Music in the Streets: The Example of Washington Square Park in New York City

Author(s): Paolo Prato

Source: Popular Music, Vol. 4, Performers and Audiences (1984), pp. 151-163
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853361
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Music in the streets:the exampleof Washington
SquareParkin New YorkCity

by PAOLO PRATO

Introduction
Non b bello quel che e bello, ma e bello quel che piace
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
(Proverb)

Music has always been part of street life. Takingit off the streets and
bringing it into enclosed spaces is a relativelyrecent experiencebut it
has profoundly changed the way music is perceived and evaluated.
'After art music moved indoors, street music has become an object of
increasing scorn' (Schafer 1980, p. 66). However, although discour-
aged by the new sonorities that appeared with the Industrial
Revolution and the new comfort of home-reproduciblemusic, street
music has not disappeared:on the contrary,it is tending to reinvade
the urban scene, in forms both old and new.
Once, music heard in the streets offered unique experiences. For a
long time it had been the only music which could reach the poorer
layers of society. In VictorianLondon, Germanbrass bands, hurdy-
gurdies, barrel organs and barrel pianos were 'perambulatingcon-
servatoires teaching the masses the most accepted music of the day'
(Chambers' Journal,1881, quoted Pearsall 1973, p. 194). Nowadays,
music in the street is a recycling of what has alreadybecome familiar
through the electronic media. The street changes its function: from
being a workshop of knowledge it has become a testing-ground. In
Jakobson'sterms, music in the street no longer performsreferentialor
aesthetic functions: it performs primarily metalingual, phatic and
conative functions.* Its purpose is no longer that of inventing a code
but rather that of checking it. However, if we take together all
'informal'music practices- those taking place in open public spaces -
as distinguished from 'formal'music practices- those taking place in
enclosed spaces - we are able to establishsome recurringsimilaritiesin
the former, notwithstanding the many changes undergone by them.
* In Jakobson'smodel of communication,referentialfunctions are oriented towards
extrinsicmeaning ('content'),aestheticones towardsintrinsicmeaning ('the message
for its own sake');metalingualfunctionshave to do with checkingcomprehensionof
the code ('do you understand?'),phatic functionswith makingcontact('hello'), and
conative functions with ordering, addressing or instigatingaction ('hey, you . . .').
151
152 Paolo Prato

As faras texts (musicalworks) areconcerned, there is in streetmusic

always an interchangebetween 'trivial'and 'art'music, and the way
these are performedoften suggests an actualequalityof 'status',due to
a homogenising of performing practices: of gesturing and timbres
(think of barrelpiano or accordion). The musical narrativeis for the
most partshaped by the need forreadyappeal, and an emphasis is also
put on contextualaspects:gestures, clothes, presentationare not mere
ornaments to music but organise the ways in which it is enjoyed. In
contrast, indoor music requires absolute devotion to the text: music
history focuses upon texts ratherthan practices.Like all dichotomies,
this too understands a hierarchy: history constantly testifies to
attempts at limiting and banning 'outdoor music' because it is noisy
and unpleasant. Nevertheless, outdoor music has always existed and
only in our century has it started to disappear. Accordingto Murray
Schafer, 'it was not the result of legislative refinement but the
invention of the automobilethat muffled the voices of the street cries'
(Schafer 1980, p. 67).
I argue that formal or indoor music practices, with the striking
exception of discotheques and rock dance halls, are mostly associated
with questions of time whereas informal, or outdoor, music practices
are mostly associated with questions of space. In Schutz's terms we
would speak of 'inner time' versus'outer time'. Music in inner time
(duree)is experienced as a meaningful flux by bracketingthe universe
of everyday life and concentratingupon listening;music in outer time
is, in turn, experiencedas a meaningfulfluxbecause it is not separated
from that universe but contiguous to it. In the firstcase memoryacts as
an interplayof recollectionsand anticipationswhich are internalto the
musical discourse; in the second case memory is fertile thanks to
extra-musicalevents - for instance, we recollectthe melody of a song
because we remember its words, dances and marches because they
relate to body movements. In such a way attention is naturally
distracted by many factors that belong to the ordering of the
surrounding environment. Schaferspeaks of 'unfocused listening' or
'peripheralhearing';WalterBenjaminspoke of 'distractedreception'.I
am going to examine examples of outdoor music practicesin this light;
more precisely I am going to deal with practicesthat take place in the
metropolis,this being the placewhere outdoormusic exists outside the
restrictions fixed by time - calendar exigencies - and space -
specialised uses. Thus I will not focus upon music performedduring
outdoor festivals, fairs, political events and religious liturgies - itself
possessing a certaindegree of formality- but ratheron informalmusic
practiceswhich tend to mix with the environment, to be part of it and
to be perceived in distraction. Formal music practices, by contrast,
 Music in the streets:WashingtonSquarePark 153

represent interventions on the environment, which entail complete,

however ephemeral, redefinitions of it.

