Troubadours of the Harbor

The most distinctive form of entertainment Staten Island can call its own doesn’t actually take place anywhere on the Island proper, but rather traveling to and from it: the performances you catch on the Staten Island Ferry, whose quantity and variety always increase dramatically as the weather gets warm. We’re heading into prime season for ferry acts right now, and it’s time someone paid tribute to the people who either help us to calm down after a hard day’s work or get us to lively up ourselves and bounce forward cheerfully into whatever’s coming next.

Of course, insofar as the tourists are concerned, the ferry ride itself is certainly the main drawing card, the Island’s top act; it’s all (unfortunately) that most of them will experience of Island life. But this cluster of performers who — not content to have all the world as a stage — do their strutting on the decks of the boats that ply the waters between South Ferry and St. George are our troubadours of the harbor, the cast of the greatest show on H2O: the Staten Island Ferry Orchestra and Choir.

They’re not an official orchestra or a rehearsing chorus. Mostly they play alone, or in small group of two and three. They make their water music independently, and in fact most of them don’t even know each other. Yet they have provided me — and countless others, yourself perhaps included — with some of the most memorable musical and theatrical moments I’ve experienced as an Islander.

Collectively, the ferry performers I’ve seen and met have become a fixture in my life. I’ve resided in Stapleton since 1967. I work at home, and don’t ride the ferry daily — maybe two or three days a week, on average. But those three decades-plus add up to (among other things) a lot of ferry rides, and literally hundreds of encounters with entertainers — primarily but not exclusively musicians — who’ve offered up their talents in that unusual, al fresco setting.

As a one-time semi-professional musician myself (I played in rock bands in San Francisco and Staten Island between 1966 and 1970), I find the very thought of playing the boat both thrilling and daunting. The setting is idyllic: you’re out on the water, with that peculiar sense of suspended time that a sea cruise (even a miniature one) generates. The harbor and the skyline are never less than picturesque, and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful. The patient, gliding motion of the boat, the soft rumbling of the engines, the clean salt smell of the sea — these create an atmosphere in which any heartfelt sound takes on a special resonance.

Are they a special breed, these performers who will risk hecklers, the stares of lobotomized commuters, the periodic hassles with crew and cops, and the occasional but real dangers of working on a moving vehicle? I suspect they are, though I have no real proof. Certainly they’re as varied a group of artists as any. Over the years, I’ve seen mime, juggling, magic and mind-reading. Musically, it’s ranged from Peruvian and Caribbean through classical chamber music, ragtime, jazz, and assorted mixtures of American folk/pop/rock/blues.

Why do musicians play the ferry? They cite a variety of advantages. Unlike the subways, the ferries are quiet. Unlike the street, the acoustics are good — the sound doesn’t evaporate, as it tends to do in the open air. It’s cool in summer and — especially important — warm in winter. (“Somehow I just never realized that it was heated until the first time I tried playing there,” I remember being told bemusedly, long ago, by a former ferry regular — sax player Herman Wright, an unofficial historian of New York City street music.)

Some years back I chatted for awhile with singer-guitarist Paul Clarke, who played the ferry steadily for a long stretch. He preferred the weekend, with its heavy tourist contingent, because “they’re out to enjoy themselves. The commuters seem very heavily burdened — tired, preoccupied — and you have to respect people’s ears and their desire for silence. But I have this vision of everybody bursting into song on the ferry — a robust chorus of ‘We Are The World’ — and the boat just taking off like an aquaplane.”

Certainly these performers take their work seriously. They do it to learn the lessons of performing in public, and because they like to play for others, and because the ferry is a remarkable setting for whatever one has to offer. None of them is in it strictly for the money, but no one turns the contributions down, either. “It helps fill in the holes between other gigs,” said one performer with whom I spoke.

As for the quality — well, let’s say it varies. I’ve never heard anyone who was out-and-out awful; the worst I ever encountered was mediocrity, which is tolerable when combined with the ferry ride. After all, it’s avoidable; unless the boat is jammed, you can always get out of earshot. The boats’ acoustics are such that the sound doesn’t carry far; you really can’t hear much from deck to deck or from one end to the other. But that particular instance of less-than-prime afforded another mediocre guitar player (myself) the opportunity to learn a chord change I’d never been able to figure out before. So even the worst of it has its redeeming values, and the best of it more than compensates you for your tolerance.

What’s most remarkable to me about the current crop is their professionalism. They may be singing for their supper, but these are not earnest novices thrashing out endless choruses of “Let It Be,” nor the woebegone, incompetent types to whom you give a quarter in the hope that they’ll shut up and scuttle off. Rather, these are serious performing artists who play the ferry (sometimes, too, the subways and the streets) because they choose to, not because their skills aren’t of the highest caliber. “I’ve got a captive audience for a whole half-hour,” the aforementioned Herman Wright once told me. “It’s not like the street, where people will listen to half a song and then move on. I’m there with them and they’re right with me, so they can hear the full range of what I can do.”

The kind of entertainment you can encounter here on the world’s cheapest ocean voyage ranges widely, as I can testify from experience. There’s no telling what you may see or when you might see it. The scheduling is not only unpredictable but nonexistent. Among other things, the element of surprise is on the side of the performers: all of a sudden they’re just there, right in your face. Some are one-shot events, striking like lightning, caught purely by chance. Then you have the regulars, the ones you look forward to, the performers you get to know. They become like familiar, comfortable slippers — with the advantage that you get to slip into them before you get home.

So just keep your eyes and ears open — there’s no telling who or what you might get to hear as you float between the Island and the core of the Apple. And put some change in the hat, or the guitar case, as you leave. Consider it a contribution to keeping alive the legend of the carefree, devil-may-care, unfettered musician content to be, in Joni Mitchell’s words, “playin’ real good, for free.”