There’s never a dull moment on the metro in Paris… Besides the good people watching, and all the friends that AK seems to make each time we enter the metro, there are tons of musicians around to entertain you. While the accredited musicians stick to the halls of the metro stations, there are many who hop onto the trains to earn a few euros to help pay the bills. They aren’t actually allowed to do this, but I’ve yet to see anyone stop them. At Concorde station there is a fantastic Ukranian band (there are anywhere from 10-15 musicians depending on the day) who play very typical Ukranian songs and often sing along while their wives hawk CD’s. The band has accordions, string basses, tubas, guitars, you name it!
While accordion players are quite common, we’ve seen singers, various brass instruments (who often bring their own loudspeakers and accompaniment), and the odd rap/dance duos. Our general rule is that if they entertain AK we give them some money.
Tags: accordion, brass, concorde, metro, musicians, Paris, string base, ukranian
Three years ago we saw a chap playing a jaunty tune on his clarinet on one of the RER trains. He was accompanied by a boom box. In Oct 2010 we saw even more musicians in the Metro system. On the platform were a group of musicians who were really quite good. I have a video of them playing somewhere.