Urbanspace redefined
Street musicians prospered right up to the beginning of the twentieth
century. Their gradual disappearancewas due to a lowering of urban
soundscape fidelity (the invention of the automobile)and to the advent
of new means of musicalreproduction:this equipmentsucceeds where
innumerable legal actions against them, over several centuries, have
failed. Street musicians did not disappearcompletelybut lost much of
their musical and social relevance until the sixties, when the cultural-
political turmoil, primarilyinvolving the younger generation, led to a
rebirthof the 'folksinger'as a popular stereotype, able to attractmany
of the new anti-conformist expectations. This type, as a set of
behavioural patterns, was popularised by the mass media and the
sociological effects put in motion both a vast process of music
self-education concentrated especially on the guitar (see Prato 1979)
and a 'return to the street'. The sixties was the period in which
nomadism became a way of life appealing to a great number of young
people and the 'folksinger' endowed it with a particulartheatrical
aspect. Throughout the sixties and seventies, however, this figure
graduallybecame normalised and his lonesome, hippie ways became
almost obsolete: street music was evolving towards an increasing
specialisation of performing means.
Contemporaryurbanculturein Westernsocieties is characterisedby
a growing 'aestheticisation'of life and a growing 'spectacularisation'of
urban space. Art and entertainment- among the most productive
institutionalisedpracticesin a post-modernsociety- are no longer tied
to a privileged time and space, but tend to disregardthese categories.*
Put in other words, the Festivitatsgefuhl (feeling of festivity) which
somehow connotates art, play and entertainment activities, is no
longer definable in terms of time - in the sense that there was once a
'sacred' or 'festive' time as opposed to a 'profane' or 'everyday life'
time - but in terms of space: there are spaces where it permanently
dwells (cinema halls, discotheques, shopping centres, private homes
provided with audio and video equipment) and spaces where it is
absent. If, in the ancient and pre-industrialisedcity, public space was
chaotic, its meanings and functions needing to be constantlyredefined
(thus, for example, the market square was used for various
overlappingpurposes), in the modern city, publicspace is orderedand
its meanings and functions are specialised: activities that might
* 'Post-modern'is a term used by Jean-FransoisLyotard(see Lyotard1979).
154 Paolo Prato
formerly have taken place anywhere are now spatially segregated.
This is to avoid possible misunderstandingsin the use of it;the ideal is:
a place for everything and everything in its place (see Lofland 1973).
What I call 'spectacularisationof urban space' is a set of operations
that, in the post-moderncity, tend to transformthe spatialorderingof
urban public space according to aesthetic criteria. Borrowing L. H.
Lofland'sterminology,we can say that such transformationsareof two
types: local and symbolic. Localtransformationsare interventions on
space itself and the bodies and objects which cross it; symbolic
transformationsare interventions on users' behaviour. Examples of
the formerwould be politicalevents, religiousliturgies,festivals, street
theatre and musical performances.Music plays a primaryrole in such
processes of spectacularisation.If, as Levi-Strausssuggests, noise was
associatedin myth-regulatedsocietieswith the sacredand silence with
the profane, modern societies have turned the relationupside down,
to the point that excess noise has everywhere to be controlled by
regulations. Today music, especiallypopularmusic, is associatedwith
a playful and festive characterisationof life and, in the age of its
technical reproducibility,it tends to infiltrateinto spaces which are
traditionallyalien to it, such as spaces of productionor transit-offices,
factories, supermarkets,trains. The diffusion of music outside tradi-
tionally established places and moments is partof a seductive strategy
which aims at rendering any human action desirable or, at least,
bearable. Time of work, consumption and desire tend to amalga-
mate, thus losing their own characteristictraits.
Leaving aside those spaces in which the use of music is more
concerned with a certain 'comforting'function (Muzak)than with a
spectacularisation, the spaces where music intervenes 'live' as a
spectacularelement, so as to reorganisethe perceptionand use of the
spaces themselves, are the areaswhere the ritualof narcissism(public
squares, parks), the ritual of transit (streets, subway stations, under-
ground passages) and the ritualof consumptionare celebrated.This is
becoming common practicein the greaturbancentres, where even the
most habitual behaviours such as transit and rest are susceptible
to spectacularisation.
An everyday remapping of the topography of spectacularisable
scenes, accounts for their ephemeral character. Not only their
localisationis ephemeral:a poetics of the ephemeralaffectsthe modes
of productionand consumption of the spectacularevents themselves,
that is, they are conceived in such a way as to be fully enjoyed in a
situation of haste and distraction.The disappearanceof 'aura'brings
about what Benjaminhas named 'distractedreception'and Gadamer
'aestheticalindifference',which does away with the 'criticaldifference'
 Music in the streets:WashingtonSquarePark 155

