two guys with acoustic guitars covering Indigo Girls tunes in Munich.an accordionist playing on a warm summer’s evening who made Washington DC feel like Paris on the Potomac.an old blind woman in Lisbon singing traditional fado music in a haunting contralto with nothing but a triangle to accompany her.
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I have heard buskers that have moved me to tears or made me smile uncontrollably.
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The beauty of busking is that it showcases variety, creativity, and oftentimes musical expressions that have roots in the local area. The following week the Peruvian pan flute mafia showed up with their overly loud amplified garbage and drowned the kids out. No amplifiers, no CDs to sell, just three kids making music and a little extra money. At the Dupont Circle Farmer’s market a few years ago, there was a group of three junior high-aged kids playing their instruments. The most egregious example of this I encountered here in Washington DC. The bland homogeneous nature of their music makes them the McDonald’s of the busking world.Īnd like McDonald’s, their omnipresence displaces a wide variety of performers that are much more original and life affirming. (Kind of like the time Homer Simpson went to Krusty the Klown Clown College…) Since 1989, I have seen these groups all over Europe and North America. It may have been genuine at some point, but the fact that they seem to be in every city in the world leads one to believe that somewhere there is an academy churning out pan flute trios to terrorize the world and make big bucks for some musical pimp. They generally wear some kind of “native” dress to fool the unknowing rube into thinking that their craft is somehow genuine. The worst offenders are those guys with the Peruvian pan flutes playing their crappy, amplified garbage.
![peru pan flute music peru pan flute music](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f7/4b/e2/f74be212258626f6680da0081bc9bbc6.jpg)
For me the difference between a good busker and a bad busker is not always related to level of talent but has much more to do with the artistic honesty of the performer and the performance. A bad busker can drive me to fantasies of instrumenticide. A good busker can turn the crankiest of commuters (me) into the happiest of humans no matter what the time of day.