The Drury Mirror

Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Perspectives

Media Credit: E Marie Tracy A "headless" street performer in Paris plays the accordion while asking for tips. Street performers are prevalent in big European cities.

I know the phenomenon of street performers is not limited to Europe, by any stretch of the imagination, but is a universal big city thing.

However, this trip is really my first exposure to such a quantity of "busking". That's the British word for the act of giving public performances to entertain people in hopes of a tip.

In some of the more heavily trafficked stops on the underground you will often hear music as you turn a corner and then see the busker performing at the top of the escalator. A nearby sign informs you that all buskers in tube stations have licenses to do so.

I've seen everything from trumpet to electric guitar performed in such venues, and it can add an interesting note to an otherwise boring commute.

This is not to say, of course, that the tube is the only place in which you come across street musicians. A violinist might play under a bridge where the acoustics are great, while three saxophonists are playing to the pedestrians crossing the bridge because their sound can carry better in the open air.

Some of the more dedicated buskers are equipped with an accompaniment in the way of a boom box, but the solo work seems more genuine to me.

Different environments have their own traditions of busking, too. In Venice and Paris we came across men playing accordions pretty frequently, an instrument I have not seen on the streets of London.

Another common form of busking in tourist areas besides music performance is costuming. On the South Bank near the London Eye you can find everybody from Shakespeare to Henry VIII to Captain Jack Sparrow, hoping that their costume will entice you to take your picture with them for a tip.

There are the standard "living statues" that are gray from head to toe standing stock-still and bedecked, like pharaohs, in a tightly-wrapped gold sheet with an Egyptian headdress completing the look.

I think these pharaoh performers must have partners (or handlers, as they're called at Disneyworld) working with them in the crowd, because being all wrapped up like that seems very vulnerable to me.

I wonder what makes someone decide to go out into the streets and perform or dress up. Most of them aren't bums, as stereotype might suggest (for the musicians, at least, you've got to have money to pull off much of a costume).

Maybe they're just looking for some spending money, or maybe they want to entertain people. Maybe there is something profound about standing on a pedestrian bridge at eleven at night and playing "All You Need is Love" on your saxophone to the occasional passerby. Or maybe there's not, but I gave this last man a couple of coins.

**E. Marie Tracy is a junior studying abroad at Regents College in London, England.**

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