In front of the Burger King and between the sports grill and the tram rails – every tramline stops at the Liedesplein – there is a clear area where the buskars (as street performers are formally known) perform a never ending variety of acts. It’s a little bit noisy, what with the trams running so close, a few buses and cars, and the constant buzz of hundreds of outside diners. But I saw some great acts there. There is a guy who bounces a soccer ball on various parts of his body for unbelievably long amounts of time, and in an endless variety of patterns. He can even climb a light post with it. There are hip-hop dancers. I saw jugglers using flaming torches and machetes. There is even a Mexican style mariachi band.
In fact, Amsterdam is a Mecca of street musicians, and I tried to film them all. There were saxophone and brass quartets. There was an accordion and clarinet duo up by the train station. A guy with a penny whistle would go from restaurant table to restaurant table until people would pay him to go away, most likely. One street was filled with the full throated voice of a female singer who I couldn’t see, until I laid eyes on this tiny little figure with a guitar, dressed in torn up jeans, a golf cap, and almost completely lost in the clutter of the parked bicycles that surrounded her. There was even an accordion trio playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue (you know: the Halloween-like pipe organ piece made famous in the scary “Phantom of The Opera,” before Andre Lloyd Webber turned him into some sort of hunky, star-crossed lover).
But my favorite performer, by far, was a slight, little guy who was at the Liedesplein almost every evening, so often that I soon referred to him as “My Bass Playing Buddy.” He became a comforting sight for me, being so close to the hotel we called home base for the trip and so close to food. He would bring an old, beat up stand up string bass, a tambourine, and his voice. He would perform from on top of a wooden conductor’s podium, placing the tambourine between his foot and the wooden surface. He plucked hard at the bass’s worn strings and tapped the tambourine with his foot on the backbeats of every bar.
He sang a variety of old jazz standards and cocktail lounge hits, usually at a nice, relaxed medium tempo. His voice was not really powerful, and I always wanted him to turn up the little amp just a bit. But he always, always smiled. And every time someone came up to drop a few Euros into the little pail he put out in front of his set-up, he would stop playing, doff his hat to hold it over his heart, and say thank you. The younger and prettier the girl, the longer he would tip his hat.
I have no idea who he is, and I learned very little about him while I was there, not even from which direction he came, or from which part of town he hails. For some reason, he strikes me as Italian, not Dutch, yet there’s no reason for me to think that. Maybe it’s the dark hair and eyes. Also, I had an Italian friend many years ago, a wire-thin sax player, who wore dark baggy suits like this guy does. Perhaps that was it. I’d like to imagine he lives in a humble flat whose dull walls are decorated with famous jazzers. Something along the lines of black and white pictures of famous clubs and singers he dreamt of but never met: Sinatra, Martin, Tormé, Lady Day, Ella, etc. Dusty shelves of old vinyl would line the walls of the little apartment, a worn out phonograph needle filling the place with the sounds of yesteryear all the time. Sounds of a different time, a different era, the time when this guy should have been alive.
So, like the many of us who onsider ourselves born too late, instead he looks the part, dressed up in a white shirt and a skinny tie like Sammy, a hat with a little feather in the band like Frank, a suit coat that hangs on his thin frame like Deano. He packs up the same stuff in the same way for every gig: the amp inside the podium, which goes on the front rack of his black proper Dutch bike. The worn but sturdy tambourine, all the cords and a little-used drum machine (that I like to imagine he won in an illegal poker game, providing an explanation for the day three women cops showed up to discuss some sort of accusation made against him by some other street performers nearby) go in the saddlebags on the rear rack. The bass goes in its own giant gig bag, with a little red taillight attached on the outside. All this goes on his back. The bow, like Robins Hood’s quiver of arrows, slashes diagonally across the whole thing.
I watched him get started one evening when he was done. He pushes away from the curb, slow like an old train pulling out of the station with Glenn Miller’s band aboard. He wobbles, then finally gets up the momentum for the ride into the relative darkness of whatever side streets lead him home.
He usually plays every night until twelve midnight. He plays for anyone who will hear, who will stop a moment and get lost in the sound of a thumping bass from yesteryear. At times he is lost in the music, eyes closed, head bobbing, some sweat beading up on his forehead. But I’m sure as he plays, he has the incredible experience of watching the people that surround him. He might look into every one of their eyes. He might be the one person on the plaza with the chance to see their smiles, their tears, and their pain. He may even, from his vantage point a foot above the ground on his podium, see which one of us are legitimate with ourselves, and which are not, as if he could see our truths and our lies. It’s like the entire world has been brought to The Liedesplein so he can look deep in their souls to see how we run from hide from the lives when it seems that they are just making them old.
A few people may look down on him because of his hangdog face, and because his voice isn’t really all that strong. To be sure, the majority of the attention goes to the other, noisier performers on the square: a juggler juggling flaming swords on a unicycle, a magician making classless jokes about the tourist girls, a soccer ball expert scaling lampposts with a ball bouncing on his head are activities bound to get a certain amount of attention. Still, he humbly tips his hat to anyone who drops in a coin. and somehow, he keeps playing. And singing. And Smiling.
There was a really disappointing sort of altercation one day. A dirty fellow with a head full of uncombed hair and his hands full of sandwich and chips, passed by and made a rude thing or two. The bassist smiled and must have said something equally derogatory about the sandwich guy over the mic. To that, the guy turned around and tossed his sandwich at the ground by the pail into which the passers by drop their coins. The tourists smirked. Kids laughed. The tall, pretty Dutch girls never noticed.
But My Bass Playing Buddy plays on.
So why does he put up with it? The trams with their noise, the other acts, the way people get drunker and louder as the night goes on, the porta-potties without doors or walls put out on the weekends right next to his space?
I wonder if it’s because when he plays, he’s in another time and place, when things made a little more sense, where he fits in better with a nicely knotted tie and hat to add distinction to his sallow face, and where there were indoor gigs to be played, and trains to be ridden, and people appreciated his trying so hard for them. It wasn’t like it is now back then, and it will never be that way again. Too bad.
I imagine My Bass Playing Buddy doesn’t care about whether these kids and tourists and restaurateurs think this is heaven or hell, or if the whole world’s going to either one with them. He can live honestly, with integrity and great authenticity as long as he’s got the Liedesplein. And his bike. And the amp, which goes inside the podium, on the front rack. And a worn but sturdy tambourine, all the cords, and the drum machine he won in a poker game but hasn’t learned how to use, which go in the saddle bags on the rear rack. The bass goes in the gig bag with the little red light sewn on the outside. And the bow, like Robin Hood’s quiver of arrows, goes strapped across the back of the whole thing.
I got close to him on my last day, dropped some Euros into his little pail. As per custom, he took his hands of the strings, took his hat off. He looked right at me, said, “Dank u, with the tiniest little bow. And a real, true smile. He looked just like the music he played, and nothing like the silliness that surrounded him in the plaza.
Turns out he may be the only one there with any real integrity at all.
