A BRIEF HISTORY OF BUSKING: FROM YONKS TO YIKES

1860 ORGAN GRINDER

Buskers, such as I, have been around for yonks. The term, busking, was first coined (pun intended) in the 1860s, from the Spanish, buscar (to seek), in reference to the Roma as they trekked along the Mediterranean Coast, singing and playing their lutes and harps for the Spanish and French and any others who would listen along their way.

Whenever I busk, I stand as a proud member of the buskerhood (pun intended), having an aggregate of antecessors:

In 11^th Century Russia, we were known as the Skomorokh.

SKOMOROKH

We, Bhavai, a popular folk theatre in India and Pakistan, have a 700-year history.

BHAVAI

In Medieval France we were known as Troubadours and Jongleurs.

TROUBADOURS

In Old Germany, we were the Minnesingers and Spielleute.

MINNESINGERS

We were the Chindon’ya in mid 19^th Century Japan.

CHINDON'YA

In Mexico we were, and still are, the Mariachis.

MARIACHIS

And Christmastime we are still A-Wassailing. Figgy pudding, anyone?!

WASSAILING

Buskers take many shapes and setups. I have seen puppeteers, knife throwers, living statues, keyboard players, accordion players, face-painters, freestyle rappers, print sellers, poetasters, magicians, ouija board readers and taro card readers. The popular pitches for these buskers tend to be in public places having large volumes of pedestrian traffic, subways, train stations, and urban parks.

LIVING STATUE 

My business model for busking is as follows.

I tend to loll always somewhere outdoors, usually in front of a vendor or in a park, either around noon hour or suppertime. Cap-a-pie, I am hatless with tousled hair, wearing either a white long-sleeved collared shirt or t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and leather work boots.

I strum my guitar whilst blowing my harp, but sometimes I play my banjo. Other times I play my didgeridoo. And when I am weary of making music (Yes, it happens!), I just take out my pencil and sketchpad and draw people’s portraits.

DRAWING IN MARRAKESH

When I am busking some people, especially dance, will dance to my songs. Some people want selfies, some people want to play my guitar (which is not always a grrrr), some people just to chitter-chatter. 

The times they are a changin.’ The artisti di strada have been performing for yonks, but nowadays some of our ilk are ditching the street to test-drive the toll roads on the information superhighway. These cyber buskers are uploading their selfie-videos to YouTube, and then wait for the consumer cryptocurrency deposits to their PayPal accounts. I am not a cyber busker, but I will neither besmirch nor belaud those of us who are. I am just an old-school busker thrumming at the nexus between time past and time future.

YIKES.

BUSKING IN AMSTERDAM MANY YEARS AGO

BUSKING IN MARRAKESH

 

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END: BY HOOK OR BY CROOK OR BY THE AMERICAN VOTER

 

ON PUMPKIN WAY, WASCANA CENTRE

Hallowe’en pumpkins have come to an end, and so has my guitar busking come to an end. I am not a brutto-tempo busker. When the Canadian winds blow cold, my busking is fini until springtime.

Sad? Yes and no.

“All good things must come to an end” (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1374). Like reading the last page of a good book, or like watching the very last episode of a popular television series, good things do end. This I know from personal experience.

In my efflorescent academic youth, I was a member of the Time-Life Book Club. Each month a little-known work by a great author, or a great work by a little-known author, arrived in my mailbox. This was the norm for a few years until one day the books just quitting coming. Was I a delinquent account? Nope. Was there a mailing glitch? Nope. Factoid: I had completed the series. Time-Life had no more books (for me). I had run and read the course. I was stunned.

My wife and I used to have the weekly ritual of watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show. We did this for years. And then one week it was gone. Unbeknown to us, we had watched the last episode. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was fini, and we were stunned.

Personally, these examples are cheesy. On a universal scale, too, all good things must come to an end. Things such as relationships in love and life stages come to an end.

All romantic relationships, from puppy love ‘til death do us part, end. Love is a powerful emotion, and when it ends, figuratively and literally, it is heart breaking. And what becomes of the broken hearted? All the people I know who have had broken hearts move on to break other hearts. Alas, my puppy-love heart ached when it was sayonara to Saffron, sayonara to Fronteen, sayonara to Maria, sayonara to Suzanne et al et al et al. These were salad puppy loves, but even the most endearing and complete loving relationships end. All lovers eventually succumb. Such is life. Such is death.   

I wish I had a time machine. There are days I pine for when my kids were little. I fondly remember being a much younger parent, traipsing about with my kids in outdoor minus 30-degree weather, trudging through the snowbanks helping them to deliver their flyers. I fondly remember the walking along the beaches in plus 30-degree weather, just beachcombing and looking for shells. I remember our endless summers together. And then it ended.

MY TIME MACHINE WOULD TAKE ME BACK TO MOMENTS SUCH AS THIS!

My kids are now grown and gone. My two oldest live in British Columbia. My third oldest lives in my city, Regina. And my youngest lives in Asia. Still we gather in summer, though not nearly as for long as those days gone by. I feel lucky to get just a week together to hike, and even luckier, too, to get together for a couple days of beachcombing.

Naturally, at my age existential dread is commonplace. Now, in the winter of my life, I am very aware that I’ve more years behind me than in front, and I worry about that. But my existential dread goes beyond that of egoism. Murmuring, sotto voce, I worry about my adult children. I worry, I worry, I worry. I worry about their relationships. I worry about their physical health. And I even worry about their financial health.

To live is to suffer is the skinny of Zen. Zen suffering means that every moment that one is breathing is an opportunity to suffer, to fret, or to be distressed about something. Suffering ends upon death.

To specifically suffer over my children is the product of evolutionary psychology, that goes along with loving my children. Evolutionary psychology, our creative design, is oblique. Evolutionary psychology dictates that our only reason for being, is to procreate and continue the species. Suffering over children is an evolutionary safeguard to help keep them safe, so that they, too, can procreate and continue the species.

Yes. My existential dread becomes more conspicuous as I age. Hmmm. Though this does not feel like a good thing for me, I suppose it ought to be catalogued as a good thing for my offspring. Like all things related, this dread will end when I end.

Yes. All good things must come to an end. 

Factoid: All good and bad things must come to an end. But whether things are good or whether things are bad is a very subjective call, depending on one's perspective. Of course, for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz et al, the good things have come to an end.

KAMALA AND TIM

But for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance et al, the good things have just begun.

On this topic, I must channel James Carville (1992): 

It's not the candidate -- It's the economy, stupid! 

(Whatever the perspective, kudos to anyone who runs for public office, for they do so at the real risk of being publicly ridiculed or besmirched. Even if some campaigns are that ilk of a circus or a sideshow, the act of voting is the beating heart of a democracy.)

DONALD AND J.D.

Meanwhile back at the buskspot, the Great Pumpkin has come to an end, and the Mountain Magic is about to begin!

MISSION RIDGE SKI RESORT, SASKATCHEWAN