Busking in NYC
The “Good Old New York” that Jelly Roll Morton wrote about has served as an evident launch-pad of hot jazz and its lineage, from its primitive years with Scott Joplin living there in 1907, the ODJB’s first recordings there in 1917, and Louis Armstrong’s first arrival in 1924, to modern-day stalwarts such as Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, Dennis Lichtman and company’s Mona’s jam, and the EarRegular’s at the Ear Inn—each being long-standing and beloved trad performances locally.
The City of Dreams allows for discovery, and rediscovery, and for Florida-born, Turkish raised Defne “Dizzy” Incirlioglu, it was the very place to identify and chase a love for early American music when she moved to the United States for college. While studying literature at NYU, a chance moment befriending NYC buskers would gradually inspire a lifetime of music.
“I was in Washington Square Park in October of 2005, on my way to go term to a midterm studying program group, and walked past Feral Foster playing guitar and harmonica and was blown away. I met him and Hubby Jenkins on the same day, and I was just really excited about the music they were playing. I thought they were cool—I had moved from Ankara, Turkey, to New York, and I felt like I had more in common with them as a city kid, rebellious, and related more to New Yorker teenagers than I could with my college classmates.
“Feral had just started doing this blues-folk show, Roots ’n’ Ruckus. Before it was at the Jalopy Theatre, it was at a Thai restaurant and karaoke bar on MacDougal Street called The Village Ma. Every Wednesday, there would be a variety show. For almost a whole year before I picked up the washboard, I would go there and watch them play. Everyone was in their late teens or early 20’s, and they were these city kids learning this really rural American music. They were really obsessively learning and progressing so quickly with playing finger-picking styles, slide guitar, and when we would hang out, we’d all be sitting on the floor at someone’s apartment and listening to Alan Lomax field recordings and Harold Smith anthology. We were obsessively, constantly learning and telling each other about old blues music.”
In the summer of 2006 in between years in college, Dizzy found herself hitchhiking in California and traveling with friends who were playing music. In the back of their van, she found a washboard, and with guidance from a friend, learned some fundamental rhythmic patterns of washboard playing, using two coins as thimbles. That same day, green as it gets, she played her first gig at the legendary punk venue Gillman Street in Berkeley, California. Having just played the washboard for the first time, that was about as punk as it gets.
After having this formative experience playing and traveling in California, Dizzy would start to busk occasionally with her New York friends—in Washington Square Park, the West 4th Street subway, the 14th Street subway. For several years, it was routine that she would busk with Feral for long enough for them to earn enough money to go buy a fish from Chinatown and enjoy a nice home-cooked dinner. At this time, she didn’t see herself yet as a musician, but was excited to see herself included amongst friends that she enjoyed and supported, and that the washboard was an outlet to provide something to this friend group.
“With loving this old music came this sense of not really knowing what I wanted to do, but wanting to have this free life of running around, meeting people and playing music. The summer before my last semester, I came down to New Orleans for the first time, for two weeks in August of 2008. It was so hot—there was no air-conditioning, just fans and mosquitos. I loved it so much.
“In retrospect, I feel embarrassed that I couldn’t see the level of systemic suffering that there is here, and how people are really struggling. I saw it as this place where people were writing poetry and playing music, and living in this world where people didn’t really have the internet or use Facebook. If there was a show, there would be flyers out. It had this type of close community in some ways—in New York, I had incredibly strong community, but in New Orleans, you felt known and seen and held by being called baby by strangers. New Orleans reminded me more of Turkey.”
Moving to New Orleans
In Tom Robbins’ novel, Jitterbug Perfume, he describes Louisiana in September as “an obscene phone call from nature.” Those two weeks in the dead of summer inspired Dizzy to bust right through the last semester of college and get to New Orleans. After graduating, she and her friend, percussionist and vocalist Jessy Carolina (of California’s Holy Crow Jazz Band) hitchhiked from New Jersey to West Memphis, Arkansas on the way to New Orleans via a Craigslist ride-share. She traveled from there with an accordion, a washboard, a change of clothes, a notebook, and a giant piece of cardboard that read NEW ORLEANS. They were dropped off only a block away from the home which Dizzy has now resided at for the last ten years.
