By The Landlord
Roll up, roll up! Most music made, published and shared, including here, is recorded in studios large or small, and sometimes versions captured within live venues. But this week we're taking a new route and doing something different. We're taking the Bar out on the road, we're serving drinks out the back of our electric van (no hoarding of petrol here), and making a worldwide tour of music that's played out on the street.
So that might mean marching bands in Scotland to funeral second lines in New Orleans, park bandstand brass in Yorkshire, to colourful festivals in India or Pakistan, perhaps even grand parades in North Korea.
We're seeking excellent buskers, whether big groups or one-man bands, on squares and corners or bus-stops, from the unspotted star your local shopping centre or station to a market in Marrakesh, from a Parisian street to a beautiful square in Havana or Trinidad, rappers in Harlem to country bands at a Texas rodeo, gypsy violin troupes, to Peruvian troubadours, all from any era, playing any kind of music. The only requirement is that it's performed for free, outdoors, and in a setting with the public passing by, and, presumably because it has been filmed or recorded, stopping to enjoy.
These don’t have to be properly recorded versions, nor are songs about this topic, just YouTube videos of great street music that have impressed, entertained or amused you.
Much of the music that may come up may be cover versions, but that doesn't matter. Some may be original material, or very original in their performance. The key thing is that it's videos of street music with all the spirit, authenticity and vivaciousness that comes from the setting passing punters and watchers, perhaps with hat or case donations, but mainly with spontaneity, urgency, oddness, originality or unexpected brilliance.
There's something particularly authentic about street music, from the troubadours and jongleurs, minstrels and mariachis of medieval Europe and beyond to later times. So buskers, for example have become famous in their own strange way. Billy Waters (c. 1778–1823) was a black man who busked in London in the nineteenth century by singing, playing the violin and entertaining theatre goers for half-pennies with his "peculiar antics". He was known also by having a wooden leg, and wore Royal Navy uniform, marking his career injury when he fell from the rigging although there were also rumour he lost the leg fighting in the American War of Independence.
Billy Waters, famous busker of London theatre streets in the early 1800s
He must have been some character, immortalised in art and porcelain, and occasionally even invited onto the West End stage for extra performances, in William Thomas Moncrieff's Tom and Jerry, or Life in London, an unauthorised stage adaptation of Pierce Egan's Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom, in 1821. But Waters wasn't a novelty because of this race - he was one of the estimated 10,000 people of African heritage who were making a living at this time in England
Busking has proven to be a big break for many artists. In the early 1920s, Josephine Baker started street dancing and singing and was recruited for the St. Louis Chorus vaudeville show at the age of 15. Tracy Chapman began her career busking in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Benjamin Clementine busked in Camden in London, and another Benjamin, the US statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin 'busked' poems and stories on the streets of Boston.
Violent Femmes were discovered by James Honeyman-Scott of The Pretenders on 23 August 1981, when the band was busking on a street corner in front of the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee venue where The Pretenders were playing that night. Damo Suzuki, the singer of the band Can, was found by Holger Czukay and Liebezeit busking outside a Munich café and was asked to perform with the band that same night.
And there are many others, from KT Tunstall in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street to Rodrigo y Gabriela, who plied their brisk guitar busking trade in Dublin. The revered classical violinist Joshua Bell busked after he became famous at Plaza Metro station in Washington, D.C. at rush hour in 2007, but only seven people out of thousands stopped to watch him, and few, if any recognised him. That is the lot of the busker.
But, with the spirit of a different flavour to proceedings, this week for inspiration, let's leave words behind and enjoy some images of street musicians across the ages from eastern European Lom performers Fernand Léger’s painting of The Three Musicians, to Parisian organ grinders, Romanian gypsies to Pakistan marching bands to Harlem hip hop crews, New Orleans buskers and also Alabama marching bands to New York’s Moondog.
So then, picking out the talent from the street scenes, and judging the good marching bands from the bad, I’m delighted to welcome back to this week’s taps on wheels, the perceptive perusal skills of pejepeine! Place your street music videos links in comments below deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday, with playlists published next week. Throw it all in the hat.
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