomas says he doesn’t do this for the money, but doesn’t complain about it when people give it to him. He says he thinks people give him money because of his music with nontraditional instruments.

“I get a good sound with the buckets,” Thomas said. “It gets peoples attention because of how different it sounds.”

Thomas has found the buckets in dumpsters and alleyways and is always on the lookout for another one. He has replaced them over the years when they get too cracked or worn out.

When Thomas decided it was time to move on from this location, he stood up and turned over the bucket he was sitting on. He loaded each of the buckets inside the larger ones and then put the $7.29 he earned in the past hour into his pocket. He put his black cap back onto his head and was on his way.

Thomas placed a quarter into the crumbled Styrofoam Dunkin Donuts cup of a homeless man sitting on the ground before crossing the street in search of his next performance spot.