For obvious reasons, I haven’t taken the Subway in almost a year, and I have to say: I really miss it.

Not the crowds or the delays or the smells, of course. It’s the sounds that I miss.

There is a strange noisy quietness to a subway station that is difficult to find anywhere else. Distant rumbles seem to ride on underground breezes long before the train appears. The way everyone secretly listens to conversations that are happening as loudly as if nobody was there to Hear them.

The term “city noise” usually brings to mind ground-level street noise, but to me the sounds of a subway system are the more accurate representation of a city. Spend an hour underground and you’ll hear every language a city speaks. Spend an hour at street level and you’ll probably only hear cars.

One of my favourite things to hear underground is live music. During 16 years of public transit commuting, there were certain buskers I came to rely on; audio milestones on my daily trip to work. The guy who played the pan flutes. The steel pan drummer. The blues guitarist whose dancing marionette bounced with every movement of the musician’s leg, mesmerizing my son on our way home one day.

Busking takes a rare combination of skill and humility, and I have immense respect for those who do it well. It’s both surprising and unsurprising to learn that a fair number of famous musicians have been buskers: Jewel, Beck, Rod Stewart, B.B. King, Tracy Chapman, and Ed Sheeran all entertained passersby before rising to fame.

Guitarist Kaki King began busking in New York shortly after 9/11. The way she has described it, one gets the impression that in that city, after that day, putting her music out into the city, playing guitar in the subway, was something she was compelled to do. Her own very small, very personal way to heal herself and her city at the same time.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. King plays the guitar with the casual skill of a top-level athlete warming up before a game. She’s not playing anything difficult, but then for a split second she’ll hit a little flourish with such incredible precision that you can almost hear the years spent honing her craft in those NYC subway stations.

2. Structurally, it alternates between an A section and a B section in a way that could easily be looped to satisfy a never-ending stream of half-listening commuters.

3. Exactly halfway through, it strays from the structure and wanders up the neck of the guitar, like a passenger on an escalator.

Recommended listening activity:

Going underground.

Buy it here.

The post Week 561: “Night After Sidewalk” by Kaki King appeared first on Beautiful Song Of The Week.