Street musicians are an under-appreciated diversion.
When walking through any major city in any country you’re bombarded by sound. Most we ignore. They’re just background noises: people walking by and talking, car and motorcycle motors, garbage trucks doing waste removal, and so on. Some are annoying: the oncoming emergency vehicle with its sirens building to a crescendo as it gets closer to you, or the jolt from a lunatic driver blasting his horn, to which your initial reaction is to drag him from his car and give him a good pummeling. Of course, we don’t do that because we’re civilized, but we wish we could. Annoying or background white noises don’t add much to our lives other than to remind us that we’re in a big city.
Then there are sounds that you might treat as background noise, unless you stop to pay attention for a few minutes. These are the pleasant sounds of buskers.
Busking is defined as playing music or otherwise perform for voluntary donations in the street. Street musicians are important to a city because they add color and diversity. They provide a diversion as we move on to wherever we might be going, and that little break can be rejuvenating. Busking is the city version of stopping to smell the roses, and its easy to miss the point that they actually add something to our day.