that has characterisedthe bourgeois attitude towards art. If art gets

back to the world, to its soil (Grund),then it is to be investigated in
terms of topological rather than ontological analyses. An extreme
consequence of this would be that artis where it is and not what it is. In
a post-modern society artloses its criticalpotentialand affirmsitself as
a blatant,inescapablepresence with which we have learnedto live (the
mass media diffuse information, culture and entertainmentall under
the general criteriaof 'beauty', that is, the formalattractivenessof the
products). That is why to talk about art today is to talk about its
localisation.
As I said earlier, musical street performancesbelong more to space
than to time. They can be viewed as architecturalworks, part of the
environment. According to Benjamin, architecturehas always pro-
vided the prototype of artworkwhose perceptionoccursin distraction.
There are two ways in which to perceive works of architecture:tactile
and optical. The first founds itself upon habit, the second upon shock.
It is in a dialectic between these two poles that we perceive street
music; but my argument is that the two are not totally separatedand
that a shocking effect can be enjoyed as healthy only if it contains a
certainamount of habit. Shockgeneratesmarvelonly if it occurswithin
habitual coordinates, otherwise it generates fear. Shock is tied to an
original experience, one that shakes the standards of the quotidian.
Only weak shocks are possible in a universe of repetition and
indifference. Everyimage is alreadyimage of itself and of all others in a
horizon of counterfeit and simulacra.

WashingtonSquareParkas a theatre
WashingtonSquareParkin Manhattan,New York,has been chosen as
an example of open publicspace which regularlypresents a sufficiently
representative range of informal music events (see Fig. 1). The park
and the centralsquare- pedestrianareas- functionboth as transitzone
and rest zone, in a high-density touristicneighbourhood. On a typical
summer afternoon the park square presents itself as a multicoloured
circus-fairwith some fixed numbers, such as the showman who is a
conjurer-cum-fire-eater,the juggler, the stand-up comic, the roller-
skate, skateboardand freesbee virtuosiand the variousmusicians:jazz
and rock banks, folk singers, conservatory students, ethnic music
groups, steel-band players, etc. Besides this 'official'show, there are
individual contributionsto what amounts to a total theatricalisationof
the space, from walkmen, portable radios, cameras. The various
performancesare distributed along the perimeterof the square at an
average distance of fifteen to twenty metres from one another. People
 /

156 Paolo Prato

(ul y

,;,
X <¢S - X

(!) Roller-skate disco (@ Steel-piano player

(t3 Puppet show (§) Jazz group
( Piano player i) Latin American percussionists
@ Folk singer (4) Country music band
(g Mime (@ Stand-up comic
(0 Juggler (H) Showman-conjurer-fire-eater
(i) Rock band (i) Conservatory flute students
Figure 1. Schema of Washington Square Park on a typical summer afternoon

walk through this bizarreworkshop, where natural, mechanicaland

electricaltones overlap with voices and noises of various kinds, and
orient themselves according to their auditory and visual desires.
Freedomof movement and informalityof behaviourare increasedby
the fact that all events are free: if you like, you can leave a quarter.
The acousticconditions characteristicof outdoor space undoubtedly
lessen the importanceof the sensual components of music, which are
betterrealised in an enclosed space where the signal is more clearly
transmittedand amplifiedby reverberation(see Winckel1974).Conse-
 Music in the streets:WashingtonSquarePark 157

