3 years in prison for a monkey show

Hi everyone,

These newsletters take days to research and write, so I appreciate all the feedback I get for them. It’s nice to know that they hit home with many of you. However, things are heating up at busk.co, and I’m picking up the research for my book, so instead of sculpting this email into a 2,000 word essay, I’m just going to briefly cover the most interesting stories from the last month.

Let me know: does this format also work for you? Or do you prefer it when I tackle a single issue over thousands of words?

Thanks, and good luck out there,

Nick

Richard Erno, a two-time Canadian Fire Master Champion and long-serving street performer, received a complaint for fire eating in town, and was given a warning for one of those bullshit infractions buskers often receive: ‘impediment of sidewalk’. So, now he’s pushing Peterborough, Canada, to create a new permit system for buskers.

According to the city’s “deputy division registrar for the City of Peterborough’s clerk’s office”, whatever that is, various bylaws could be interpreted as preventing busking, by criminalising loitering and soliciting. If nothing changes, then busking will remain in that legal grey area, where you may or may not be ticketed depending on whether you get a complaint.

Richard has previously help set up something similar in Kelowna and Montreal. His mission is to make street performance something that is not just tolerated but encouraged through the use of permits. Of course, setting up such a system implies someone has the right to permit you—or refuse you—your right to express yourself freely in a city.

On October 11th, Chloe Marie Aston was still making local news on her tour of Britain, where she’s played in almost 300 towns since 2019. (I’ve mentioned her a couple of times in previous emails, because I’m so impressed with her set up and mission).

On October 13th, she made a very different kind of story: while busking in Tamworth her van was broken into, containing “all her costumes, equipment and spare parts for her piano bike.”

So, she launched a GoFundMe to pay for it, with a goal of £2,500. By October 19th she closed the request after reaching £10,000 from 591 donors! Amazing what you can do when you’re loved by a large number of people.

Joao Pagano, the musician who runs Brighton Beach Busking, presented a petition to Brighton and Hove Council with 592 signatures on it to support the return of amplified busking to one of the city’s best busking pitches. The council’s cabinet member for culture, heritage and tourism, Birgit Miller, a professional musician herself, has asked for a review.

Here’s one of those only-in-America stories. A man in Saratoga Springs, NY, was bankrupted by medical bills, and has become a street performer. He complained in a public hearing that the new city ordinances that made homelessness illegal (by banning sleeping, lying or camping on public property) also criminalised busking.

Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll replied that “We want to make sure the buskers are not allowed to sit in chairs”—the kind of cruelty reminiscent of US retail outlets banning their own employees from sitting.

Compare that with this story about 20-year-old pianist Mark Dyson, who used the money he made busking in San Francisco’s BART transit network to escape homelessness. Two quotes from Mark Dyson that are highlighted in the article are wholesome enough to deserve republishing here:

Three infant rhesus macaques were rescued from street performers in Agra, India, following a complaint by PETA. The PETA article states that “Keeping rhesus macaques in captivity without Parivesh portal registration [is] a punishable offence that may lead to imprisonment of up to three years, a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh, or both.”

I know the mistreatment of monkeys is cruel. But, there is a question over just how much punishment you should give someone for doing these kinds of shows. Rs 1 lakh is equivalent to over $1,100 USD—more than the average monthly wage for an office worker in Agra, and who knows how many times more the wage of a street performer—and three years in jail seems…well, to me, three years in jail feels a little too harsh.

In 2011 we filmed a guy doing these ‘topeng monyet’ shows at traffic lights in Jakarta. He claimed that every time he was arrested, the police would release his monkey, Bejo, back into the wild. But instead of going into the forest, Bejo always made his way back to him. We left that interview conflicted. On the one hand, here was a guy saying he has a loving relationship with a furry friend. On the other, he had that friend on a collar, making it do tricks for passing traffic. It might be a difficult watch for some, but the video above is what we cut together.

And finally, a Canadian music licensing agency, Entandem, wants to charge a farmers market a licensing fee. You can understand the logic: if an organisation is paying for a permit to take up space on public land, they’re essentially asking to be treated like a private venue—and should be held to those standards. Private venues have to pay music licences, ergo the farmers market must pay.

However, the market argues that it doesn’t coordinate the shows. There are no auditions, permits or scheduling of shows. So, it’s not acting like a venue would — and musicians therefore are acting on their own. [Also, the annual operating budget for the market is just $1,200 CAD, an astonishingly low sum, so a music licensing fee would be unpayable for them.]

There are five main ways that property managers can turn street shows into unpaid gigs. You can determine where busking is allowed (by establishing pitches), who’s allowed to busk (by issuing permits), when they’re allowed to play (by scheduling shows), what art they’re allowed to produce (by restricting instruments or amps), and how long they’re allowed to be there (by limiting show durations).

If you do some combination of the above, you should be treated like a private landlord and forced to pay all the fees that come with that, including the music licensing fee. The farmer’s market doesn’t seem to be doing any of that stuff, so should, in my humble opinion, be exempt from paying.

If you think I’ve got that wrong, let me know.

If you’d like to send us your photo, hold a sign saying #buskingisnotacrime, and tag us on Instagram (@buskingproject), or just email it to me here.

No Closing My Tabs today, because it’d be more of the same as the above.

Thanks, and heavy hats out there,

Nick