Why We Busk (Street Perform)

“Don’t make eye contact — that’s how they get you,” said one old lady to another as they walked by us, as if we, the musicians, didn’t have ears.
“Son, this is why you should go to college. So you don’t end up on the street like these two.” For the record, Tim was an adjunct professor and has deferred from his masters and PhD programs to practice his passion for a living (as a musician). Anna deferred from her college programs too, after studying abroad with a full ride scholarship.
It’s time to talk about the value of street performing and the prejudices many people have against “buskers.”
Let’s begin with acknowledging the reasons why this prejudice is so common. Many people that are looking for tips or donations are homeless. Many homeless struggle with addiction, which is why people who give them money feel they are fueling their “bad lifestyle choices.” We get it. In fact, if we performed in your neighborhood we probably know your homeless community better than you do (and all of these communities we’ve gotten to know have had some serious problems). We’ve also educated ourselves about the matter a little bit.
We’re not trying to educate you on the homeless right now, we’re trying to educate you a little bit about street performers.
But before we get back to street performers we want to address homelessness a little bit, just to define the community that many people think street performers fall into.
Homelessness is a really big problem in the US (just look into the situation in Hawaii or Portland, OR). And judging from the groups of young people we’ve encountered on the streets all over this county that are picking up a similar “lifestyle,” we don’t think it’ll be getting any better anytime soon.
It’s a huge bummer that the basics of life can be so hard find every day for someone with mental illness, let alone an addiction to, say, opioids. Many of the people on the streets, we found, are not only addicted to drugs but have been heartbroken somehow in the past, which threw them into a downward spiral. Like one of the homeless guys we connected with in Laguna Beach, “everybody’s got that person in their life that hung up and never called back.” Seriously, people who live on the streets, for the vast majority, are very unwell. This shouldn’t be a surprise.
We honestly don’t see a reason why the homeless epidemic in our societies imply that ALL people that are asking for tips on the streets are drug addicts or living on the streets.
If more people would do a little research, or even just listen to the music that’s coming out of the street performer (is it music that sounds good?! Is there variety? also, do they look sick or unshowered?) we probably wouldn’t be insulted as often as we do with comments like this: “Get a job, bums!”
So now let us be clear — we don’t street perform because we don’t want or can’t keep a job.
Neither are we addicted to drugs. We perform on the streets because we want to do music while being financially sustainable. Most importantly, for us, we can reach people in a unique way when we play in a public place.
Imagine this: you’re walking down the street during your lunch break when the sound of harmonious bells and reeds are drawing your forward. As you approach, you see children dancing and people smiling. A couple of young musicians are playing the music from your favorite movie, “Amelie…”
…The day’s monotony has been broken. Your lunch hour just got a little more sparkle. You’re sandwich tastes really good while you’re chewing in ¾ time.
That’s what we can bring to a person’s day. We’ve seen more people smile and dance because of our music in this last year than we’ve seen throughout the entirety of our lives before we started our band.
We have one more point to leave you with.
When you first start out as a band, you have no fans because you’ve never had a show. You also need time to practice your songs, write and record. A lot of time and money goes into creating a really good sound. So, if you can do away with the full time job, you’re a lot more likely to succeed as a band (but only if you can make some money through your music). That’s what we did, with street performing as our major source of outreach and income.
We have a lot of ambition. Busking gives us the fuel to move forward. So unless you think that all musicians and artists, all of them, are bums that don’t want a job and you wish society didn’t have any music or art at all (in which case you don’t even deserve a radio), then it’s probably time for you to reconsider the value of street artists.
Next week, ridiculous things people will do and say when they encounter us on the streets (things not to do to buskers).