I have seen him in Penn Station as well. The instrument is called a Didjeridoo. Further info in it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didjeridoo
There are quite a few very talented musicians currently playing the “MTA Circuit”.
I try to support them in their musical pusuits by buying CDs from the ones that are musically interesting to me.
A few of my favorites:
Lorenzo LaRoc plays a Jazz/Pop electric violin. In addition to being an excellent musician, he is also quite an entertainer. Just last Sat night I saw him win the $25K first prize on one of those American Idol clone TV shows.
Dorian Spenser is a Folk/Rock type singer kind of along the line of Eric Bibb
Yasuyuki Takagi plays a nice jazz sax usually with a small combo.
Lorenzo, Dorian and Yaz all have CDs that you can obtain through Amazon, but I think the favorite of my “Subway CDs” is from a young man by the way of Jason Green who play a great hollow body jazz guitar. Unfortunately, his CDs are private issue CD-Rs that as far as I know can only be purchased at one of his performances
Thanks Tom, I knew it was a Didjeridoo, not entirely sure why I didn't use the name of the instrument, I guess I was just trying to give an idea of the general feel for the music rather than being specific.
Thanks for the intro to the other musicians, the cultural exposure is one of the things I miss about commuting into NYC for work every day...
