When I was a little kid, I would drum myself to sleep by putting my ear to the mattress
and playing the mattress, and then I would hum to it.
What I'm doing now is not really much different than that.
I came up with the name Street Newell because I play so much on the street and in the subway
and it is in a sense a shortened version of my last name.
I decided to audition for my solo act because I wanted to be able to express myself on my
own time.
It's very difficult because there's maybe 300 acts that will apply each year.
They'll take 75 to audition at Grand Central.
I actually failed my first time.
I went back the next year, got a standing ovation and was accepted.
This program speaks of love and diversity and expression for being whoever and whatever
you want to be and then New York is eat it up.
I love New York for that and I love the program for that.
People ask me all the time what this music is and I tell them it's sweaty.
What I'm trying to do is provide the people that see me with 15 seconds of energy.
The sound is more of an idea of the New York City diaspora of people coming together from
all over the world and finding something new.
I consider really everything an instrument.
There's hand drums like the Middle Eastern hand drum which is a Darbuka or Doombeck and
then a Cajon which is a Peruvian rhythm box that I sit on and then I play a plastic wind
tube that could be a PVC pipe, a fiberglass tube or an actual didgeridoo and then percussion
on my hands as far as bells or shakers and then on my feet as well.
It's a whole balancing act.
Atlantic Pacific in Brooklyn is a great spot for all my local people.
It sounds really great.
It kind of looks like a trumpet and the dimensions are such that the sound is compressed a bit
but then it opens up and so for my sound it just kind of billows out like that.
I play to the pulse of the location that I'm playing and I find that my creativity is best
in the moment.
In the subway the moment to entice somebody to come by and stop even or just slow down
is so short that I've learned to slide in and out of different time signatures and moods
so I'm flexible as far as what I'm doing and that has I think helped my rhythm experience
because I've become more agile with my gear basically.
The best thing for me is when I see a child and because they are so much in the moment
the people that are watching or the adults they'll realize that that's the point of playing
street music.
Put down the technology and just dance, connect, that's all.
