Guts & Soul: Looking for Street Music and Finding Inspiration

By James Hegarty

Ever walk down a city street and hear music in the distance? And then all of a sudden, it’s the most amazing sound, a performance of something new or exciting that just fundamentally alters the way things look? Even just for a moment?

It happens to me all the time. I find a lot of inspiration and new perspectives in street music.

It comes in a fleeting glance of an African rhythm, a Bach melody, or a band jamming on a Second Line riff. Maybe it’s a drummer from Trinidad, a classical musician from China, or a guitarist from Syria. It could be someone from this very neighborhood, it doesn’t really matter. It’s happening on the street, somewhere, even right now.

Because street music has been a source of inspiration to me for as long as I can remember, I wanted to go out and collect it, share it, offer it up for the inspiration of others.

For the past two years, I’ve traveled to the major cities of the U.S. to make a documentary (coming soon) that shares the inspiration I’ve discovered. From New York to Venice Beach, New Orleans to Chicago, San Francisco to Boston, I captured music that I wanted to share so others could be inspired, too.

This story is about impressions and reality, about the images and the facts of making music on the street. It’s about going out there and playing hard, pounding out a gig, day after day. Guts.

And it’s about the human connection, the expression of something personal and amazing - something that fascinates our ears, eyes, and heart, and brings us together for a moment. Soul.

This is my story, the images from my documentary that share my discoveries, the music that gave me new vistas of inspiration. Join me and find out for yourself just how exciting guts and soul can be!

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Hegarty
• Release date: Jun 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310108730

James Hegarty

James Hegarty is an improvising pianist, music producer, and filmmaker who writes on creativity and artistic expression. His compositions have been performed in Europe, Asia, and throughout the US. He recently filmed a documentary on the creativity of street musicians in cities across America.Throughout the 1980s he worked as a free-lance commercial music producer confronting the intersection between art and commerce at a time when technology was rapidly changing the recording studio landscape.For twenty years he has been a college professor who teaches composition and jazz students to expand their creativity and discover their personal style. Over the years, he has been chair of the departments of music, mass communication, and communication, the division chair of creative arts and communication, and he now oversees departments that explore the potentials of multidisciplinary and experiential academic experiences.He has written concert reviews and articles on music technology for magazines and music journals. He interviews artists and innovators for his YouTube series, “Creativity Is...” Hegarty lives with his wife in a century-old historic home in St. Louis where he uses the space to record and produce avant-garde jazz and classical music.

Book preview

__________

A Street Long and Winding

Can I remember the first street musician I ever heard?

Old Town, Chicago. Mid 60’s. Wells Street. The images are pretty vivid. If you were there, you know what I mean. Bell bottoms, epic hair, paisley shirts – got to have one of those. Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, my parents would drive my sister and me through the neighborhoods of Chicago. If they asked me, I would always say, Let’s go to Old Town.

As a nine or ten year old kid, it was all about the music for me. And it was happening there, then. On the street.

I guess I got hooked on Wells Street. A taste for contemporary fashion, and a realization that the world was literally full and spilling over with music. I wanted to be a part of that. Nothing else was anywhere close to that exciting.

So I spent my time learning three-chord rock songs, playing in a band. And growing up.

My first trip to New York was in 1980 as a staff member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that was in town for a couple of Carnegie Hall concerts. And I stayed on for a few days to check out the city and feed my curiosity. In those days it was a very different place, just as Wells Street is now no longer populated with Hippies, I’m afraid. The NYC subway today is almost entirely free of graffiti and the sex shops around Times Square are thankfully gone.

I heard bucket music for the first time on that trip. And a mental door was blasted open. Instantly. You mean you can make music with like, anything? Well that’s interesting. Very interesting.

So this street musician thing goes way back. And it’s been a huge influence on my work as a musician, artist, and producer. It has left a deep and lasting mark on my artistic identity.

…

Ever walk down a city street and hear music in the distance? And then all of a sudden, it’s the most amazing sound, a performance of something new or exciting that just fundamentally alters the way things look? Even just for a moment?

It happens to me all the time. I find a lot of inspiration and new perspectives in street music.

It comes in the driving pulse of an African rhythm, the arching curve of a Bach melody, or intense power of a band jamming on a Second Line riff. Maybe it’s a drummer from Trinidad, a classical musician from China, or a guitarist from Syria. It could be someone from this very neighborhood, it doesn’t really matter. It’s happening on the street, somewhere, even right now.

Because street music has been a source of inspiration to me for as long as I can remember, I wanted to go out and collect it, share it, offer it up for the inspiration of others.

For the past two years, I’ve traveled to the major cities of the U.S. to make a documentary that shares the inspiration I’ve discovered. From New York to Venice Beach, New Orleans to Chicago, San Francisco to Boston, I captured music that I wanted to share so others could be inspired, too.

This story is about impressions and reality, about the images and the facts of making music on the street.

This book and the companion documentary are a result of my travels. The stories and images presented here are from the videos that appear in the documentary. The book provides depth and detail. And some of the nasty bits that are unavoidably a part of navigating an urban environment in the 21st century – a glimpse into the labyrinth