(SWITZERLAND) An interesting page at Swiss Info has many busking attractions, pictures, and related stories starting in the nation's capital with the Berne Buskers Festival.Celebrating its 12th year this summer, the three-day event featured 42 acts with 145 performers from 18 countries. Half of the acts were musical with the rest involving clowns, dancers, human statues, and other artists.

Related busking stories and pictures take us around Switzerland to Basel, Biel, and Montreux as well as podcast on what it's like to be a busker in Berne.

A reporter for Busker Central entered a Buskerfest contest in Luzern back in 1992. Unfortunately, the city was given a bad reputation when the contest was found to be "won" by a professional opera singer who had stumbled outside. Her father also happened...

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(LIAM MURRAY BELL) Three cities, two years, one chance - a story of a young man determined to find his voice in this world. Plucked from obscurity in Glasgow, Rab Dillon is about to become the next great protest singer.Seduced by promises of stardom and carrying only the guitar given to him by the girl who broke his heart, he travels down the road to London. There, he records his debut album that will speak to the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, and the disheartened. But one year later, he is sleeping rough on the streets of Brighton.

A modern-day ballad set across three cities and two years, The Busker is a rich comic exposé of the music industry, the Occupy movement, homelessness, squatting - and failing to live up to the name you share with your hero, Bob Dylan. It is also the story of what survives ...

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(COSTA RICA) San Jose has buskers singing the blues. Avenida Blues, a traditional blues band in Costa Rica, is finding national resistance to their style of music and performing. The buskers have been working for the past months filming their performances on the streets, issues with police, and concerts at large national festivals in the country.Due to severe lack of interest of the blues in Costa Rica, they are trying to get exposure with the international blues community. With different administration changes, the police have taken down several artists, jailed some others, and have confiscated equipment. A strike in January resulted in a movement called "Nuestra Calle" when there was the reported abuse of power by local authorities in the arrest of a sax player.

The Avendia blues band has been working hard...

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(CAPE TOWN) Buskers and street-performers are busy celebrating City Hall's decision to legalize performing in Cape Town.The South African city made news earlier this year when blind busker Lunga Nono was beaten by metro police for busking in St. George's Mall.

Charges against the busker have recently been dropped in favor of new legislation. Nono's guitar was broken in the melee which took place in front of his family and onlooking tourists. A music shop donated a new guitar to Nono who has filed a lawsuit.

Now that the city has come to it's senses about the performing artists and tourism, just about anything goes. This includes street musicians, acrobats, clowning, comedy, contortions, dance, singing, fire skills, mime, living statues, music performance, puppeteering, storytelling, poetry, painting,...

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(WWW) Our Founding Fathers...who art in Heaven...
Explore the History and Cultural Impact of Street Performing in America.Ben Franklin on the Streets of Boston in 1718 and Patrick Henry and Sam Adams on the Revolutionary Streets are just a few that used their talents to influence the making of a nation. Street performances were a part of colonial American life as evidenced by these observations of Hanover and Williamsburg, Virginia and Boston. Nathaniel Hawthorne, anyone? Here's a history of busking in the new world.

Americana at it's finest.

Follow the link below for edification.

American Street Performing