quently, a street musician must stress other elements, because music

for its own sake is not sufficient. As a matterof fact, street musicians
have always known this, certainly since the times that gave birth to
the commediadell'arte:ambulant performerswere not only musicians
but also stand-up comics, vendors and healers whose first aim
was that of selling a convincing image of themselves. To compensate
for the deficiencies of distractedlistening and to appeal to a flowing
streamof passers-by, street musicians oscillatebetween two solutions:
virtuosity and familiarity.These do not necessarilyexclude each other;
however, they represent two differentstrategies. A virtuoso perform-
ance tends to signify its presencewithinthe contingent spatio-temporal
coordinates. A medley of familiartunes, on the other hand, tends to
relate to absentelements of the socio-culturalcode rather than to the
present materialityof the performance.In other words, there is here a
polarisationbetween a musical experiencewhich displays an emotive
function (attention is focused upon the subjective aspects of the
performance), and a musical experience which 'tickles' the most
superficialzones of the collectiveimagery, thus displaying primarilya
metalingualfunction (listening is a verificationof one's competence in
the code) and secondarily phatic and conative functions (to establish
contact, through a familiarmusic; to produce certainstandardeffects
on the public). There is no communicativefunctionin the iterationof a
well-known Bob Dylan protest song,* nor does its performancefoster
an aesthetic effect, for attention is very rarely paid to its textual
characteristics.Instead, it is the whole event which carriesaesthetic
connotations; such expansion, overlapping and speeding up of
perceptions brings about what I should like to call 'aestheticisationof
recollections'. Following the modes of mass culture, there occurs a
totally culturalised musical experience, where nothing is originalbut
has already been heard somewhere else; this somewhere is not
locatable(spatiallyor temporally)but is disseminated around us like a
corporealappendix to our bodies. 'Modernlo-fi soundscape possesses
no perspective; rather sounds massage the listener with continual
presence' (Schafer1980, p. 158). Thereforewe should speak of tactile
rather than optical knowledge in this respect. The aestheticisationof
recollections, which sums up the experience of Washington Square
Park, is, then, the perception of habitual and trivial events (sounds,
images, gestures) within a spectacularframe that aims at presenting
them as shocking.
Maybe the fundamental difference between a piece of music
performed outdoors and the same piece performed indoors (and
* I take 'communicative'as meaning 'referential';or more precisely, as referringto
verbal language.
158 Paolo Prato
therefore in its 'natural'place) is that the first need not be a faithful
copy of the model, as long as it functionsas a sign of it. As such, today's
outdoor music is not an autonomous experience within the vaster
music panorama- as it was before the advent of electronicmedia- but
finds its guaranteesof success in a rereadingof indoor music. If it is not
autonomous fromthe viewpoint of texts, its peculiaritiesare, however,
to be found in its textualpracticesor, in other words, in the ways texts
are faked and presented in a differentlight. Forexample, if a rocksong
is performed by the composer, what it may foster is an aesthetic
appreciationof itself; if the same song is performed outdoors by an
amateurband using cheap and low-fidelityinstrumentation,attention
is very likely to be focused, not on centralfactorsof recognisability(the
melodic line especially, then harmony and rhythm) but rather on
various peripheral factors of recognisability (such as arrangement,
timbre, comparisons with the original), as well as on the related
connotations, social and individual. Again, popular tunes such as
'Love Story' or 'A Man and a Woman' played on a steel drum do not
claim attention for themselves as texts but as texts presented by that
particularensemble instrument performer. They ultimately amplify
the meaning of the ensemble and legitimise its existence; thus, more
than music such tunes are here 'signs' of music.

Musical events in Washington Square Park

Almost all of the events that take place in WashingtonSquareParkare
unoriginal. A common itinerary through it would be the following:
introduced by a Cagean radio music - a sort of 'natural'background
sound coming from portable radios whose mixing is determined by
individual trajectories- you may stop before a bizarrepair of oil drum
lids (called 'steel piano' or 'steel drum') played by a Caribbean
musician. Instead of presenting ethnic music of his own country, he
plays long medleys of evergreen tunes (often only theirrefrains)from
the fifties and sixties, thus creatingat once an atmosphereof familiarity
which neutralises any possible diffidence towards the exotic-tech-
nocraticcharacterof the instrument.The surpriseeffect is obtainedby
the encounter between the novelty of the tone and nature of the
instrument, and the familiarityof the music performed.Immediately,
then, the music event becomes a simulacrum, that is, an image of
music. The performerdoes not aim to offer an exclusively aesthetic
experience but, aware of the distractedreceptionwhich characterises
the back-and-forthflow of his public,he aims at capturingthis publicin
single moments: by dividing his performanceinto brief, meaningful
units, which, however, are tied to one another, he facilitatesa mutual
 Music in the streets:WashingtonSquarePark 159

