Takin’ it to the Street (Beat)
Have you ever watched a street performer playing great percussive beats on an instrument improvised from something you’d never considered as having musical potential?
The performers of Street Beat, a high-energy urban rhythm and dance group, do this in each of their performances, taking ordinary water bottles, buckets, trash cans, pots and pans, and making them into their own uniquely sonorous orchestra. The company’s dancers respond to the beat with hip-hop moves, astonishing break dance acrobatics, and the raw energy of the city.
This unforgettable show is coming to Fairbanks on Saturday, February 13 at 8pm at Hering Auditorium. Street Beat’s musicians and dancers honed their skills through their time as street performers in Los Angeles. Street performance is the basis for many of the art forms we enjoy in theatres and concert halls today, as well as a vibrant and viable form on its own.
Every major culture in the world has had performances in public places for gratuities, dating back to antiquity. Before the advent of recording and personal electronic devices, street performing was the most common means of employment for entertainers. Nearly anything that entertains people can be used for street performance, from acrobatics to poetry, from string quartets to sword swallowing and flea circuses. Street performers work for tips and gratuities, to hone their skills before a live audience, to meet people and socialize, and for the joy of entertaining.
Some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry started their careers as street performers, including Blue Man Group, Jimmy Buffett, George Burns, Bob Dylan, Stephane Grappelli, Joni Mitchell, Penn & Teller, Pete Seeger, and Stomp. In recent years, several very well-established and famous musicians have performed on the streets for their own entertainment or as a social experiment. Paul McCartney put on a disguise to perform for his film Give My Regards to Broad Street in 1984. He said, “It was something I'd always wanted to do, so I scruffed myself up a bit, put on a false beard and shades, and went down to Leicester Square tube station. It was really cool. A couple of people came up and said, 'Is it you?' but I just said, 'Oh, no'. But I got a few shillings and I thought, 'This doesn't feel right,' so I gave it to charity."
In a unique experiment initiated by Gene Weingarten, a columnist for the Washington Post, classical violinist Joshua Bell performed incognito as a street musician on his $4,000,000 Stradivarius in the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station in Washington, DC, on January 12, 2007. A hidden videocamera recorded the experiment and its results: among the 1,097 people who passed by during Bell’s 45 minute performance, only seven stopped to listen to his music, and only one person recognized him. Bell collected $32.17 from 27 passersby. Weingarten’s article on the experiment and its greater meaning, “Pearls Before Breakfast,” earned him the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.
