Art Show and Street Musicians

Since I have been here I have been enjoying the cultural richness of the city. Both the formal cultural institutions and the informal. We'll start with the formal.

Last week I went to the opening party of a photography show titled "DCist Exposed Photography Show". Photographers submit entries via Flickr and then 30-40 photographs are choose to be displayed in the exhibit. All of the artists are from DC and all of the pictures were taken in the DC area. Click here for a slide show of this years winners.

To the left is a picture of the event. It's really a terrible picture because it's missing two things- any of the photography and any of the people I went with to the show. This is because I find it terribly dorky to take pictures of events I go to so I had to take it quickly when no one was looking.








As I was looking at the photographs I found one particularly striking but I couldn't figure out why. Below is a copy of the picture.

If I remember correctly the name of the photograph was "Street Musician". I then realized why I found the picture striking- because I had seen this man performing before outside of the Chinatown metro!

Last Sunday I got off at the Chinatown metro station for a reason I can't remember now. At the top of the stairs was an excellent street band. A large crowd had gathered to listen and I sat down and listen to them for about 20 minutes. It was an interesting instrumental make up: violin, bass and drums. They mostly covered pop songs. The one that I remember was a U2 song. The man in the above photo is here on the left.

Street musicians are extremely common in the area I live. Mostly because its a very busy area filled with people that aren't usually downtown-tourists and area resistants that are in the district for a big event at the Verizon center. The musicians range in ability. Some are typical bad guitar players who only know 4 songs. Others, such as this band are actually extremely talented. Although I don't know where these people come from or what they do I imagine they fall into two camps. First, casual musicians who have "legit" jobs and just play on the street on the weekend for fun. Second, local music students who want to make money while practicing. I really enjoy all of the street performers. It's like a soundtrack to the city. These musicians add to the cultural richness of the city. In just the past week I have heard countless blues and jazz musicians, a New Orleans style street band, several classical musicians, and numerous bucket and trash can drummers. This informal culture that residents and visitors are constantly exposed to makes the city a more enjoyable place to live.