“For performing in general, you have to maintain people’s attention – you need to make them laugh, cry and think.” – Jesse Jackson, musician

By Omar Sommereyns

Just past midnight on Lincoln Road, and the sauced-up nightcrawlers are out strutting their stuff, meandering alongside the garish restaurants and storefronts. Around Meridian Avenue, a ragged bearded bum pushes his life’s belongings in a baby carriage while, just across him, a few sloppy drunks are shouting obscenities and pestering random walkers with vile behavior.

Nearby, one man plays his guitar, not a worry in mind. He’s got some stories to tell and, at this moment, this is where he’s telling them.

“Hey — can I play you a song?” he asks an older couple.

“Maybe next time,” the man says, his arm firmly swung around his woman.

Unaffected, the young troubadour looks over his repertoire and finds a piece to play. When he finishes, and some people have stopped to listen, he’ll say, “I’m Jesse Jackson.” Naturally, everyone believes at first that he’s talking about the famed black reverend, but he assures them it’s no lie. “That’s my name.”

Ever since he’s been down here – a good five years or so – the 28-year-old Jackson has preferred busking on the street with a dandy amp and mike set-up. Tonight, he’s quite happy, having been able to woo some people into surrendering brief moments of their time – from a group of excited young visitors to a wandering Beach local tugging a feisty Italian greyhound. He’s made more than a hundred bucks and he’s stopped several people on their way, offering them a song or two before they reenter their little lives.

His choice location is right in front of the ArtCenter because he has more space there and he’s less bothersome to the restaurants and their swanky, dolled-up diners. Usually, he’ll stay out from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m., although it varies.

“I love playing out here,” he says. “In a bar, it’s difficult to get your friends to come out all the time and see you. Eventually they get tired of it, and the people that are there already have their own reasons: drinking, getting laid, meeting new people. … It can be difficult to win them over. But in the street, people that don’t wanna listen just keep walking by and the people that do are the ones you really want to play to.”

Right then, he sees a group of curious tourists and reels them in by a casual, “Time for a little song?” A cluster of people begins to assemble around the young musician as he gets lost in his charming, yet brutally honest way of telling tales of sex, death, God and government. Here on Lincoln, the group of tourists lend their ears as he heartily plays his “Psalm.”

It’s amazing you don’t look more like your mother/What with all the time we wastin’/tastin’ vicious, verbally disgusting treats we cook up one another/It’s amazing I don’t look more like my father, all them flyin’ insults tryin’ to become a part of what I’m tryin’ not to be/Don’t bother me at all.

It’s amazing that we don’t all just drink whiskey/And throw our clothes down on the floor and fight the fight worth fighting for and bill the rich to feed the poor/And open up some ancient door with this key.

Call Jesse Jackson a folk singer if you want, although it doesn’t really matter. For too long now, Miami’s been suffering from a deplorable dearth of live-music venues and many musicians either leave or somehow cultivate a scene by their own means. The fad-filled image glaze all around often obscures anything meaningful. But all the while, Jesse Jackson – a loudening voice in the scene – still believes in the redoubtable power of song and word. Every day, he’s busy concocting compelling sounds and ideas, offering them to whoever wants to listen, with, in the back of his head, Bob Dylan still singing Johnny’s in the basement/Mixing up the medicine/I’m on the pavement/Thinking about the government in “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

Seated on the curb near Jackson’s set-up, Tara Harris, a friend and drama student at New World, talks about the man’s persistence throughout the years. “I’ve seen this guy work really hard and stick around in the scene,” she says. “There’s a lot of great music and musicians here, but there isn’t quite that unity that you see in other places like Northern California.”

While she’s speaking, Jackson’s playing a cheeky little ditty written by Rob Katz of Miami’s stanky-funk outfit Pencilgrass. I’m gay…I’ve just come out the closet/Can your brother come out and play? Expectedly, the lyrics grab the attention of several onlookers – particularly a homely, rather square-looking chap hunched under a large backpack. His name’s Moses, he says, and he’s very interested in knowing whether Jackson’s singing about being gay or, well, just being happy.