If they are playing an instrument well they are buskers. If they are playing it badly they are beggars.

[ARROGANT AMERICAN]

I have a thing. Everyone has at least one. Maybe your thing is pedestrians in cycle lanes, maybe it’s sexist jokes, maybe it’s when people say sat when they mean sitting. My thing is stereotypes, and they’ve been bugging me for years.

Take for example Gypsies in Romania. The Romany (gypsy) people have spread far and wide from their Indian origins, with a large base in Central and Eastern Europe (including Romania). But Romany does not mean Romanian, and not all Romanians are gypsies.

The gypsy stereotype that offends Romanians by association isn’t even fair. The idea of dirty, invasive, aggressive, thieving gypsies [F***ING GYPOS] is so ingrained that we have little or no tolerance for accepting information beyond this stereotype. A stereotype that does no justice to the gypsy’s current struggles or their troubled history (see The Truth About Gypsies, The Guardian [LIBERAL BASTARDS]).

Stereotyping is pandemic: not all Indians drive taxis or run small businesses [CURRY-MUCNHERS], not all Thais are prostitutes or cross dressers [BANGKOK LADY-BOYS], not all Koreans are workaholics or videogame freaks, not all Japanese are martial arts experts or tiny tourists [CAMERA-CLICKERS]. This may seem obvious, maybe even funny, but jokes are a part of the problem. Proof of the pervasiveness of stereotype-based prejudices is seen in Implicit Association Testing, which tests subconscious reactions to cultural biases (see Blink by Malcom Gladwell). In these tests even black people score as racist (against blacks)!

“I’m not racist,” you’ll claim.

That’s what I said – take the test.

As part of The Busking Project I have travelled from London to Scandinavia via southern Europe, India, SE Asia, NE Asia, and Moscow. We, a small team of three [TRUST-FUND GOOD FOR NOTHINGS], have visited fifteen cities in fourteen countries, seeing a snapshot of the street scene and buskers in each location. I have now met/seen/filmed/photographed/heard over one hundred performers. They all have individual stories (some exciting, some boring, some sad, some happy), and yet the same stereotype has cropped up in every single destination:

Buskers are beggars.

Busking is the activity of performing in public for voluntary donations. There is a great range of motivations for busking, and begging is only a thin slice of the pie. See table below:

Case Studies – the great thing about the above matrix is that it doesn’t work. Buskers, much like people, are very hard to box. Below are some examples from our time in Hong Kong.

Unkown Stories (the stories are unknown because on the day of filming we did not have an interpreter and we do not speak Cantonese [IGNORANT ENGLISH]):

• The rose sculptor was without arms from his elbows down and I desperately wanted to know where they had gone. Was he born like that or was it a horrendous accident? He was extremely dextrous, kneeling on the street and creating beautiful flowers out of play-dough (plasticine). Hong Kong does not have a welfare system to support disabled persons, so there is a chance that he was on the street with very little choice. Maybe he was supporting a wife and family. Maybe his rich wife supported him, and rolling flowers is pure artistic expression. Whatever the story, his small creations were beautiful and his busker’s-hat was filled with Hong Kong Dollars – some given in exchange for the flowers, and some donated freely.

• Along the same street we met a young lady pulling her guzheng (traditional Chinese harp) while hobbling on crutches. She reached her spot, curled onto the paved street, settled her instrument, and plucked the strings beneath the invasive lights and sounds of Hong Kong street advertisements. Maybe she had sprained her ankle playing tennis on the mainland, maybe she had polio. I thought she could be a music student – was the busking to pay her tuition fees, or just a chance to practice? Either way she was very talented, well dressed, and played with quiet dedication on the noisy street.

Known Stories

• Mr. Funny (Andrew So) is a skilled and professional clown who performs on the streets in protest against the lack of public spaces in Hong Kong. We know that his family supports him, his daughter was there at the interview, translating our questions for us, and explaining his responses. We know that he takes street performance seriously enough to fight for his right to a pitch on a public street. He has been arrested more than once:

“Magistrate Lau Wai-chung was told onlookers were unhappy with the police action, accusing them of “suppressing art” and questioning their authority to deny the people the right to enjoy a show in a public place.”

South China Post

• Dan Berlin is a young performer travelling around the world doing magic tricks for money. He was fun and full of jokes and his show drew a big crowd. Dan was good but getting better, not yet as smooth as the older, more experienced Mr. Funny. Dan was couchsurfing in each destination he travelled through and living cheap so that he could afford his adventure. He spoke fluent English and at the end his show he held a sign in English and Cantonese that read:

This is my job, I do it for money, I am hungry.

这是我的工作,我的钱,我饿了。

It’s a strange and wonderful world.

Chris Smith [TREE-HUGGING HIPPY]