Street Musicians Perform In Benefit for Homeless

The coffee house set mixed with the soup kitchen crowd last night at a seven-hour benefit concert for the homeless in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church.

As street musicians performed on everything from steel guitars to glass harmonicas, guests sampled a vegetarian buffet dinner with an optional price tag.

The concert's proceeds will be donated to the Boston Coalition for the Homeless and the Boston-based Project Bread, said the organizers, Clark M. Pratt '87 and Milbert D. Shin '87-'88.

Pratt, Shin, and Daniel Buchanan '88 helped serve rice, beans, and dayold baked goods provided by "Bread, not Bombs," a group whose philosophy links military budgets to hunger. The Kendall Square-based group salvages and hands out food from local restaurants and supermarkets along with anti-nuclear leaflets. The servers request but do not require payment for the food.

"Benefit concerts need to address the issues which they're put together for," Pratt said of last night's concert. "People can only do things to make the world a better place if they have some information to work with, and the typical fundraising event doesn't give any information," he added.

As the audience of about 100 drifted in and out of the parish hall, representatives of local organizations to aid the homeless described their programs and needs. Rev. Fred Reisz, who advises the Harvard University Lutheran Shelter for the Homeless, talked about the 23-bed facility, staffed by student volunteers, which will open on November 15.

Denise Caruth, of the First Congregational Church Cambridge Shelter Committee, announced plans for a new "transitional shelter" that would accommodate 12 people "on their way up from homelessness."

The group is likely to receive state funding for its project, but has not yet been notified of a grant, Caruth said. She estimated that there are 200 homeless people in the Cambridge area competing for the city's 96 shelter beds.

Guitarist Jason Threlfall opened the concert with a musical tribute to a homeless man named Eddie. Mime and jack-of-all-trades Robert Salafia introduced the performers and offered rubber clown noses to those who contributed a dollar or more.

A few homeless people dropped in and partook of the buffet. Students, musicians, and activists also joined the event, some coming to eat, others to distribute leaflets, others to listen.

Many of the musicians have lived on the streets, Buchanan said. All sang about poverty--sometimes humorously, in songs like Kenny Holiday's "Cockroach Blues," while others were more serious.

Selafia offered his philosophy as a street performer in opening comments. "You see a lot of people walking down the street, and they don't have any common ties with the other people on the street," he said. "When we look up and look in each other's eyes, you make contact and you become real to each other. That's what this evening's all about."