tuning-in relationship. Now you move ten metres forwardand come

across a rock-blues band playing with rather poor instruments and
batteryamplification.A crowd of young people stand, stareand dance
to their impoverished but passable versions of Rolling Stones and
Creamhits. They play for the multitudeof nostalgicswho overlookthe
make-shift aspect of the actual performancebecause they are reliving
through it what the performance relates to (the utopian imagery
relatedto rockfestivals, the 'freak'universe of the earlyseventies . . .).
Here again music is an image of itself and the differencebetween copy
and model becomes irrelevantto the success of the event. A little bit
further on you can enjoy the retro-flavouredmusic coming from an
upright piano placed under the arch in the north side of the square.
The pianist is an old man who drags along his instrument every
Saturdayand Sunday, spends aboutan hour in tuning it, then startson
his usual repertoire,which is made up for the most part of melodies
from a wide range of sources: musical comedy, cabaret,folk dances,
barrel piano waltzes, piano literaturefor beginners and others. The
show, actuallystartingwith the tuning operations- themselves a fine
theatricaltouch- is a combinationof agreeablenaivete (the performer
is a poorly skilled dilettante)with iconographicsuggestions of bygone
days (memories of barrel pianos emerge from the anachronistic
happening).
Another kind of show is the one offered by the Latin American
percussionists: a small number of musicians start a rhythmic figure,
then anyone who wishes is providedwith a percussioninstrumentand
can join in, while others can improvise dances and songs. This is an
example of open ensemble, open in space and time, as opposed to the
closed ones where the publicis not allowed to intervene directlyin the
textual practices. What counts here is to participaterather than to
assist, making music together more than listening to it. The structures
of the event are more like those of a game than those of art, requiringa
previous knowledge of the rules which makes participation and
enjoyment more selective than it is for, say, cosmopolitan rock and
popular music.
An example of the influence of technology on solo performanceis
provided by the flautist who plays in duet with an amplified cassette
on which he has previously recordeda second part(from,for instance,
a Baroquesonata for two parts), or, similarly,by the saxophonist who
improvises over a pre-recordedharmonicsequence. The most elemen-
tary operationin studio recordingbecomes an everyday practice,thus
disclosing new routes to outdoor creativity.
When outdoor music is not exclusivelya discourseon the known but
claims to be primarilyan aesthetic experience, then it must appeal to
160 Paolo Prato
technical virtuosity. Such are the performances of the jazz group,
which plays quite regularly in other places as well (for example, in
front of the Plaza Hotel). Their style is mostly be-bop; they are a
semi-professional group able to attain good results in terms of
ensemble and solos. Jazzimprovisationis a virtuoso practicefounded
upon subjectivity,thus differentiatingitself from others hinging upon
cliche or the iteration of the known. Admittedly, any of the
performancestaken into accountcontaina certaindegree of virtuosity,
but this is rarely an end in itself. It is often employed as a means to
produce cheap thrillsor, simply, kitscheffects, as when classicalmusic
is tamed according to criteriawhich are proper to popular music or,
conversely, when popular music is classicised.*
The street is the scene where an indifferent mixing of 'high' and
'low' texts, in a homogenising type of approachshaped on the modes
of entertainment and play, is most likely to occur. The 'promise of
happiness', which for Adorno constituted the ultimate meaning of
popularmusic, seems then to derivefromthe pleasureof recognition:a
speeded-up recognition which includes a collective sharing of the
related connotations. It is the very sharing of connotations - not the
mere recognition of the tune - which generates this kind of aesthetic
pleasure, but in a post-modern age, where there is no longer a clear
distinctionbetween a festive and a non-festive time, this does not take
the form of Durkheimianeffervescence. On the contrary,it is a testing
operation whose effect is to lubricatethe circuitsof knowledge. Jean
Baudrillardcalls it the 'seduction of the code'.

