Posts Tagged ‘Over the Rainbow’

  1. Typical Tuesday

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    July 9, 2014 by admin

    A small group of Japanese people, the women sporting parasols, stopped to hear me play. “You have a nice voice,” one of them said, as the man put a dollar in my case.

    “Domo arigato gozaimasu,” I said, bowing politely.

    “Oh, have you been to Japan?” I nodded in the negative. “Have you been to Hawaii?”

    “Hai,” I said, “many times.”

    “Yes, we too, many times.”

    Three college-age women stopped to hula. “Can you guess where we’re from?” one asked in impeccable English. I guessed Argentina. They roared with laughter. “Pakistan,” one told me. I took a closer look: light skin, thin noses, bare arms, legs and head.

    “Can’t you just see this one,” I said, taking one of the girls by the hand, “dancing the tango?”

    A couple pushing a stroller came by next, dropping a buck as they passed. Our exchange of a few words revealed Brits.

    Next came a day camp group in orange tee shirts. “Have you got time for a hula today?” They did not. But the next orange-shirted group did have time; the counselor donned a lei and tried to show his 6-year-old charges how to hula. Unlike other groups of kids, who tumbled over each other trying to get a lei, this group was reluctant. Only 2 out of 15 or so wanted to dance. “That’s ok,” I said, playing the introductory chords of “The Hukilau Song,” “No one has to hula, it’s not a punishment.”

    Two couples with 4 kids stopped to kibbitz. The girls played the uke, I was told, and had had hula lessons, although neither remembered them. “Do you know ‘Over the Rainbow’?”

    I started strumming the Judy Garland version, but was immediately stopped. “No, no, can you play it like Iz?”

    I couldn’t, but one of the young girls could; with a little prodding, a second young girl played too. I watched their fingers, then, taking back the uke, played the intro back to them.

    Counting my take at the end of the set, $12.98, I came upon a postcard someone had dropped instead of money. It promoted The Peace Industry Music Group. I know them as the Boyd family, who set up in the tunnel, otherwise known as the Minton Tile Arcade, every day, all day, all seasons. The patriarch, John Boyd, would allow no other musicians to play in that acoustically well-endowed space, which led to some bad feelings, raised voices and veiled threats. In a compromise, he allowed a Korean tenor and a Ukrainian upright bassist to join in his particular mix of sacred music and pop spirituals, but he made no allowance for a solo act, like Arlen and his dulcimer. John was arrested several years ago for violating the Quiet Zone rules, although since that tumultuous time he has reigned uncontested.

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