Cast In Concrete tracks Vijith Assar as he records the musical offerings of New York City's street musicians.

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Who: Zack Orion
When: 8/16, about 11:30pm
Where: Bedford Avenue L train platform

It's been a very long time since I've seen anybody pull off the one-man band thing quite like this guy—his ability sucks you in from all the way up by the turnstiles. Right foot stuck to a tambourine which is substituting quite effectively for the snare crack, left foot perched on a kick pedal that's aimed backwards at the suitcase/drum he's sitting on, harmonica around his neck ready to go for the times when he's not singing, and all this still leaves both hands free for the banjo. Imagine my surprise when I ambled up alongside him and saw the name on the CDs he was hocking—Zack Orion. I vaguely recognized it from the time I spent down in Virginia, where we sort of traveled in the same circles without ever actually meeting.

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Cast In Concrete tracks Vijith Assar as he records the musical offerings of New York City's street musicians.

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Who: Dan Bellen And The Hare Krishnas
When: 6/8/11, about 6:15pm
Where: Union Square

Scorcher of a day out at the Union Square Greenmarket, which is the best I can do by way of explanation for my complete and utter snark failure here. When I was about halfway through recording these white dudes singing an Indian devotional chant, a husky and apparently quite confused West African fella approached me to ask, "Hey, what you believe in?"

Now, granted, I am a full-blooded Indian guy, and there was even a phase of my life during which music like this was a constant background presence—house parties with other suburban Indian families where the adults would sing this stuff in the living room while the kids played NES in the basement, and then all the above parties would eat tandoori chicken and aloo parathas together. But here I was standing off to the side, wasn't singing, and was wearing a polo shirt, sneakers, and a considerably more conventional haircut.

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Cast In Concrete tracks Vijith Assar as he records the musical offerings of New York City's street musicians.

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Who: Sistine Criminals
When: 6/4/11, about 5 p.m.
Where: Washington Square Park

Quite the debatably fortuitous beginning to this enterprise, getting run over by a mobile mariachi quartet's accordionista the moment I jumped on the subway out by Prospect Park. But they declined to participate because they didn't have their uniforms, which seemed to me a very good reason to refuse. So instead I was off to Washington Square.

If you're lucky, Greg "Torch" Sgrulloni's drums will pretty much rule the park when you arrive, jumping out over the fountain and right through the crowds milling about with their ice creams or homework or whatever it is the NYU kids do out there. What could otherwise probably pass for a straightforward jazz head with a slight Middle Eastern modal flavor gets warped into a nerve-wracking monument to paranoia by jittery mile-a-minute jungle breakbeats that you'd assume were programmed specifically to sound inhuman if you weren't right there watching it all unfold from a park bench.

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​We certainly try, but capturing the sound of the city is a tall order, even and especially for those of us who are usually most concerned with these things. To most regular New Yorkers—those more likely to spend their Friday evenings in a park than at a concert, for example, or those who take the 7 instead of the L—panhandling doo-wop singers and clarinets echoing across Bleecker are a much bigger part of the sonic texture of NYC, as important as the street vendors and traffic din. And yet these musicians have often been ignored, largely because many of them don't have publicists and fancy album release shows, nor web sites and YouTube accounts. In some cases, they don't even have safe homes to return to when they're done performing.

Either way, enough is enough. Welcome to "Cast In Concrete," a new series in which Sound of the City publishes recordings and commentary focused on a traditionally under-served population of musicians: the buskers playing their hearts out for your pocket change deep down in the subway stations, surrounded by trees in the park, and on dirty street corners all over New York. I'll come find you, musicians; just grab your instruments and get out there. Leads are welcome.

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