Street performance

Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performance is practiced all over the world and dates back to antiquity. People engaging in this practice are called street performers or buskers. Outside of New York, buskers is not a term generally used in American English.^[1]^[2]

"Busking" and "Busker" redirect here. For other uses, see Busking (disambiguation).

Performances are anything that people find entertaining, including acrobatics, animal tricks, balloon twisting, caricatures, clowning, comedy, contortions, escapology, dance, singing, fire skills, flea circus, fortune-telling, juggling, magic, mime, living statue, musical performance, one man band, puppeteering, snake charming, storytelling or reciting poetry or prose, street art such as sketching and painting, street theatre, sword swallowing, ventriloquism and washboarding. Buskers may be solo performers or small groups.

Etymology[edit]

The term busking was first noted in the English language around the middle 1860s in Great Britain. The verb to busk, from the word busker, comes from the Spanish root word buscar, with the meaning "to seek".^[3] The Spanish word buscar in turn evolved from the Indo-European word *bhudh-skō ("to win, conquer").^[4] It was used for many street acts, and was the title of a famous Spanish book about one of them, El Buscón. Today, the word is still used in Spanish but mostly reserved for female street sex workers, or mistresses of married men.

Australian pop rock band. Prior to achieving international fame, the band busked in Rouse Hill and other parts of Sydney.^[24]

5 Seconds of Summer

is a professional spoon player, street performer, and busking advocate who lives in Asheville, North Carolina.^[25]

Abby the Spoon Lady

started street dancing to make money and was recruited for the St. Louis Chorus vaudeville show at the age of 15, which started her dancing career.

Josephine Baker

a noted classical violinist, posed as a busker in the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Washington, D.C. at rush hour in 2007, as part of a feature in The Washington Post. In the 45 minutes that Bell played, only seven people out of over a thousand who passed by stopped to watch, and he took in just over $32. Gene Weingarten later won a Pulitzer Prize for the story.^[26]

Joshua Bell

a well-known busker from Sydney, Australia, so inspired Van McCann of Catfish and the Bottlemen that he named his band after him. He watched him perform as a child and said that it was his first memory of music.^[27]

Catfish the Bottleman

began her career busking in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tracy Chapman

former singer for Soul Coughing, released Busking, which contains 12 tracks from a 2007 busking performance in the 14th Street subway station in New York City.^[28]

Mike Doughty

has been known to busk and video footage of him busking has been made available on YouTube, including a full acoustic cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".

Newton Faulkner

the American inventor and statesman, was a street performer. He composed songs, poetry and prose about current events and went out in public and performed them. He would then sell printed copies of them to the public. He was dissuaded from busking by his father who convinced him it was not worth the stigmas that some people attach to it. It was this experience that helped form his beliefs in free speech, which he wrote about in his journals.^[5]

Benjamin Franklin

the British popera quartet, performed as buskers across London during their college days.^[29]^[30]

G4

aka 'Big Toe', known for playing guitar despite being born without arms.^[31]

Mark Goffeney

former singer for Blind Melon, was known to busk all over the U.S.

Shannon Hoon

a classical pianist who performs on a Steinway grand piano in Washington Square Park and other parks in Greenwich Village, New York City.^[32]

Colin Huggins

(1806–1910), circus acrobat and street entertainer using acrobatics, tightrope-walking etc.

Henry Johnson (acrobat)

a busker in Boston, Massachusetts, who wears a bear suit and plays a keytar.

Keytar Bear

' was a street performer when he founded the Cirque du Soleil theatrical company in 1984.^[33]

Guy Laliberté

developing a passion for Celtic music, learned to play the Celtic harp and began busking at various places, including St. Lawrence Market in Toronto in order to earn money to record her first album.

Loreena McKennitt

was a celebrated street musician known as Seattle's "Tuba Man", who busked outside the city's various sports and performing arts venues. In 2008, he was killed by attackers who were attempting to rob him.