Over those next couple of months, Dizzy and Jessy would busk every day on the streets in New Orleans, before going separate ways to travel more. By 2010, Dizzy was there as a full-time resident of New Orleans. Smoking Time Jazz Club had just started as a busking street band, and Dizzy became the third-call percussionist, after Sean Clark and Peter Loggins. STJC was founded by bassist John Joyce, and at the time, included regulars such as Blu Beverage, Jack Pritchett, Chris Johnson, Earl Bonie, Colin Myers, Jason King, and Sarah Peterson.
“I had one feel that I could play, and I would just play that feel no matter what the song was. I have a lot of gratitude for their attitude—instead of them realizing they have a big crowd of people watching, so we want to assign solos to the best people, he (John Joyce) just kept pushing me into the deep end over and over again, and I just kept flopping around until I was able to hang. That was really scary, but really important for me to do, Anything you learn to do by yourself, you have to re-learn to do in front of other people. In my experience, it makes it a completely different thing when you are being watched and judged.”
Most of this era, Dizzy could be found in busking bands in New Orleans—the now fabled Loose Marbles Jazz Band, Tuba Skinny, a revolving door of short-lived jug bands, and an assortment of solo folk and blues guitar players associated with the circuit playing up in New York, where Roots ’n’ Ruckus had been moved from the Village Ma to the Jalopy Theatre where it still occurs today. Significant memories of washboard players in New Orleans at that time recall Washboard Chaz, Washboard Lisa, and Tuba Skinny’s Robin Rapuzzi, who had moved to New Orleans around the same time.
“I think the thing that draws me to old blues and folk and ragtime stuff is the same in terms of feel for New Orleans jazz and early jazz, which is the sense of the feel and the rhythm section being loose yet organized, it’s precise, but it feels really laid back. The aesthetic I like of the washboard players I listen to to try to emulate their sound—their time is great, and so is their syncopation, but it doesn’t sound like a machine. It sounds like a person. A playlist I make for people who want a lesson or pointers has “Rag, Mama, Rag” by Blind Boy Fuller with Bull City Red on washboard, “Jitterbug Swing” by Bukka White with Washboard Sam, and Clarence Williams’ recording with Floyd Casey and Jimmy Bertrand.
At the same time, she joined noted street blues-punk band Yes Ma’am, with whom she would play with over the next six years. They played original music as written by leader Matt Bracken, as well as some classic New Orleans music. This was the golden era of busking on Royal Street—bands could go out with a surplus of musicians, dancers, and creatives in their party, and after holding the spot in the street overnight, would take shifts playing from late morning for the tourists, sometimes distributing upwards of 100 CDs a day, which were often home printed.
“There’s this joke that New Orleans has 200 musicians and 500 bands. But this was like, Royal Street has 30 musicians and 30 bands! We did one thing, and we did it with a lot of enthusiasm. We did really well busking, and we were kind of a spectacle for people. There were a lot of busking spot wars at that time—going out at 7 pm on a Thursday to play at 11 am the following daytime.
“I would go burn CDs with artist Amzie Adams who lived down Frenchman Street. I would go with the master CD and he had three CDs burners, and some of the drawers would not pop out or go at different times. I would pay him ten bucks to burn a hundred CDs, and then sit there with him and he would tell me stories about New Orleans in the ’90s. At some point we got our own CD burner, and once Goorin Brothers Hat Shop let us use their extension chord and we were burning our own CDs on Royal Street. We’d stick them in a brown lunch bag, fold it, write something with sharpie on it, and hand it to somebody and taking their ten dollar bill. People were in a line, and we had this assembly making CDs as we were playing.”
Shake ’Em Up Jazz Band
By 2016, Dizzy felt the need to branch out and do something fresh musically and stepped away from Yes Ma’am in search of broader inspirational environments. A fortunate musical encounter with the group Deakin Hicks from Bellingham, WA, had inspired her to play original music in different styles and meters that went far beyond what she had been doing, and members Thomas Deakin and Lucas Hicks were encouraging of her at this transitional musical period. A few weeks of playing with them was a bright turning point for her to amicably quit Yes Ma’am, trusting that she could get by by either busking of picking up odd jobs, as she has been able to do over the years in New Orleans and New York.
