Bartosz picked up his trombone case and stepped out of his studio apartment in Pantin, a suburb of Paris. Now he had to take the Metro to Trocadéro and walk up the garden path to the terrace where visitors gather to view the Eiffel Tower. Along with Michal and Piotr, he would set up their band just yards away from the crêpe vendor whose stall is always crowded. Bartosz hoped for a good collection today. He had some bills to pay and his girlfriend’s birthday was coming up next week. Each man had a long and arduous journey from the provincial town of Wrocław in southern Poland to the megalopolis of Paris.
But Bartosz and his friends are not alone. Thousands of musicians — home-grown, and migrants mostly from Eastern Europe and some from North Africa — earn their daily bread, and, sometimes, a crumb of appreciation on the streets of Europe. You will find them on sidewalks and plazas, settled in the tunnels of underground stations, waltzing from one compartment to another in underground trains, on ornate bridges across the Seine and the Aare. Commonly known as buskers, the street musician’s life revolves around practising at home and performing in public places for a living. Like Bartosz, many took to music at an early age. Piotr, for example, had quit the family’s tiny bakery business to pursue his love for the alto sax.
Street music in Europe is a collage where the Ural of Russia greets Andalusia; where Ali, the Moroccan, shares a drag with Jovan from the Serbian town of Prokuplje. Lazar from Hungary is a one-man-band who pefroms at the Konstablerwache, the sprawling central square of Frankfurt. He plays on his acoustic guitar and, in between singing, on the harmonica attached to his neck, all the while tapping a tambourine with his foot. He was singing a folk song from Hungary’s Vas county. I couldn’t follow the words, but Lazar’s playful glide from the mid to the high octave indicated it was a happy love song. Apart from some applause, coins were also dropped in his open guitar case. But his attempt at ‘Yellow Submarine’ fell flat. I had half-a-mind to suggest that he stick to his Hungarian mooring, but restrained myself. Street music is not just free, but free from judgment as well.
Some solo performers use a karaoke rhythm or chord sequence as support. Like Irena, while playing on her Baroque Lute. But a two- or a three-member band is more commonly found. Usually one plays the lead while another keeps the rhythm on percussion or the guitar. The third, if there is one, chips in with the bass.
At times, a busker would appear from nowhere, leave a tune in your head and move on. Like the gypsy guitarist who entered my compartment at Rathaus Station of Cologne Metro, and enthralled the largely home-bound commuters. On other occasions a busker would slip in to a grand setting, as if made for it. Like the elderly man on his piano accordion on Avenue des Champs-Élysées of Paris with the majestic Arc de Triomphe as a gracious backdrop. Musicians from North Africa — Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria — bring in a whiff of the ‘far away’ in the banking districts of Zurich or Brussels. Splashing colours of melody to the monochromatic dresscode of the bankers.
Many of the instruments used by these buskers have long fallen silent on concert circuits and are therefore rarely heard.Take the Didgeridoo, for instance. The long wooden trumpet, which, musicologists believe, was carved out by the indigenous people of Australia some 1,500 years ago can be heard on the streets of Amsterdam.
Of course instruments like the violin, piano accordion, guitar, trumpet and sax are more to be seen. Harps are not rare. But don’t be surprised to find a grand piano transported in the middle of a plaza, ready to be played on. Who brought it there, and how? I wonder. The Hang, I discovered, is an ancient-looking modern European instrument. Shaped like a UFO, it is a metal percussion played with hands and fingers. In Copenhagen, I found a three-piece band: a Balalaika, a Russian instrument of a triangular wooden body with a stem with three strings; a Mandolin and cimbalom, a heavier Austro-Hungarian cousin of the santoor. The list goes on. Then there was this man singing while playing on the Ukulele.
“No one wants to look a busker in the eye …. ‘cus then they get his life story,” said Paul McCartney, the Beatles legend, after a film shoot in which he had disguised himself as a busker in London.
So, the next time you come across one, do stop and listen to the music for a while.
Celebrity Buskers
Bon Jovi has sporadically busked and, sometimes, got away unnoticed. However, not while in London's Covent Garden and at Moscow's Red Square.
Paul McCartney has busked, in disguise, while shooting for the film Give My Regards to Broad Street.
At the L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington, D.C. Joshua Bell played on his $2 million worth Stradivarius for 45 minutes. He collected $ 32.17, till a commuter recognised him as the master violinist and donated $20.
