Central Station

For many years I traveled the world and listened to and learned the rhythms of other people. After that I didn't want to travel or be a on a train or plane or boat. I wanted to be home with my children and wife. So the man who traveled around the world decided to sit down and watch the world travel past him. For about four years solid I played almost every day on the street in front of the Central Station in Amsterdam. And it turned out to be the best experience of my whole life. Playing in the street. Which I never did before. I had played on all the big stages of the world - in Madison Square Garden with Osibisa, for example - but the Central Station was the best stage I've ever been on. The most critical stage I have ever been on, playing alone without a guitar player, bass player, or drummer, trying to convince people that rhythm is just as important as chords and progressions, that rhythms are feeling. Some people say, "Oh that's a nice rhythm but that's not music!" But good rhythm is feeling rhythm. That's why I was on the street. Playing alone and researching the kinds of rhythms people react to, the kinds of beats they feel and the kinds of beats they hear. To me the street is a laboratory where I make all the songs and rhythms that come to me. Rhythms come from my watching people. Their reactions. How they walk. Most people are kind of one, two, one, two, But a guy who was passing walked kind of majestically, you know, so I said this is nice, maybe I should try to play something for it

Kofi Ayivor