A Bit of a Cop Out

I have not written in a while but I have written something pretty hefty about Aix and about my stay here. I figure I'll just copy/paste the whole thing right here. It's a paper for one of my classes. Enjoy.


Musings on the Music
You lock the two locks on your front door – one turns twice to the left, the other turns twice to the right. You pass the Fresh Box Wok and you make a right past the BSA Tattoo Parlor and Hotel de Ville extends to your left. In the mornings you have flower markets. In the afternoons, evenings, and nights, you have café tables and chairs and umbrellas and chalkboards. And musicians. A whole assortment of musicians with their specialties and time slots and expectations. Watch them; you’ll see.
But this is a quick walk for the moment. For now it’s 8:23 a.m. and you’ve got class at 8:30. So no musicians are around. Hang a right onto Saporta and you might see the dirty haired past middle-aged man with a beat up guitar leaning against a building with a cigarette in one hand and a can of beer on the window ledge. You think you saw him last night in the same clothes. Across from this scruffy man is Place des Martyrs de la Résistance and it always has coffee tables. It doesn’t have musicians until 1 p.m. or after. You’ll check for musicians on your way back from class.
There’s no reason for you to wear your earphones when you walk through these streets. They provide music for you. Let them.
After class you have a look - well, a listen, rather. There’s a bit of swing jazz coming from up ahead and when you reach Place des Martyrs de la Résistance a fabulous sight meets your eyes: A jazz trio of young men complete with a tall blond bassist in a fedora and two seated Django-esque guitarists, both brunettes. You don’t have anything to do but stop and sit on a step behind them and listen and watch and wish you could be apart of whatever it is they are.
They face the two large cafes there. They swing away on old traditional jazz tunes and nod to those passing by who make eye contact. One of the guitar cases sits before them on the ground and gently asks for bi-colored coins, or even single colored coins. Anything really. You watch the bassist bob his head up and down with the steady walking of his chords. This group is tight. They feel each other. You’ll later find out the bassist’s name is Vincent but for now you watch him carefully put his bass down on the stone slabbed ground and take off his hat. The guitarists adjust and readjust – pluck a string, turn a knob, strum a chord in unison, scoot the chairs closer – and while they tap in a new number, Vincent weaves his way through the café tables, smiling at the girls and older women, making small talk with their men. The waiters say nothing to Vincent about his addressing their customers for coins. You’ll notice these same waiters chasing off certain musicians and leaving others alone. Perhaps you’ve even seen a waiter make pleasantries with a particular musician. It’s not impossible.
Every time you walk past Place des Martyrs de la Résistance, which is at least four times a day, you look for them. You’re pleased when you find an older jazz quartet with drums and even a fiddle, but you’re always looking for the Django Trio. They usually play around 2 p.m. but never on the weekends.
Today you’ve found neither the Django Trio nor The Old Quartet. Today you have an accordion player. He’s older in a stripped shirt with a less than pearly white grin. He feels French. He leans left with the stretching of his accordion and leans right with its three count. It feels traditional to you, even stereotypical. He paces between the two cafés opposite each other, playing for this table, playing for your enjoyment, playing for your two Euro coins, if he’s lucky.
And why this song, you wonder. Why “Hernando’s Hideaway” among the traditional French songs? You know he must be playing what he does for a reason and perhaps that reason is a hybrid of his love this kind of music and the expectations these coin tossers want to hear when they sip a café crème under a large tree in Aix-en-Provence. This is their South of France vacation, after all, and it should feel French.
There is a chained off section of Place des Martyrs where a massive plaque bears the names of known members of The Resistance who died during the war. You can enter this chained off section and a little brother and sister dance to the accordion player while their adults drink their coffee. The little girl raises her arms above her head and she flexes her fingers and waves a stick and gallops in circles. She stops when the music stops. She starts again with the next song.
After sitting at Place des Martyrs several times you begin to feel the time warp. The swing bands seem to gravitate to the place dedicated to The Resistance. Nazis hated American Swing and today those from Provence who resisted the Nazis are perpetually honored with plaques on the wall, a street in commemoration, and swing for their memory.

You find your evenings at Hotel de Ville. Once you saw a piano player there. Just tonight you’ve found a different jazz trio comprised of a bass, electric guitar, and tenor saxophone. You decide after a while that you don’t like them. After a bit more reflection, you decide that there are several reasons why. The first thing that strikes you is their get up. They’re all wearing straw fedora type hats and cheesy button up shirts. They’re wearing a uniform. A uniform doesn’t necessarily bother you, but it does remind you that these guys are putting on a show. When you stop to think about their show, you recognize that you’ve never been that big of a sax fan, let alone a sax solo. And they’ve got CD’s for sale. Again, this isn’t a reason in itself to dislike them, it just rubs you the wrong way. But the biggest and most legitimate reason to dislike them is that they’re on the scruffy solo guitarists turf and playing into his time.
You see Solo standing by the wall with a cigarette in one hand, a beer on the window ledge, and his guitar propped against his leg. He’s staring at them from behind. He’s puffing away. He’s touching his hair. He coughs something up and spits it on the ground. The next moment you look over at him, he’s approached the trio, waiving his cigarette at them, mumbling something inaudible to you at the tables – and perhaps even to The Pretentious Hats because when he shuffles back to his wall, they tune up and play another song that can no doubt be found on their album.
You’ve noticed Solo before this incident, but never really gave him much thought. If you’re honest, you’re made a little uncomfortable by him. He’s not a music student like the Django Trio and you suspect he’s homeless. But he’s really good. And all of a sudden you’re angry for him! He’s a good musician and this is the place that he has chosen and that has accepted him. The waiters at these four cafes know him and his music. He’s not chased away because he mumbles and smells like beer. There seems to be an agreement that The Pretentious Hats haven’t made. See, The Pretentious Hats want to be watched and looked up on MySpace and bought into. They want your full attention and participation. That’s not how it works here. The people come to Hotel de Ville and want to meet up with their friends and chat, not to attend a concert. When Solo plays, he sits on a box under a tree and plucks complicated classical guitar patterns and hits harmonics and smokes. Only two people actively watch him for a few moments, but when he finishes playing the tables around clap enthusiastically.
You never really know until the last possible second if you’ll give your coins to a street musician or not, but when Solo comes by your table with a mumble and a coin container, you drop a few in because you specifically withheld them from The Pretentious Hats.