Street performance

This article is about a form of public entertainment. For an element in a corset, see Busk.

Busking is the practice of doing live performance art in public places to receive donations of money. Those engaging in this practice are called buskers. Busking performances can be just about anything that people find entertaining. Buskers may perform music, clown, twist balloons, do comedy acts, dance, juggle, do acrobatics, eat fire, charm snakes, do magic tricks, street theater, street art(sketching and painting, etc.), do fortune telling readings, do mime or a mime variation where the performer simply stands still as a living statue (very popular in Europe currently). Many people consider busking to be the bottom rung or grass roots of the entertainment industry. In the United States, the term busker is not as widely known; buskers in the United States are commonly called street performers.

The word busk comes from the root word buscar, which means "to seek" in Spanish – buskers are literally seeking fame and fortune.

Busking with beer bottles in Sydney, Australia

History

Minstrels and troubadours

An organ grinder in Vienna, with barrel organ.

From the Renaissance to the early 1900s, busking was called minstrelsy in Europe and English-speaking lands. Before that, itinerant musicians were called troubadours. This art form was the most widely used method of employment for entertainers before the advent of recording and personal electronics. Prior to that a living human being had to produce any music or entertainment, save for a few mechanical devices such as the barrel organ, the music box, and the piano roll. Talented street performers were treated very well indeed. Every major culture in the world has had street performers, dating all the way back to antiquity.

Roma

Because of their nomadic nature, minstrelcy is a common form of employment among the Roma people, also know as Gypsies. The distinctive sound of Roma music has strongly influenced bolero, flamenco, and jazz in Europe. European-style Gypsy jazz is still widely practised among the original creators (the Roma People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was Django Reinhardt.

Roma people who came to the Americas contributed to many musical styles. Salsa, rumba, mambo and guajira from Cuba, the tondero and marinera from Peru, mariachi music from Mexico, and even American country music have all been influenced by their plaintive vocals, mournful violins and soulful guitar.

Mariachis

Mariachis are Mexican street bands that play a specific style of music by the same name. Mariachi groups can be considered the Mexican equivalent of buskers when they perform for gratuities as strolling minstrels traveling through streets and plazas, as well as in restaurants and bars. Mariachis frequently wear ornate costumes with intricate embroidery and beaded designs, large brimmed sombreros and the short charro (cowboy) jackets. Mariachi along with the Gypsies are by many considered to be the most romantic of the buskers. Because of their great popularity many Mariachis are in mainstream entertainment doing professional gigs.

Folk Music

Folk music has always been a dominant presence in the busking scene. Cafe busking is a mainstay of this artform. Two of the more famous folk singers are Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez.The delta bluesmen were itinerant musicians eminanting from the Mississippi Delta region of the USA around the early 1920's and on. They spread the gospel of the blues to many.

Hippies

The counterculture of the hippies of the 1960s occasionally staged "be-ins", which resemble some present-day busker festivals. Bands and performers would gather at public places and perform for free, passing the hat to make money. The San Francisco Bay Area was at the epicenter of this movement — be-ins were staged at Golden Gate Park and San Jose's Bee Stadium. Some of the bands that performed in this manner were Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape, and Jimi Hendrix. The sex, drugs, and other controversial pursuits of the hippies tainted the image of busking especially among the religious right.

State of the art

A "silver man" at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco.

The new millennium has experienced a divergence with both a rebirth and an oppression of this art form occurring in the U.S.   Many cities are encouraging buskers because they provide a form of entertainment and are considered a tonic to the stresses of shopping and commuting, an influence which is favourable for shopkeepers.

In the early 90's PBS affiliated stations aired a program called "Street People". It revealed some very interesting information on studies done from local universities around New York and Boston. They studied street people of all sorts; buskers, street vendors, panhandlers, beggers and the homeless, cops, cabbies and maintenance workers. The studies showed that crime rates tend to decrease around areas in which buskers routinely perform. The old adage "Music Soothes the Savage Beast" was found to be true. The studies also showed that buskers attract and are supported by a better educated, more intelligent, wealthier class of people. This video and those studies were one of the motivating factors in New York's decision to allow buskers to perform in the subway system.

Cyber Busking

One of the latest things to enter the busking scene is Cyber Busking. Artists are posting work on the internet for people to download and if people like it they make a donation through PayPal or snail mail. Freeware and shareware works this way.

