At last, somebody has said it. Busking is akin to psychological torture, especially for those who have to live or work within earshot. This damning comparison came from no less than a judge at the City of London magistrates’ court, following a suit brought by Global Radio, the Leicester Square-based owner of LBC and Classic FM. The judge noted ‘the use of repetitive sounds is a well-publicised feature of unlawful but effective psychological torture techniques’. He found that the ‘volume’ of the buskers’ music was ‘the principal mischief’ but also delivered a damning assessment of the way out-of-tune pop songs are offensive to the human spirit. ‘It is clear that the nuisance is exacerbated by the repetition and poor quality of some of the performances,’ said the judge.
Indeed. Global Radio, whose employees were forced to take phone calls in cupboards to get some quiet, filed the suit against Westminster Council after repeated complaints, to no avail. The council will now have to seize or sanction those who breach nuisance and noise guidelines. Whether or not they do so properly, it’s a triumph of a verdict: no two-tier justice here. It has become all too rare in philistine Britain for discussion of offensively bad art.
It’s not that all busking is unwelcome. A good friend of mine who studied the cello at the Royal Academy used to play for passers-by with her equally gifted sisters, and did well out of it too. Very occasionally – especially in the Tube, and even sometimes in front of my local Waitrose – tones do lift the spirit. I’m a fan of the studious violinist in a skirt, probably Eastern European, rendering Schumann on a dark winter’s evening as commuters hurry past. I react in the same way every time (which are few and far between, as there aren’t many players of Schumann in today’s TikTok-infused buskers’ jungle). I think: ‘I should offer some cash, or flick my card on their iZettle machine’… and then I don’t, out of miserliness or embarrassment or a mixture of both.
There is something deeply embarrassing and awkward about the fervour of a busker. It is simply not suited to the English soul – walking past someone vying for your pennies as they belt out their tunes, the pennies tinkling in their guitar cases or a pitiful hat sitting atop an amp.
In days long gone, buskers formed part of a hardscrabble brigade that included jesters, jugglers and magicians. In an icy pre-modern world, street entertainment might be the only levity available to you – and those who dispensed it had clear roles in society. They were hustlers and entrepreneurs and very tough, and they rendered a clear and thoroughly understood service.
That clarity has been muddied, in part because there is so often nothing impressive about what these street warblers are doing. They are, as the Westminster case highlighted, often reprising the lowest common denominator of algorithmic pop songs, frequently with some rather vulgar dance moves. Technological advances mean they can pollute the air with their jiggery-pokery far beyond the sphere of those who opt to gather and listen. Busking is both an embarrassing imposition and a natural part of the ecosystem. It’s when it gets into the territory of ‘torture’ that it must be stopped.
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