Edward McMichael

Sterling Magee and , AKA Satan and Adam, were busking on 125th Street in Harlem, New York City, in the summer of 1987 when the members of U2, accompanied by a film crew, paused to watch the blues duo. The scene later appeared in the film Rattle and Hum.^[34]

Adam Gussow

used to busk near the London Underground, performing songs such as '39 by Queen.^[35]

George Michael

the singer-songwriter, recorded an entire album down in the Boston subway, where he was a regular busker. In most cases, songs were recorded in one or two takes.^[36]

Peter Mulvey

won the BBC Radio 5 Live Busker of the Year competition in 2005 and has gone on to sign a recording contract with Decca. Her debut album is due for release in September 2012.

Kristyna Myles

a famous Blues musician and harp player, has busked as "Brooklyn Slim" on the Venice Boardwalk to try out new material. Oscher, a two-time W.C Handy Award winner, was the harp player for Muddy Waters and his band in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He currently performs at blues festivals in the U.S. and internationally.

Paul Oscher

singer-songwriter, internet personality and founder of The Dresden Dolls started out performing as a living statue around the world.

Amanda Palmer

an English singer and songwriter, known as the "king of the buskers". Achieved unexpected commercial success in the UK and Europe in the late 1960s with the songs "Rosie", "Blue Eyes" and "Breakfast On Pluto".

Don Partridge

aka 'Saw Lady', who can be seen in movies such as Dummy and heard on many movie soundtracks, has been playing the musical saw in the New York City subway since 1994.^[37]

Natalia Paruz

Surf/ska band the boosted their career by playing outside in Santa Monica, California, on the Third Street Promenade. Their manic performances attracted such large crowds that city officials asked them to stop.^[38]

Red Elvises

busked in New York City subway stations for 30 years; semi-finalist in America's Got Talent, mother of Gabourey Sidibe^[39]

Alice Tan Ridley

began their career by busking in Dublin, Ireland.

Rodrigo y Gabriela

a famous harmonica player from South Carolina, preferred busking over all other forms/venues. His most requested song was "John Henry".

Peg Leg Sam

performed in the streets of Portland, Oregon, and subsequently joined boy band Why Don't We.

Daniel Seavey

Ketch Secor, whose group started with busking and remains committed to it, has said: "People ... have short attention spans. ... So if you can get 'em to stop ... if you can get 'em to listen with a song, then you've got yourself a keeper."^[40]

Old Crow Medicine Show

street performance group from Manchester, England

The Piccadilly Rats

sings on Grafton Street, Dublin

Allie Sherlock

street band in New Orleans

Tuba Skinny

began hanging around folk singer Wizz Jones and busking, at Leicester Square and other London spots in 1962.^[41] On several trips over the next 18 months, Jones and Stewart took their act to Brighton and then to Paris, sleeping under bridges over the river Seine, and then finally to Barcelona.^[41] Finally this resulted in Stewart being rounded up and deported from Spain for vagrancy during 1963.^[41]^[42]

Rod Stewart

an Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who busked on the streets of Melbourne.^[43]

Tash Sultana

a beatbox loop artist won the Amateur Night at the Apollo competition in 2014.

SungBeats

the singer of the band Can, was found by band members Czukay and Liebezeit busking outside a Munich café and was asked to perform with the band that same night.

Damo Suzuki

an Australian indie-pop singer-songwriter and musician.

Tones and I

a popular Scottish singer, has been recorded busking in Glasgow.

KT Tunstall

former saxophonist with Hawkwind and Inner City Unit, continues to busk regularly in the streets of his adopted hometown Cardigan.

Nik Turner

members Marc Bolan and Steve Peregrin Took first performed as an acoustic guitar/bongos duo when they went busking together in Hyde Park in summer 1967 after their electric equipment had been confiscated by Track Records and their two bandmates had both left. In this acoustic format, the duo would go on to release three albums.

T. Rex

a performer in Portland, Oregon, is known for playing the bagpipes on a unicycle.

Unipiper

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, the Milwaukee venue that The Pretenders would be playing later that night. Chrissie Hynde invited them to play a brief acoustic set after the opening act.