Motivation

File:Accordion Bass.jpg

Buskers performing in San Francisco

People perform on the street for a variety of reasons. Some do it for the love of their art. Some to practice their talent in front of an audience. Some do it for the money. Some do it for the attention and to meet people. Some do it for fun. Some do it because they have to in order to survive. Currently children are rarely found busking, but this was not always the case.

Professional buskers make a full-time living performing on the streets. Some buskers get paid for professional entertainment gigs as well as working the streets. Some buskers do it only part-time and work regular jobs. Some buskers are disabled and do it to get by.

A busker's income often varies widely from day to day, depending on the kind and quality of the performance, the time and place, the traffic volume, and the kind of audience. An act that might make money for one spot (or pitch) may not work at all in another. An act that does well during the day may not do as well at night, or conversely an act may thrive during the night and fail in daylight. Some people manage only pocket change from busking, while others can amass substantial incomes.

Practitioners

Some buskers have become local legends. Others made it into mainstream entertainment and later rose to greater prominence. Examples of both can be found in the buskers category list.

Places

See also: Category:Busking venues

Popular busking spots tend to be public places with large volumes of foot traffic. Good locations include tourist spots, restaurants, cafes, bars and pubs, theater and entertainment districts, subway and bus stops, outside the entrances to large concerts and sporting events, shopping malls, strip malls, and outside of supermarkets (although permission is usually required from management for these three). Some cities reserve certain high-traffic areas for "approved" buskers and even publish schedules of performances.

File:Street Musicians in NYC.jpg

Buskers at work in New York City's Central Park.

Some well-known busking spots include:

• Barcelona: La Rambla
• Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Square and Boston Common
• Chicago: Maxwell Street Beginning in the 1940's it became like a Meca for blues players.
• Dublin: Grafton Street
• London: Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus and the London Underground
• Nashville: Music Row
• Los Angeles: Venice Beach Boardwalk
• Mexico: Almost any zócalo in Latin America.
• New Orleans: The French Quarter and all over the city.
• New York: New York City subways: which have a city-sponsored program, Central Park and all over the city.
• Portland, Oregon: Portland Saturday Market
• San Francisco, California: Fisherman's Wharf, any cable car turn around and Market Street, and all over the city.
• Santa Cruz, California: Pacific Garden Mall and the Beach area
• Santa Monica: Third Street Promenade outdoor mall
• Seattle, Washington: Seattle Center and Pike Place Market
• Singapore
• Sydney: Circular Quay
• Waikiki, Hawaii
• Washington, DC: Washington Metro

Busking festivals

Some buskers travel the world, performing at various festivals, including:

• Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where street performers can perform at one of three allocated spots on the Royal Mile and at busking competitions.
• Ferrara Buskers Festival A non competitive parade of the best street musicians in the world. In terms of tradition and dimension it is one of the most important festival of this kind and takes place in the medieval and renaissance stage of the historical centre of an Italian town.
• World Buskers Festival An annual ten-day festival of busking in Christchurch, New Zealand, where international buskers who perform comedy/acrobatics/circus acts, most of which have made it beyond the basic street-performer stage and into clubs and big events, but wish to preserve their "roots".
• Halifax International Buskers Festival held in the Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Waterloo Busker Carnival held in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
• Edmonton International Street Performers Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• Bangor International Busking Festival
• Banbridge BuskFest
• Dundas International Buskerfest in Dundas, Ontario, Canada

Busking and the law

In the United States and under most European common law, the protection of artistic free speech extends to busking. In the USA and most places the designated places for free speech behavior are the public parks, streets, sidewalks, thoroughfares and civic squares or plazas.. Under certain circumstances even private property may be open to buskers, particularly if it is open to the general public and busking does not interfere with its function. It is common knowledge that most places require special permits to use electronicly amplified sound and have limits on the volume of amplified sound. Some places require a license, a permit, or some other form of permission to busk.

