Many people walking around St. Louis neighborhoods during upcoming summer evenings will encounter a new soundtrack.
A trio of nonprofit organizations is behind PLAY STL, a newly launched program that pays local musicians to play outdoors in an effort to make streets more welcoming to visitors and reinforce St. Louis’s reputation as a hotbed of local music.
There was music wafting from three street corners in the Central West End on several evenings this month. PLAY STL has also sent buskers to the Grand Basin at Forest Park, after testing out the program with dry runs in The Ville, the Delmar Loop, the Grove and downtown Clayton.
Organizers won’t announce where and when musicians will pop up, but artists are scheduled to perform through September.
“One thing music does is it makes a space safe. People feel welcome. People feel safe when they're in the presence of a musician,” said Michael Loynd, executive director of Interco Charitable Trust. His nonprofit is partnering with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation and Rio Vista Foundation to present PLAY STL.
Loynd traveled to Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana to study how arts advocates portray those cities as prime spots for cultural tourism.
“It just really activates an area. And music transcends all ages, all demographics. It's just one of the most inviting things,” Loynd added.
Playing in impromptu spaces poses its challenges.
Makini Morrison, who performs as K Kudda Muzic, sat quietly behind his snow-white keyboard at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Maryland Place one recent evening, waiting for a friend to bring a replacement for a cable that had stopped working. A group of motorcyclists revved by.
A few minutes after the musician resumed playing a dreamy piece on keyboard, a man dressed in sweaty athletic gear paused his jog to stand nearby and bob his head approvingly.
“A lot of people tend to think a certain thing about St Louis. So when they see the music and the liveliness of it, it kind of encourages them a little bit more about the city. It gives them something positive to reflect on,” Morrison said.
A few blocks down Euclid Avenue at the corner of McPherson Avenue, Lou Winer III played a solo adaptation of Dave Brubeck’s jazz classic “Take Five” on soprano saxophone. People walked by on their way to get tacos or Mediterranean food a few doors down.
When playing for an impromptu audience, Winer III can tailor his performance to the people within earshot at the moment.
“I've had people jump out of their car and tell me I sound like Sonny Rollins or somebody. The other day I played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ for a little, bitty girl. I had her start singing and then she danced along. Those are lovely moments,” Winer III said.
Buskers participating in the new program typically play one or two sets, each lasting two hours. PLAY STL pays solo artists $200 for each set, while duos split $300 and trios earn $500.
In addition to creating new gigs for local musicians, the organizers of PLAY STL navigate the sometimes-complicated permitting process for buskers.
To place musicians in Forest Park, PLAY STL paid insurance fees and purchased a one-year permit for $500 from Forest Park Forever, which set the location and offered dates to choose from. To clear the way for musicians to perform in the Central West End, organizers worked with the Central West End Association. Other entities provided permission for pop-up performances in Clayton and The Ville.
The authors of “Sound Diplomacy,” a 2023 study sponsored by the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, recommended that St. Louis create a single office to centralize matters such as busking fees and permits.
The busking program is a way to reinforce the fact that musicians are a big part of the region’s cultural fabric, keyboardist Luke Sailor said as he took a break from his set at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Laclede Avenue.
“This is showing that St. Louis is worth investing in musically. There is such a rich cultural and artistic and musical history that is at risk of being silenced, through the sale of KDHX and a lot of different things,” Sailor said. “We're able to bring some beauty into this city by showing that we exist here, too.”
Not long after — about an hour before the planned conclusion of that night’s sets at 9 p.m. — the Play STL musicians on duty that night encountered a familiar hazard for buskers.
It started raining.
