Busking Becomes A Viable Way For Students To Make Money

“Everything depends on your act,” Jovan Johnson said.

Johnson is studying jazz performance at The New School, and focusing on trombone. Depending on his schedule, he can be found many days of the week playing music in subway platforms or at Washington Square Park for whoever happens to walk by.

This act of performing in the street or in subways is also known as busking. Most people busk as a hobby doubling as a source of extra cash, but some performers use busking as a way to be more creative with the type of show they put on.

During his performances, Johnson makes improvised loops using a mix of beat-boxing and sampling and then plays trombone over the loop.

“I could go and make, on average, around $20 or so an hour,” Johnson said.

Playing venues in New York is very much centered around networking and marketing, which isn’t always the easiest thing to maintain for a full-time student. Busking, however, is relatively quick to break into, simply requiring a $25 permit from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. One can easily draw in a crowd from the subway stations and parks, which are usually teeming with people who want to hear some original music.

During rush hour, when a train is coming every 4 minutes, the constant stream of people can disrupt the flow of his set.

“I’ll lay a beat-box, then I’ll lay a bass line, then I’ll lay three different harmonies,” he said. “For the people that just got to the platform, when they hear me playing over the loop—to them, it’s like ‘Oh he must just be playing over some type of track.’ They don’t see the process.”

In some ways, playing at a venue can be restrictive for the performer, since the audience is a specific crowd expecting a certain kind of performance that will be familiar to them. With busking, there’s no limit to the music one can make, or the crowds one might attract on any given day.

“I’m taking my music directly to the population I’m trying to affect,” Johnson said. “With a jazz club, you can only get so much because only so many people will come in there.”

When performing solo it is not only important to have one’s own unique presence onstage; one must also have the expertise to play at a high level, says Harrison Keithline, a student of jazz performance at The New School, with a bachelor of fine arts degree in jazz percussion.

“A really good musician has both,” Keithline told The Free Press. “They have all the thought, all the technique, and all the skill in the world, but they also know when to roll all that shit away. Because music and entertainment is just about losing yourself.”

Though lately he has been performing more at venues, Keithline’s preferred spot to busk has been the 4/5/6 train platform in Union Square, where it’s not rare for people coming from the Upper East Side or Downtown Brooklyn to drop $50 bills into his hat. Keithline is a member of a number of bands, including Napoleon, Wise Girl, and others, and is also regularly polishing his solo work in his studio located in his hometown of Providence.

Veteran solo busker and New School alumni Matt Vorzimer is a self-proclaimed e-cussionist, meaning he combines playing drums live with overlayed samples. Vorzimer studied jazz percussion at The New School and now spends much of his time busking in subway stations. As an e-cussionist, he combines loops from a variety of genres with his own beats using a drum pad.

But things were not always so easy for him when it came to busking. After he graduated from The New School in 2006, Vorzimer started playing music in parks with a jazz group to stay busy and keep a little pocket money.

“I was waking up at about five or six in the morning just so I could get to a spot,” Vorzimer told The Free Press, “and I would sleep on the park bench until about eight to hold down our territory because it got so competitive.”

Vorzimer did this from 2006 to 2011, at which point he came up with a solo act that he would perform in the subway, which was a combination of mashups and his own beats. He would sometimes start out a set with a sample from Bjork and the addition of his own beats made live, or something from any number of pre-recorded beats, then on top of that, he’ll lay the vocals of Rick Ross and let the set build from there.

“As soon as I started playing down in the subway by myself, people were amazed that there was this much sound coming from one person,” he said.

With the help of Music Under New York, a MTA program that grants street musicians the ability to use certain spots at times of their convenience, Vorzimer is now free of the nuisance of competing with other musicians for a stage on a subway platform. He still maintains a balance of playing in subways as well as in venues.

“I choose to stay in the subway. I don’t have to though,” said Vorzimer. “I definitely find the subway to be just as beneficial from a financial standpoint as from a crowdsourcing standpoint.”

Matt Vorzimer has two projects coming out in the near future. The first will be a mixtape of various mashups and remixes in the same vein as his subway performances. The second is a project called “Demigods,” featuring singer Dannis Winston, which will be a mix of soul and synth-pop. The album is set to be released in the next few months and will be available on Vorzimer’s site at ecussionist.bandcamp.com. Meanwhile folks can find him regularly doing his e-cussionist set in the West Fourth Street subway station, or in various venues around the city.