Concert halls and sanctuaries are designed for optimal sound and viewing. Danny walks into any potential music venue and immediately starts snapping his fingers and walking here and there making noise to check acoustics. Your husband doesn’t do this? Oh. Well, my sweet musician can’t help himself and I hardly even notice anymore though I still notice when he uses my legs as part of his imaginary drum set when he plays along during concerts, at the movies, in the car…

I think I’m off topic.

The point is to say that atmosphere matters. Sound matters. Musicians and all their technicians (those people you don’t see but who play that sound board like a violin and who roll up mic and patch cables on their arms like the Crocodile Hunter wrestling a water moccasin) love a room with proper design.

On a street corner in a busy city, skilled musicians take what they can get. Let me back up. I once assumed if a person was playing his music while perched on an upside down 5-gallon bucket outside tourist shops that meant he wasn’t very good. I think a lot of people feel this way. It’s easy to assume. Who would choose the dampness, the unfocused audience, the car brakes accompanying his tune?

We heard many such musicians on the streets of New Orleans and most of them were darn good but one group held our attention for thirty minutes when we could have been furthering our beignet binge or buying pralines or watching the guys who walk down stairs on their hands. We simply could not walk away from this group. They engaged with their audience, drawing us in and magically transporting us into their musical world. We were part of all of it—the clarinet player (Danny’s favorite), the violinist who made snappy remarks and batted his eyes at the ladies who stopped to dance to his song, the guy playing guitar with the piercing eyes. One guy actually played a washboard. They leaned in and so did we. They laughed and then closed their eyes as the sound took them somewhere else entirely. They did not let the venue define their quality.

They have a gift and we received it.

I wondered about what they do besides music. Are they husbands and fathers? Do they bag groceries or audit taxes in order to fund their street music habit? Or do they depend solely on those dollar bills and quarters dropped into the blue, plush, open guitar case? They sold CDs for $15 and wrapped up their performance far too quickly. I saw the guitarist later, hurrying through the crowds, maybe off to another street corner? Maybe to his art studio. I don’t know. I sort of wanted to follow him (though this was the day I wore super cute but excruciatingly painful shoes and had to sit in front of the cathedral, rip my footwear off and rub my toes extensively to thwart the cramping… so following random musicians wasn’t in the cards).

I do know a few things: these were real and talented musicians. We are better having heard their harmonies and joined their rhythms. The environment only added to the experience. We weren’t in a perfectly-designed, acoustically superior room. We were in the heart of their city, with their people, on their sidewalk, hearing street cars and car horns and bits of conversation and that entirely New Orleans background was the perfect accompaniment for their songs and our day.