Reggie Guillaume set up on a sidewalk in New York City with a guitar and a single rule: it is free. Not a pitch, not a swindle, just a stranger willing to play whatever song you bring him, even one he has never heard before. For millions of people who have watched his work on YouTube as Guitaro5000, that premise sounds simple. For the people who actually stop, shake a maraca, and open their mouths in front of a crowd of strangers, it is one of the braver things they will do all week. On this particular afternoon, the NBC Today show was there to watch.
The animation student and her sunset song
Elena came straight from her office and asked for something Reggie had never played. ‘Que Sera, Sera’ was the song she had found on a beach at sunset a few years back, the kind of track tied to a specific slant of light and a particular feeling of not knowing what comes next. She is an animation student at the School of Visual Arts, a 2D specialist who got hooked the same way most people get hooked on a thing they will spend their life doing: she saw it young and never stopped. Standing on the sidewalk, maraca in hand, she was visibly scared. Reggie told her the nervousness was just her body giving her energy. She said she hoped he was right.
She sang both verses. The crowd cheered. Afterward, still shaking a little, she said she was ‘still very nervous.’ Reggie told her he was proud of her anyway, and meant it.
Before the Today show cameras arrived that day, Reggie told NBC reporter Joe Fryer about a woman named Sandra who had once sat in a wheelchair on that same stretch of sidewalk. Sandra was 93 years old, a former professional singer who had not performed in many decades. Her nephew had walked up and asked if his aunt could sing. She could. She did. When Reggie checked back later, the nephew reported that Sandra had started singing all the time afterward. Reggie’s read on it was characteristically grounded: ‘Did I really do it? She said yes. I just served as a reminder.’
A jazz-trained singer, a Radiohead request, and a reluctant reporter
Mariah had lived around the corner for about a year and had spotted Reggie before. She studies at Oberlin and moved to New York to find musicians. She asked for ‘At Last’ and dedicated it, quietly, to a first boyfriend who had introduced her to music and whom she has not spoken to in some time. She said he still inspires her every day even without the contact. Reggie played it without a moment’s hesitation, and when she finished, she asked for a hug.
Adam, an aspiring actress studying theater at Fordham, matched her shoes to her headphones and had been waiting in the queue. She asked for Creep by Radiohead. Reggie had heard it before and figured he could manage. She sang all three choruses on a New York City sidewalk and walked away saying there is nothing like it.
The afternoon’s final holdout was Joe Fryer himself. He had been filming all day and Reggie was not letting him leave without a turn at the microphone. Fryer picked Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, warning the crowd they would have it in their heads for days. He sang it, eyes occasionally averted from the size of the audience. When it was done, he said he felt happy and energized, and admitted he had deliberately avoided looking at too many people while it was happening.
The maraca, still in Elena’s hand
Before the song started, Elena gripped the maraca Reggie handed her and said, ‘give me something to do with my hands.’ She shook it all the way through both verses of a song she had only rediscovered recently, on a beach, at sunset.
After every single person who sang that afternoon, Reggie asked the same question: ‘Now that you sang, how do you feel?’ The answers were jittery and liberated and great and still nervous and exactly what you would expect from someone who just did something brave on a public sidewalk for free.
