Skid Row Easter Celebration

Six rows of metal folding chairs, each inscribed with names in faded paint, were lined in perfectly straight queues in the center of Gladys Park, Skid Row at a Saturday morning Easter celebration. While the jazz band jammed to bluesy beats, hardly anyone sat in the chairs, except for one or two passersby or the occasional charity volunteer.

The real audience stretched out on the cement ground. Around the outskirts of the park, a woman with a bright red bruise on the left side of her face reclined on the legs of her partner. Other homeless people rested in disorganized groups, most curled in sleeping positions, the lullabies of the jazz band echoing over their heads.

Gary Brown, the solo alto saxophone player, belted melodies unfamiliar to my classically trained ears. His accompanists, two percussionists and a keyboardist, provided steady patterns of beats while he improvised unusual rhythms to no particular sheet music, in no particular major or minor key. The free flow of his performance, unconfined by written music notes and scripts, was jarring.

I was used to audiences filing into striking concert halls, sitting in evenly spaced cushioned seats and focusing their undivided attention to the show. Viewers were not allowed to talk, and profuse coughs drew glances of annoyance. The enforced silence mystified the musicians onstage, a scene removed from daily life. The conductor and orchestra were a spectacle of talent that I paid high ticket prices to watch.

I identified with the musicians for their classical training and strict discipline. They too, endured hours of music theory, scales, practice and rehearsals. Because I believed in the lifelong devotion to perfecting a traditional craft, I valued European classical music above all other music, and I carried an air of elitism.

Skid Row was a different kind of spectacle. The fluid spontaneity of jazz music reflected the disorder of homelessness. Jazz is not bound by the lines on centuries-old sheet music created by a famous European composer. The genre encourages the freedom to play according to your sense of timing, tempo and melody. If the notes keep coming, then keep playing. “You never run out [of keys] or anything,” said Brown, who was homeless for nearly 10 years but now lives several blocks away from Skid Row. He practices with another band every Saturday afternoon and sometimes performs at a pizza parlour down the street.



On a day meant to celebrate a figurehead symbol of suffering and resurrection, there is certainly suffering at Skid Row, but there is also life. Basketballplayers grunt groans on the court, two friends wearing boxing gloves jab at a bag, and the police blast reprimands over the megaphone about jaywalking. Amid the cacophony, Brown blows smooth sounds from his saxophone with the persuasion of an orator. I take a seat on a metal folding chair painted with the words “Skid Row Gladys Park” and listen.

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