The Big Smoke

Find out more about our chosen buskers

Watch our video of the best buskers in action

It took 23 years for the tube to catch up with New York’s licensed busker scheme, Music Under New York (MUNY), but in 2003 Transport for London (TfL) tried it and we liked it. Hold our breath for another 20 years and we might just get 24-hour trains too.
On the Big Apple’s MUNY website, busker profiles gleam with images, biogs and sample tracks. Try the same in the Big Smoke and you’ll find some guff about details of a new 0845 number used as an ‘interim in-house booking system while we… look for a sponsor.’ Feature continues

Previous sponsorship – Carling followed by thelondonpaper/ Capital Radio – dried up last spring and the scheme, now administered in-house, is showing cracks under the financial pressure. The 0845 number, introduced in December, appears to be part of the solution. The bad news for tube buskers is that unless you use a BT landline, calls to book a pitch can cost up to 25p a minute. TfL estimates it receives 13,000 calls on Tuesdays alone from more than 300 active licensed buskers. A pretty penny no doubt, and TO can confirm that this money is going straight toTfL. ‘It’s like walking into the office every week and the boss asking you for money because times are tough,’ says didgeridoo stalwart Beppe Nieddu, a tube busker since before it was legal. ‘But we’re stuck. If we don’t make the calls at 9.30am on Tuesday, we can’t secure the sorts of pitches (Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street) which make playing worth our while.’

Jo Laverty of the Musicians’ Union has been trying in vain to bridge the communication gap between TfL and Peter Murphy, the head of a 147-strong Yahoo! Group and the nearest thing tube buskers have to a representative body. Or should that be ‘had’: on January 23 TfL sent out a statement effective last Saturday (February 14) stating that any activity decided on the Yahoo! Group (used primarily to co-ordinate last-minute pitch swaps) would no longer be recognised by station supervisors.
A spokesperson for TfL told TO: ‘Any income from the 0845 is tiny compared to the cost of administering the scheme,’ and suggested buskers call less frequently. Curious advice for a first-come, first-served system. As for the termination of the Yahoo! Group, no explanation or alternative has been offered.

Above ground, licensing laws for performers are even more obscure. Busking is not illegal, but since 2003 boroughs have been allowed to decide for themselves whether to set up licensed schemes. Few have bothered, leaving decision-making to the police. Not all buskers want to operate within a regulated system, but many who do find that the better the busk, the bigger the crowd and the more likely it is to be deemed an ‘obstruction’ – a word which along with ‘begging’ appears in Met Police clauses dating back to the 1824 Vagrancy Act.That was a time of exceptional poverty, when disenfranchised soldiers returning from the Napoleonic Wars gave rise to the phenomenon of the ‘griddler’. Montagu Williams’s 1894 book ‘Round London’ described these men as unemployed ‘gutter singers’ who would bellow the song ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ until ‘they’ve got enough money to get drunk on’.

Each of our five profiled buskers – all professional musicians – agree this Victorian conflation of street performance with poverty still pervades busking. ‘The authorities are mind-blowingly patronising,’ says 26-year-old Emily Edmondstone (aka Milli Moonstone). Dave Osbourne (aka Puncturekit) agrees: ‘The worst is not knowing how cops are going to react to you. It’s nerve-wracking being at the mercy of their whim.’

The good news is that the Greater London Authority is willing to back a rethink. A spokesperson said, ‘We would be happy to participate in discussions about how the implementation of the 2003 Licensing Act might be improved,’ and pointed to the tube scheme as a template.

et with pitches down from 42 to 23 in the past two years and London Underground set to cut 1,000 jobs , questions about the sponsorless scheme at TfL are surfacing. TfL insists that it is committed to busking and finding a new sponsor, but perhaps a better template for the GLA to adopt would be Bertie and Evelyn Anderson, the sisters who represent Covent Garden Courtyard Buskers. They have fostered a respectful relationship with their landlords, Liberty International (LI). Evelyn says, ‘It’s amazing. Historically, buskers are the bottom of the heap, but they respect us and accept that even though we are not employees, we are as important as any business in the market.’

After a disastrous start in 2006 when LI threatened to cut shows in Covent Garden by 50 per cent, the sisters took their plight to the press and used the strength of public support to leverage discussion with the new developers. A similar push seems needed now; here’s hoping we can help.

Find out more about our chosen buskers

Watch our video of the best buskers in action

See the Best of the Buskers at Ginglik, 1 Shepherd’s Bush Green, Thur Feb 19.