Almost immediately after, she was contacted by Tuba Skinny’s Shaye Cohn to play a one-off Girls Rock Camp performance with a group of Frenchman Street jazz musicians. There was one small daytime rehearsal show at the Dragon’s Den on Frenchmen Street, with Shaye on trombone, Marla Dixon on trumpet, Chloe Feoranzo on clarinet, Molly Reeves on guitar, Julie Schexnayder on upright bass, and Dizzy on washboard. An attendee of the performance took a photograph of the new band which was posted on Facebook, and they were thereafter invited to play Umbria Jazz Festival, which Dizzy describes as a “fairytale, falling ass-backwards into good luck.”
Shaye had decided quickly that she wasn’t willing to commit full-time to another traditional jazz band, so the trombone role was soon taken by Haruka Kikuchi. This group with Haruka remains the lineup of Shake Em Up Jazz Band.
“We used to do a lot of crazy European festival tours, which I would love to do again. I got to play the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest for the first time with them in 2019. For me, Shake ’Em Up was a really supportive environment as someone who felt secretly insecure. Playing with other women who had both similar and different experiences of being onstage at a young age and, as Molly puts it, being expected to be either the best or the worst.
“It was my first time being in a band that had good communication with each other and that really listened to and supported each other. We would talk about decisions and things we wanted to do or not do as a band. I didn’t feel like I had to prove myself, even though I was playing with world-class musicians. I just felt appreciated and supported. It was a cool environment for me to grow into playing jazz after having dabbled in it.”
Post Pandemic Career
While the pandemic changed much of the musical landscape for New Orleans and the world, Dizzy’s role in traditional jazz in New Orleans has since flourished and been elevated. In 2021, she became a member of the once busker band and now Frenchmen Street fixture, Jenavieve and the Winding Boys, and in 2022 she joined the Secret Six Jazz Band. In addition to these regulars, she works with projects including as James Evans and the Kindred Swindlers, Golden Ours, the Garden of Joy Jazz Band, and Sirocco Brass Band.
“With Shake ’Em Up, it’s a combo of arranged and loosely improvised tunes. We try to incorporate new songs frequently at gigs and not be precious about our sets, so we can try out weird stuff and songs we’ve been working on. With a band like Secret Six, there’s a huge emphasis with our King Oliver centennial project of really taking a magnifying glass into early recordings, which has been an extremely educational experience for me to actually study this music with people who better understand it on a technical level than I do. It’s expanded by ability to listen to limited, primitive recordings, and I’ve got a sharper sense of being able to listen and differentiate. Close listening with a group of people is something special.
“Conversely, playing in the Winding Boys is more of a working band, where everyone is largely influenced by a lot of the same music, but not necessarily the same stuff. One person might love Tiny Grimes, another is doing a Harlem Hamfats thing. And that’s a different expression of doing traditional music and old tunes. Getting to record standards and original music with James Evans who is a master of technically being able to play and study old music, but also evoke the emotions and playing in a way that is lovely and not a novelty. There is an earnestness and genuineness that hasn’t been lost even though he’s developed this technical ability over these years. I feel really lucky to get to play with people who play these beautiful sounds.”
Each of these groups has been quickly churning out albums in recent years. Jenavieve and the Winding Boys released Sleepy Time Dream Team in 2023. James Evans and the Kindred Swindlers have released their most recent album, Swindlers Play Jazz Music in May of 2024. The Garden of Joy has released Bouncin’ Around in spring of 2023. Shake Em Up Jazz Band has released Summer Selections in July of 2023. The Secret Six have most recently released their Centennial Tribute to King Oliver’s Jazz Band in September of 2023 and anticipate a release in fall of 2024. Of note, all of these with the exception of the live Secret Six release have been recorded by Bigtone Records in New Orleans.
“I feel like my role is to provide structure and to metaphorically be putting a cushion under someone’s chair before they sit down. No one needs to see me do it, it’s better if no one does see me do it if I can ease some transitions and do things that provide an interesting counterpoint. But if what the rest of the band is doing is the picture, and I’m part of the frame, we shouldn’t be more decorated than the picture.”
