Traffic Jamming : Freeway-Close Musician Weaves an Intriguing Tale

The morning commuters who exit the westbound Simi Valley Freeway at Tampa Avenue first saw him late last year, as Christmas approached. The old black man stood at the top of the overpass, lips pursed on the reed of a clarinet, his instrument case opened hopefully near his feet.

If the light was green, drivers would whiz on by, catching just a few notes and perhaps a squeak, enough to know that Benny Goodman’s reputation is safe. Only at a red light, and only near the musician, could drivers catch a melody.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . .

And he would improvise a bit, bending a note here, adding some there, to make the song his own.

“Thank you, thank you,” 78-year-old Ahmed Abdullah says, whether the gratuity is a quarter or a $5 bill. Sometimes, even when the light is green, motorists will pause to toss a crumpled dollar or loose change toward his case.

Los Angeles wasn’t built for street performers. The conventional wisdom holds that they need pedestrians to thrive. New York and San Francisco are naturals. Here, you find street artists in enclaves like the Venice boardwalk, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, Universal City’s CityWalk. Ahmed Abdullah goes his own way, trolling the traffic with his off-ramp serenade.

He plays up at Tampa most mornings now. Sometimes, he plays first at Burbank Boulevard and Hayvenhurst Avenue, then rides the bus to his Northridge gig. Wherever, the curious may wonder: What’s his story?

Friendly, easy with a smile and laugh, Abdullah offers it like another rich song, perhaps a symphony--generous here, circumspect there, accented with fantastic flourishes. Does he improvise? Could this man really have a father who is 109 years old and lives in Switzerland? His raw accent suggests St. Louis or Kansas City. Yet, his name. . . . Is he a convert to Islam?

No. His family’s roots, as Abdullah tells it, are in Sudan, although he himself was born in Egypt and raised in Switzerland. He carries with him the Al-Hayat, an Arabic newspaper.

“I was born and raised Moslem, but I killed the idea of God a long time ago--the standard concept.”

With his philosophy, he is generous. Abdullah believes in karma, in a universe that has no mercy. However, good works are rewarded and evil deeds are punished. “What goes out always comes back,” he says.

If there is a supreme being, he says, then “God is within you and that evil thing is within you too. . . . We are the epitome of nature’s creation because we are creators ourselves. But we can become slaves to our creations.”

What Abdullah has learned, he says, he has learned though experience. “You listen to what you hear,” he advises. “Take note of what you read. But what you see is real.”

How might Scheherazade begin Abdullah’s tale?

Once, a boy named Ahmed was born to a family of prosperous traders. One grandfather dealt in the commerce of things, the other in the commerce of humans, providing slaves to sultans and sheiks.

Ahmed’s father, having thrived in imports and exports, would move his family to Switzerland. Ahmed would learn a variety of European tongues and receive classical schooling in the cello. He would grow up to work in the family business, traveling often to Asia. And at the age of 29, determined to seek his own fortune, Ahmed would come to the United States.

He spent time in, yes, Kansas City and St. Louis, as well as Chicago and Cleveland. In New York, he operated his own import-export business. His love of music led him mid-town to listen to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk. Abdullah honed his skills with the bass fiddle and got in on some jam sessions. “52nd Street was wide open then, man.”

He came to Los Angeles in the ‘50s. Business was good enough so that Abdullah invested in real estate.

So why does Abdullah now make his living playing clarinet by an off-ramp?

“I started doing this,” he explains, “after I had a run-in with the government.”

About this, he is vague. All considered, he would much rather philosophize than divulge the details, but it’s easy to deduce that his “run-in” leaves a gap of several years in his narrative. Having paid his proverbial debt, Abdullah seems to find comfort in believing his karma is back in balance.

“As long as you do the right thing,” he explains, “you don’t need no excuse. . . .

“Like this thing in Oklahoma. . . . You know why they caught him? He was trying to run away from himself and you can’t run away from yourself.”

Timothy McVeigh, Abdullah suggests, “ran right to his fate.”

Little Ahmed’s fate, it seems, was to become a 78-year-old man with a clarinet beside an off-ramp. He was near 70 when he started to teach himself the instrument. He took his music to the streets because “I’ve never been able to sit around” and because he wouldn’t accept money from his children (there have been 12) and grandchildren (56 before he lost count).

First, he played Downtown, competing with panhandlers. “I figured I might as well stretch out and give those cats some space.” He took his act down Wilshire and over near the Beverly Center. Then he migrated to the Valley.

He knows that people wonder whether he’s homeless, but Abdullah says he rents a place in Sherman Oaks. He makes enough with his music to pay his bills and he seems content with playing above the roar of the freeway. The other day, he says, a gopher snake came out from the underbrush, as if intrigued. Afraid of stepping on his new fan--and of himself taking a spill as well--Abdullah tossed some pebbles to shoo the snake back under the brush.

Abdullah knows that some drivers would like to make him go away. They don’t seem to like him any more than they like the beggars who sit with plaintive signs of woe by other off-ramps.

Recently, a morning commuter witnessed this little drama shortly after the light turned from red to green: One motorist paused to hand the music man a dollar. A woman following behind angrily laid on her horn, a clear protest of this brief transaction. The mere sight of Abdullah must anger such critics every morning.

“I couldn’t care less,” the musician says. “That’s their problem.”

And, perhaps, their karma.