Legal battles

Some buskers are in a constant fight with authorities, seeing themselves as trying to keep free speech alive. Some cities have tried to ban or outlaw busking altogether, but in most of these cases in the United States, the laws have been found to be unconstitutional when challenged. Related to this, there have been a number of lawsuits and other legal cases in regard to the extent of the rights of buskers to perform in public, constituting an ongoing controversy. In the US, multiple court decisions have ruled that permits and laws regulating artistic free speech must not be judgmental or so restrictive, complex, difficult or expensive to obtain that they inhibit free speech. A few of these cases:

• The city of St. Augustine, Florida was one of the latest to engaged in a battle to prohibit busking. District Judge Henry Lee Adams Jr. issued an injunction barring the City of St. Augustine from enforcing its recent ordinance 2000-03 banning street performances on St. George Street. Judge Adams' order states, "Street performances are a form of expression protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution." After public outcry they had to acceed and are in the process of drafing a plan to allow busking

• Judge rejects Seattle Center rules on buskers, April 23, 2005 You may read the decision here [2].
• Decision in Harry Perry and Robert "Jingles" Newman v. Los Angeles Police Department, 1997
• Decision in Goldstein v. Town of Nantucket, 1979
• Street Performers win lawsuit in Hawaii.
• The World Famous Bushman beat four arrest charges.

Buskers' code of conduct

Musicians polish their art at a railway station in Japan

Some venues that do not license busking may still ask performers to abide by voluntary rules.

While there is no universal code of conduct for buskers, there are common practices to which many buskers conform, and some venues may require.

• It is common law knowledge that buskers should not impede pedestrian traffic flow, block entrances or exits, or do things that endanger the general public.
• Career buskers may try to maintain a "right of pitch" over those they consider as hobbying buskers, but it is generally not considered acceptable to hold a pitch for longer than a few hours if another busker wishes to perform. At times compromises may reached between competing buskers, but conflicts over pitch do happen.
• It is common law knowledge that busking for a captive audience is generally not acceptable, unless invited to do so. For example, one may perform outside a bus or train stop where people are free to step away. It is unacceptable to perform where people cannot choose to move away, such as on a bus or in a train car. In some jurisdictions this may actually be illegal. However, in some places, for example some locations in Europe, busking on public transport may be commonplace.

Pitfalls

A street artist doing a sketch in Paris.

Buskers are generally not homeless, panhandlers, or beggers, and these terms should normally be considered derogatory when referring to a busker. It is not unheard of for these groups to be confused. Some people try to stigmatize buskers as such regardless of their status.

Many buskers have spent years developing and honing their talents in order to provide an entertaining act, repertoire, or shtick. Some people who attempt to busk, especially beginners and those performing only occasionally, may be looked down on by those who consider themselves professional buskers. Judgments about who is a legitimate busker may be difficult to make, especially by those who find themselves in competition with others for patrons' attention and remuneration. It is ultimately left to patrons themselves, as well as governmental regulation in some jurisdictions, to determine who is legitimate. A performers "take" (gratuities) examined over time may be a good rough measurement of success and legitimacy.

Beggars have been known to congregate around buskers trying to intercept those patrons who want to pay the busker for their services and convert the donation to themselves. Beggars may also try to extort money from buskers by being obnoxious and harassing people until the busker pays them to go away.

Buskers may find themselves targeted by thieves due to the very open and public nature of their craft. Buskers may have their earnings, instruments or props stolen. One particular technique that thieves use against buskers is to pretend to make a donation while actually taking money out instead, a practice known as "dipping" or "skimming". George Burns described his days as a youthful busker with the PeeWee Quartet this way:

Sometimes people would put money in the hat,

sometimes people would take money from the hat,

sometimes people would steal the hat.

See also

• Performance
• Street theatre
• Circus skills
• Street artist
• Street painting
• Busking Day
• American and British English differences - mentions busking
• List of British words not widely used in the United States - mentions busking
• Busking on the West Coast of the United States
• Balloon animal

External links

Press

• Striving to make music under the streets of NYC - article on Busking from MSNBC
• Busking for Stardom from LA Weekly
• Notes From the Underground - What busking could teach the music industry, from the Washington Monthly
• Teen goes from busking to starring in The New World from The London Free Press
• What this town needs is a little street music from the University of Washington's Office of News and Information (uwnews.org)
• Busking Can Pay for Travel in Europe from the Transitions Abroad magazine
• Busking their butts from the Montreal Mirror

Resources

• Busker Central - non-profit busker reference site
• Street Arts and Buskers advocacy group - part of Community Arts Advocates, Inc.

Related

• Music Under New York - schedule of busking in New York City subways, by the MTA
• Streetnote - a record label that promotes street music in the USA