Louis

Louis Roldan enchants and engages people with his smile and his ukulele, working his way around the world with music.

Traveling through Europe, if he got to the point he needed to ask for bread, or a few Euros, most times he would get just what he needed, or even more than he needed, he said. Over three months hitchhiking between Denmark and Portugal, people thanked him for the music, offering him a place to stay in a spare room or on their boat.

“If you live for the moment, the moment will take care of you,” he likes to say.

Born in Chicago to a Puerto Rican father and a 17-year-old local girl, his only worry was whether or not he did his homework. As a young boy, he wasn’t cognizant of the significance behind his parents’ constant fighting. “Only the mother knows the pain that she’s going through. The kids don’t know," Louis said. "The kids are just going to school, doing their homework. They know that Poppy and Mommy are fighting all day but they don’t know why.”

His dad was a heroin addict who beat his mother. He would sell their belongings to get high. His father sold the food from the family’s cupboards. He sold their t.v., even their soap. Louis got mad at his father when he was old enough to understand the magnitude of his father's actions and how they affected the family. Reflecting on his father taught Louis how not to treat other people. “I have questions about what does it mean to be a young man on the street, or how does one treat another person? I can complain about his way of treating my mother, but I know I’ll never put a hand on a woman. It’s all a matter of perspective: how you see it (behavior) and what are you willing to do to change it.”

Because of his experience watching his father in a courtroom between stints in jail, he got into Political Science in college, and ultimately wants to be a judge.

“I didn’t understand that an addiction is a sickness and lies are a side effect of addiction. He was saying, ‘Oh, I’ll never do it again… Oh, this is the last time I’ll be there (prison), Oh, I’m never going back in; I don’t like that kind of life. But it seemed he did like that kind of life.”

While at college in Puerto Rico, Louis met a girl and moved to Denver with her. He wanted to get married. She broke his heart. He went on a road trip to Portland, then Hawaii, to heal. “Eight months in Hawaii is better than talking to a shrink!”  That began his world odyssey, playing music and learning from his experiences. “I like to think I play for the Universe,” he said.

One negative story sticks out in his travels. Hitchhiking from Cancun to the U.S. border, he was stunned that people offered money for his female traveling companion. He was also shocked to see so many children on the street. “Maybe I’ll go back to college so I can do something about it.”

He doesn’t sleep in the East Village because he doesn’t want his ukulele stolen. He doesn’t smoke or drink, he just plays music all day, and engages with people who stop to listen. Louis does encounter people that want him to move along, occasionally.  He is surprised by how differently people in America treat homeless travelers, from the way Europeans treat them. He keeps the stories of his travels in notebooks; hoping some day to write a book.

“Only doing transcendental things can we transcend,” he said, between songs. “I’m positive, hopeful. I believe in God. Those times I had nothing to eat, there was always a way to get through. People don’t believe in their dreams, so they don’t achieve them. Today’s sacrifices are tomorrow’s glories.”