Playing real good for free
“We spent our last pennies on a van so there was no money to eat or buy petrol. We busked on the street and realised that singing together really worked. We earned loads of money and it took us on incredible adventures.” Busking isn’t always as exciting as this but it’s certainly a phenomenon deeply rooted in our society. Let me take you back to the year 451 BC. Roman law ruled that anyone composing or singing libelous songs in public would be prosecuted on pain of death. Thankfully, laws have changed a little over the past 2000 years and are now less drastic. There is now no law in Britain prohibiting busking. However, many local councils have decided to pass a by-law concerning street musicians in their constituency. Regulations vary from town to town, ranging from a complete ban to a warm welcome. York City Council states that busking “provides interest for both locals and tourists”, but buskers are here required to apply for a license.
London’s Covent Garden, the heart and soul of the West End and famous, among other things, for being home to the only busking pitch in the world dedicated entirely to classical music and opera, takes legislation one step further. All musicians and street performers must audition to secure a busking pitch in this tourist hub and then compete against each other for prime-time slots each week. Mitch, a Covent Garden busker and member of string quartet Bowjangles, defends the managements stipulations: “They know how many people are going to be down here and they will get a bad reputation if there’s a really awful performance going on and everyone leaves. So you have to go through the whole audition process to mean that you’re actually giving people a good time.”
Successful auditionee Seija, a Finnish born, Australian singer is trying to forge her way in the operatic world. The opportunity and experience she gains from her time busking in Covent Garden is invaluable: “Down here so many people come past I get lots of auditions and extra work out of it, it’s really beneficial to my career.” It’s not all glitz and glam though, Seija tells me there are ups and downs to busking in Covent Garden. “Some days are great and some are terrible.
The winter can be really awful because people aren’t down here.” This wasn’t the case when I visited – the market building was rammed -but this too can be problematic; “it can work against you if it’s really busy because of the high noise level. It really tires you out, my technique had to improve really quickly here so I didn’t damage my voice.”
The need to protect your voice is something that singer-songwriters Susie Ro and Ayla soon realised when they started touring the country busking and they now take a portable amplifier with them wherever they go. “We always drag it up little cobbled paths because you can pretty much guarantee that’s where the nice places for busking are.” Susie Ro continues, “we have found that amplification really helps with busking. People can sit at a distance and listen to a concert and enjoy the music. It appears more professional if we’re amped and people like that. We’re not exactly suit and tie kind of appearance, we look less like homeless people if we’ve got an amp.”
Back in Covent Garden everybody looks very professional and they like to put on a show to get noticed. “We do a choreographed performance and we definitely try to get people involved. We retain an audience like that so we make more money,” says Mitch, adding that “kids are good for us because we can go and play to them.”
But in 2008 the governing body of Covent Garden is alleged to have proposed cuts in allocated busking time of 30%. Unsurprisingly, there was much furor, resulting in petitions and busking protests, which involved musicians performing the cancan whilst playing their instruments. “People come here to see live shows,” Mitch objects, “I don’t think people really come here to shop so trying to cut the busking down is like trying to cut down what Covent Garden is about.” When I contacted the management they maintained that this wasn’t the case and that no cuts have been made. The time frame for each slot is thirty minutes, as it has been in previous years. But, the new guidelines, they say, ensure performers work between these given time allocations to avoid the performance clashes and overlapping that had happened in the past. It is clear the performers are riled up but there certainly wasn’t any shortage of entertainment when I visited.
“This is proper busking, with proper street performing” Steve, another member of Bowjangles, tells me, “It’s professional busking.” This notion contrasts with my initial understanding of what busking is. To me, the practice of playing music on the street in exchange for tips has always appeared to be something of a spontaneous act. Natural and almost off the cuff.
I have been proved wrong and as the aforementioned regulations attest, it is often far from an act on a whim by fanciful musicians. Or even, as I had also supposed, primarily a monetary necessity. Rather, it is often in their desire to get noticed and become successful that professional musicians still return to the streets to get their music heard by unsuspecting audiences.
I cannot have been the only person to think of busking as an impromptu act. Many are unaware of the hurdles through which the aspiring busker must jump if he or she wants to busk legally. Musicians casually embellishing our street corners with melodies belie the regulatory framework that supports the busking system. Susie Ro and Ayla are two musicians who flout convention and current practice. Their thoughts on busking present a very different outlook from these strictures and confines. “It’s a really great way of creating bridges between certain groups of people.” Ayla frowns as if to think, then elaborates, “there are certain audiences that we would normally connect with, by busking you expose yourself to people who wouldn’t see you otherwise. You can have really beautiful moments with strangers. There’s some kind of magical space round busking.”
With their debut album She and I not long released, for Susie Ro and Ayla busking means more than just earning money. “Since we recorded our album it’s about the CDs as well. Singing to people, busking, is promotion for the album. It’s an exhausting way of making music and making money though so we combine busking with gigs and that’s how we survive. The aim is to be able to live from our music.”
It sounds like there is a knack to successful busking and all the buskers I’ve met have left me in no doubt that it is an unpredictable pastime. However, I have come across buskers who approach their art in different ways. From the eloquence of Seija’s professional busking (her deep slow curtsey at the end of her set left me in no doubt of her high aspirations within the operatic world), to Susie and Ayla whose serious but soulful attitude suggests a much closer relationship with the music and what it means to them. Not least because they have written it themselves.
To reach a state where we can talk about professional busking we have come a long way from Roman law. It seems to me that, by administering regulatory systems of varying degrees, local councils and London borough managements are making attempts to engineer a social atmosphere. Nowhere is this more true than in Covent Garden and the London Underground (which, in 2003 launched ‘official’ busking pitches at designated and highly sought after spots). These managements have realised that buskers will continue to entertain crowds and passers-by even if it is illegal. However, by licensing and auditioning each performer they are able to monitor and control to a greater extent that which is played, and at the same time appear to be supporting the practice. Perhaps they are, but on their own terms.
Personally, I am torn between the benefits of a legal and legitimate platform for buskers and the restrictions that this places on them. Essentially they are being monitored: from the hours they play, the location they choose, right down to the sort of music they busk with, the authorities keep tabs. In our technophilial age maybe these regulations will advance to a future where buskers need not leave their homes to entertain. Instead their image and music will be projected to designated pitches where admirers may make a donation of their choice by swiping their personal chip (embedded in their arm, of course) over a credit point. Although this extreme example is unlikely to materialise , the conjecture however exists to highlight the irony of an art which is essentially organic in its nature being subjected to regulatory systems.
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This is happening all over the world. There is now a terrible tendency by municipalities to get rid of buskers, or try to regulate them to the point of suffocation. This is illegal – there is, after all ‘Freedom of expression’ in democracy.
I’m in NYC right now, where buskers are plentiful, but at Times Square only a select handful are permitted to perform. The NYC subway holds auditions for buskers, but people are still free to busk without passing the audition, too (that’s a good thing). In Charleston, South Carolina – no busking is permitted and in many other places I’ve been to in the USA and Canada people are fighting for the right to play music in public spaces.
A prominent busker in NYC tells about the audition for buskers: http://www.sawlady.com/blog/?p=349