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kottke.org posts about Brushy One String

Brushy One String

As his name suggests, Jamaican street musician Brushy One String plays a one-string guitar and, under that constraint, makes some truly beautiful music. Josh Jones wrote about Brushy for Open Culture:

When Jamaican musician Andrew Chin, better known as Brushy One String first told friends about his vision โ€” “a dream in which he was told to play the one-string guitar” โ€” they responded with mockery โ€” all but one, who “insisted it was fate,” writes Playing for Change, “and that he had to make that dream come true.” So Brushy set out to do just that, playing on street corners and in the market, “in a big broad hat and sunglasses,” he says. The music came to him naturally. He is no ordinary street musician, however, and his one-string guitar is not a gimmick. Brushy is a talented singer-songwriter, with a powerful voice and a musical sensibility that transcends his bare-bones minimalism.

In addition to his NPR Tiny Desk Concert above, this video of Brushy performing Chicken in The Corn on his one-string has been viewed over 50 million times.

See also Gasper Nali and His Homemade [One-String] Bass Guitar. Would love to see a duet with these two single stringers!