Music in the Subway Station

Standing in the 53rd street train station after spending a day with my friends, I heard a peculiar sound. Normally when you’re in a train station, all you hear are the high-pitched screeching of the train tracks when a train is moving through the station or the loud chatter of fellow transit riders ready to go home after a long day at work. However, this sound was different; it was the plucking of strings that made this almost ominous sound. I followed the sound to see where it was coming from and saw a Chinese man sitting down to the right of the turnstiles, with a large instrument propped on a table in front of him. He wore these picks on his fingers, and every time his finger met a string, it made a plucking sound that echoed throughout the train station.

Born in the United States, I’ve never seen Chinese instruments except for the booming drums that are used during Chinese New Year when there are lion dances and dragon dances in Chinatown. This was something new to me, since I am used to the more-known instruments such as the piano, trumpet, flute, and guitar. This Chinese instrument I later looked up, was called the gǔzhēng, translated as “ancient plucked zither;” it has 6 to 21 strings, which in musical terms can be tuned to give up to four complete octaves. Seeing this instrument in a New York City train station made me feel as if there is culture everywhere, and that music is not limited to only one location of the world.

http://www.listenforlife.org/oneworldwalk/10musicfest_files/guzheng.jpeg