Posts Tagged ‘Global Citizen Festival’
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Mr. Ukulele Loses His Aloha
0September 25, 2017 by admin
Friday started out bad and got worse. As soon as I entered the park, I was assaulted by loud music. Some moron with a boombox had cranked it up to 11, or so I thought. “Aren’t there rules about amplification in the park?” I asked a green-shirted volunteer in the information kiosk.
“Yes, there are, but this is the only time for the musicians to rehearse for Saturday’s concert.” The concert she was referring to was the Global Citizen Festival, an annual event since 2012, which featured, she told me, “world-class performers like Stevie Wonder and Elton John.” The concert was held on the Great Lawn, some half mile from where we stood.
From Central Park West to Fifth Avenue, waves of rock riffs roared from the north. It stopped from time to time while technicians fiddled with the bass, thumping like a migraine, then began again. The noise echoed around Bethesda Fountain, where a sad-looking woman played folk songs on her acoustic guitar. Farther east, under the maple tree, the caricaturists and begging Buddhists occupied my secondary and tertiary venues.
Instead of giving up and going home, I hit upon the idea of playing near the Alice in Wonderland statue. In my early days as a busker, before the Quiet Zone Wars, I frequently set up between the Conservatory Pond and Alice. Like Bethesda Fountain, Alice was a destination, especially for children; unlike the fountain, it remained a Quiet Zone after the peace. Despite the ambient amplification, if I played softly, using an inside voice, so to speak, I could sing my set here.
As I put out my solar-powered hula girls, I was mobbed by little kids . Each kid wanted a chance to position the toy on the ground and watch it dance. In the melee, the yellow hula girl was roughed up in what turned out to be a non-life-threatening injury. When it came time for a hula dance, however, nannies and governesses whisked the kids away.
Two older girls, maybe 6 years old, hung back. They did not want to hula, but they seemed to enjoy “I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone.” One ran off to get a dollar from her mom, who sat out of sight on a bench. Not to be outdone, her friend ran in the other direction and returned with a dollar too.
The first hula of the day was by a little girl, the second by an Argentine woman.
A man motioned for permission to take my picture, after which he gave me a buck. “It’s very happy music,” he said. Two women got off their bikes and leaned against the fence across from me, listening with smiles on their faces. After a few songs, one remounted and the other came forward with $2. A woman from the unseen benches to my left surprised me with a dollar.
With 9 singles in my case, the day’s busking proved to be far more successful than I thought possible 90 minutes ago. As I was about to wrap up with “My Little Grass Shack,” a green shirt pulled up in his Konservatory Kop-mobile, told me I was in a Quiet Zone and asked me to leave.
“Listen,” I said, as another bass sound check rattled my teeth. “Are you seriously going to enforce Quiet Zone rules today?”
“You can’t play here. You can play farther uptown,” he said, pointing north, closer to the source of the noise.
My aloha spirit, put much to the test today, drained away. “I’ve been kicked out of better Quiet Zones than this,” I said.
“I’m not kicking you out, I’m asking you to leave.”
“Ok, as long as you’re asking, I’ll leave after one more song.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Is it 20 minutes long?”
“Why don’t you take a spin around the pond; I’ll be gone before you get back.”
I sang “Little Grass Shack,” packed up and left, not at all happy about this day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Global Citizen Festival, I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone, My Little Grass Shack
