Tonight, councillors in Dublin will vote on new bylaws to busk in Dublin.
“Buskers could be faced with a complete ban on amplifying their music as Dublin City Council (DCC) gets ready to pass the capital’s first ever by-laws for street performers.”
– That’s the headline that came into my inbox about a week or two ago. Damn.
The announcement was last November, and since then the Dublin City Council received 88 submissions from businesses asking for new rules around busking to be considered. 72% identified noise as a big issue, 31% wanted an outright ban on amplification. 17% wanted a ban on drums, 17% just wanted amps to be turned down.
The council took a look, and decided that there should be some kind of fee for artists who want to busk in Dublin – around €30, or €60 for using amplifiers. It’s not clear what this has to do with noise.
New regulations proposed would stop the use of knives, saws, fire toys and other dangerous items, unless the performer had liability insurance. No busking before 11 a.m. or after 11 p.m., except on Grafton Street, where buskers could perform until 1 a.m. on Fri/Sat nights. Buskers could only spend only two hours performing in any one location, and their amps would be limited to 80db.
Breaking the rules wouldn’t result in a criminal record, but there could be on-the-spot fines of €75, rising to €1,500 if convicted in court, and you could have your permit revoked – although the revocation process would have two different appeal mechanisms.
And busking was banned in two locations in Temple Bar, thanks to testimony from local residents.
Go here for a great video, with the reactions of local buskers.
Go here for some quotes about how awful buskers are.
Regulations were passed in mid-January. From this article:
The council instead proposed to designate a “public domain officer” to patrol the city measuring noise levels created by buskers. Those found to be consistently exceeding 80 decibels would have their permit revoked, and could be removed from the street by gardaí.
The “enforcement officer” will be able to check the decibel level of performers, their distance from businesses’ entrances, as well as enforcing the two-hour time limit rule that will be put on performers and where they locate themselves. Hopefully the officer will be hired from the artistic community, and be friendly to the artists, instead of a cop.
The new bylaws will be up for review 6 months after implementation.
The Journal did a poll of its readers on their tipping habits. The breakdown was a unanimous win for buskers;
9% said they couldn’t stand buskers, and they should all be banned.
12% tipped buskers frequently
25% said they don’t tip, but “live and let live”
51% said “only when they’re really good”
The Dublin City Council released this statement on the byelaws. If you want a copy of the report sent to DCC, or you want a copy of the DRAFT byelaws, you can do so by emailing cra@dublincity.ie
Then, according to this report in the Independent, “Audio tests reveal Dublin buskers are louder than drills and sirens”.
Noise levels from some buskers on Dublin’s Grafton Street are louder than jackhammers and ambulance sirens, and more than 10 decibels above the proposed limit set by Dublin City Council
A sample of noise-level readings conducted by the Sunday Independent with Hidden Hearing audiologist Keith Ross found that even innocuous-sounding musicians, plying their trade on the capital’s biggest pedestrian corridor on Friday afternoon, exceeded 90 decibels – the same noise level as a DC-9 jet engine coming in for landing at 6,080 feet; a motorcycle; or train-whistle at a distance of 500 feet.
On Grafton Street, two buskers playing in front of Brown Thomas using an amplified electric guitar and keyboards registered at 92.4 decibels – which is just shy of the 95 decibels that would be emitted by a subway train at 200 feet.
Metres away, a talented young female singer belting out Adele’s Make you Feel my Love on a microphone, accompanied by a young man playing an amplified acoustic guitar, measured at 95.5 decibels – a level at which hearing loss can result during sustained exposure.
And finally, this editorial by the Independent, which takes a more busker-friendly view:
The fine chaps at Lonely Planet have even dubbed Grafton Street the “buskers’ Carnegie Hall”. High praise indeed.
In fact, many of our biggest rock stars have cut their teeth strumming guitars on the cobbled streets. The Frames frontman Glen Hansard famously began busking after dropping out of school.
Curly wee Paddy Casey, dynamic duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, Mundy and the Hothouse Flowers – then known as the Incomparable Benzini Brothers – all played to disinterested window shoppers.
Every Christmas there’s still a great deal of excitement to see if Bono will venture out of his plush Killiney abode to rattle out a few tunes where the street has a name.
But the city’s buskers aren’t all wannabe U2s. Performance art, too, is a big part of the scene. Thom McGinty, aka The Diceman, dressed up as the Mona Lisa, an An Post postcard, a condom and an Edwardian news vendor during the 80s – and helped transform the meaning of street performance in Dublin.
Comedian Dave McSavage was a Temple Bar regular, and the bold 007 himself, Pierce Brosnan, worked as a part-time fire-breather while he was at college.
Today, the streets of Dublin are crowded with giant bubble blowers, puppeteers and that solitary sand sculptor who laboriously carves the same fat Labrador out of wet sand grains, day after day. And that’s not to mention mime artists. I’m serious – don’t mention them.
But it’s the music that’s causing problems with residents and shop owners who have grown weary of hearing ropey and repetitive renditions of One. The appeals to ban amplifiers may have fallen on deaf ears but Dublin City Council – like Galway before it – is still looking to regulate busking with a new set of by-laws, which, if ratified, will take effect in March.