New listening habits

Borrowingthe terminologyof the musicologistand ethnomusicologist
Marius Schneider, we can speak of sedentary musicians - those who
come regularlyto play, locals- and ambulatorymusicians- those who
pass by, travellers.In the same way, we could speak of sedentaryand
ambulatoryways of enjoying music. If there is no need for the former
to be illustrated,the latterreveals itself to be the privilegedway of the
outdoors. A different kind of aesthetic pleasure is obtained through
movement: moving from one attractionto anotheris like watching TV
by continuously switching channel with a telecontrol, something
already proposed by the Italianfuturistswith respect to cinema (that
* See E. Dufaure'srecord Starsof the Streets,which containsJ. S. Bach'sPreludein E
played on a marimba,Beethoven'sFurEliseplayed on steel drums,Vivaldi'sTrioin E
minor op. 1 no. 2 played on tuba, violin and vibraphone, Gershwin's 'They all
laughed' and GlennMiller'sMoonlightSerenade arrangedfor a brasstriowith Baroque
sonorities.
 Music in the streets: Washington SquarePark 161

is, composing one's own movie by entering and leaving a different

cinema hall every five minutes).
Similarly,we can have the experience of walking, running, skating,
riding a bike while rockingwith a 'walkman'or a portableradio. Here
the functionalityof the music attainsits best results;as a matterof fact,
disco, funk, rap music and the like are best enjoyed through repetitive
movements, so that we should not speak of the 'functionality'of music
in relationto movement, but of a perfectintegrationbetween the two,
just as in 'classical music' listening is perfectly integrated with a
sedentarybehaviour. This ambulatoryway of listening is characterised
- in Schafer'sterms - by 'immersion'ratherthan 'concentration';what
is experienced is a 'wraparoundsound' rather than a 'sound from a
distance', and its 'presence' eliminates any 'perspective'.Thus music
becomes, on the one hand, a partof the environmentand on the other
hand a part of the body.
'In earlier societies the vast majority of sounds were discrete or
interrupted while today the majority are continuous' (Schafer 1973,
p. 29). Seeing that the distinctionbetween a time/space of silence and a
time/space of noise has become almost irrelevant,what we experience
in the modern city is a sort of 'sound indifference' which, besides
homogenising sounds, renders different spatio-temporalcoordinates
equivalent to one another.

Conclusion
Music in the streets has different uses in different historicalperiods,
but generally speaking it very rarely claims to be an aesthetic
experience. Outdoor music practiceshave been meant to celebratea
sacred or secular power, by appealing to the population through
highly redundant qualities(processions, funerals, ceremonies . . .), or
to serve as a means of entertainment, or to perform an informative
function as mass-media embodied in such figures as the jongleur, the
minstrel, the cantastorie, the modern folk-singer.
Fromhis viewpoint Berliozis rightwhen assertingthat 'musicout of
doors is nonsense', since most Western practiceof music has been an
attempt to emancipate it from its relations with celebration, body,
meaning, and to preserve an aseptic terrainseparatedfromothers. In a
mass-media universe, however, the strategy is that of breaking
through the various separate sub-universes and homogenising the
ways of experiencing culturalproducts. My view on today's outdoor
music in an urban setting has tried to provide an example of such a
break-throughof the separate codes, which constitutes what I have
162 Paolo Prato
called 'a spectacularisedexperience of music': by speaking of itself,
music advertises the code and controls its users' competence.
The first phase of mass media (radio, TV, Hi-Fi) coincided with a
privatisation of music- the home as a meaningfulmusicalcentreversus a
meaningless public soundscape - which parallelled, according to its
'negative critics', the music's loss of meaning, banalisation, etc. The
second phase (walkman, car-stereo, portable radio, street music)
coincides with a growing socialisaton of music, based on new premises.
The sound identity of public space becomes meaningful again, but
it very often does so accordingto the same modalitieswhich operate
in private spaces, so that today's street music, besides being heir
to the street music of the past, is also, and maybe primarily,heir to
its antagonists (the home media). The experience of Washington
Square Park, for example, has more in common with TV and radio
advertising than with an outdoor performancein VictorianLondon.
On the one hand, today's streetmusic fostersnew listening habits, but
on the otherhand, it repeatsfamiliarmessages;it certainlyenrichesthe
notion of music and redefines that of noise, but it also reduces
creativityto an exercise in good style, and makes popularitycoincide
with effect.
The experienceof streetmusic today not only includes that of 'street'
(the social involvement) and that of 'music' (the aesthetic involve-
ment), but also a review of what is known about 'street' and 'music'
(the code involvement).
Following Luigi Del Grosso Destreri's paradox- 'music does not
exist, . . . what we deal with are a number of musical behaviours'
(Destreri1981,p. 138)- I have been focusing upon the anthropological
ratherthan the musical aspects of outdoor music. In so doing I do not
claim that the various genres of music have no specificitywith regard
to their related behaviours; only that they lose many of their
differentiating features when taken off their 'original' sites and
exhibited in streets and public squareswhere they ultimatelymonitor
social interaction.

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