Busking: Maybe it doesn't matter

The Bucket Boys: a group of Chicago drummers
People either love them as a cultural landmark,
or hate them for the noise they make and the crowds they gather.

Here's something that I've been struggling with all year:

Why street performing?

Why is street performing important? Why did I spend a whole year following around street performers? What larger significance does a study of street performing have - I mean, other than generating some interesting facts on a few quirky individuals?

Who they are, what do they do, and why should you care?

In short, what are the stakes?

People talk about street performing as "culture" and "entertainment." These things are important in the same way that all art is important, but it's important in an abstract way that everyone agrees with in theory but rarely in practice - because sometimes it's "too noisy" or it "obstructs traffic" and because it's a little unpredictable when you have agents like this acting on their own.

So why does it matter?
And let's be honest: maybe it doesn't.

Maybe it doesn't matter that so many of us live in a de-industrialized capitalist city like Chicago, where regular blue-collar work and the corresponding middle-class wages are harder and harder to come by everyday. Maybe it doesn't matter that, for some, the only other kind of work available to them is a retail job that means "$9 or $10 an hour" - and worse, where those hours are spent selling things that you didn't make and things that you, honestly, don't really care about.

Maybe it doesn't matter that in street theater, the creation of art is more fulfilling than a job transferring merchandise from the hands of a company to the hands of a consumer - and yeah, maybe you could make more than $9 or $10 an hour on the streets.

For the rest of us, for the audiences and the consumers and the ones who don't busk - maybe it doesn't matter that, as our cities get more and more crowded, we're learning how to better and better ignore each other. It doesn't matter that we've forgotten that the things we buy was made with the sweat (and, at times, the blood) of workers thousands of miles away.

It doesn't matter that it's sometimes just a little nice to participate in a street show, to be part of an audience of strangers brought together by the work of a street performer. It's easy to forget how nice it is to actually see something being created - to see art being made and possibly to even take part in the creation of this bit of art.

And when "it's a little nice" happens over and over again to different audiences at different street corners, "a little nice" can become a distinctively urban "vibe" - and, just maybe, city spaces become less of a place where people instinctively ignore each other and, instead, more of a place where some go to specifically seek each other out through their shared participation in a street show.

Two balloon artists working side by side at Chicago's annual OktoberFest (2013)

That's my mission in this blog. A part of it, at least.
To show how exactly street performances do all this.
To argue that street performance really does matter.

See you next week!

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A side note: in my research, I have really only been able to focus on the city of Chicago. I was able to go fairly in-depth with the handful of buskers I spoke with and observed, so I will make my arguments through the personal and lived experiences of these performers.

In the meantime, check out the Busking Project. They conducted their research all over the place. For a broader perspective, check out the Busking Project's Nick Broad's blog post. He and his team traveled all around the world to study busking in different cities. I also had the chance to read one of researcher Vivian Doumpa's presentations.

Here's some things from Vivian's presentation that's worth thinking about:

"It could be argued that each local method of busking regulation reflects each 
city’s management approach towards social inclusion, freedom of speech, 
social networking, accessibility and equal opportunities."

The heavily-regulated atmosphere for buskers in Madrid has brought about an intense dialogue over the "human right to work."

There's something about the "unexpectedness" of a street act that generates "pleasure" when someone runs into one.

She makes an argument of street performance as a "Lighter Quicker Cheaper" means of revitalizing city centers.

And something that I have observed in my time street performing but never really articulated:
"[Busking] is a source of entertainment for the disenfranchised. Beggars empty their hats into the cups of buskers, as it's the only form of live performance they will ever see. It's social inclusion not just for the busker but for their audience."