(NEW ORLEANS) Celebrating 300 years in the making, New Orleans is currently busy with Mardi Gras, Jazz, and the French Quarter festivals. A visit by Busker Central reporters for a month reveals some interesting developments along with a deep history.Bourbon street in "da qwada" is traditionally known for it's late-night activities, bars, drunks, fights, and arrests. It's still a wild place but not too suitable for busking. Jackson Square mall is known for it's daytime bands, painters, and psychic readers. Now, one block off Bourbon, Royal street is really nice and becoming popular for buskers both day and night. Among the historic quaint shops, several jazz bands and others buskers have sprung up. And who can blame them? It's probably the best single street that embodies the French Quarter at it's best....

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(WWW) In these days of pandemics and wars, what better way than busking to get people's minds off the problems of the world? Buskers are the chosen ones when it comes to this now even more difficult task. Performers all over the world can take heart that they're doing the right thing - especially in these trying times.Most buskers are talented muses from jazz thru hip hop thru classical, Latin, and folk and rock music even playing some blues standards for fans in the know.

Parks can be more open to busking. It helps to know that North Carolina's Busker's Day welcomes select buskers from across the state to play music throughout the Museum Park. These kind of sidewalk attractions can only create a more vibrant community.

"To seek a more perfect pitch", as it were, is part the Busker constitution -...

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Seems some in Hertford are busy using their heads for something other than hat-racks these days. The East Herts Council has applied to let buskers perform outside a Maidenhead Street site. Street performers may soon be able to entertain at a pitch formerly known as the Woolworths store. The application allows for "performance of plays, live music, recorded music performances of dance, and anything of a similar description to live and recorded music and dance. Interested parties or responsible authorities may make representations in writing to East Herts Council by May 26."

BRISTOL, Tenn. – The city has launched a program to encourage performers to display their talents at designated downtown spots billed as “busk stops.”

Known as “Busk Stop Central,” the program will allow performers – including jug musicians, avant-garde mimes, tap-dancers, orange jugglers, rubber-band pluckers, bongo players, Flamenco guitarists, spoken-verse poets, Austin Powers imitators, Renaissance Fair re-enactors and other artists – to legally do their thing at specified downtown locations and receive donations from passers-by.

“Busk” refers to an old English term for street performers, known as “buskers.”

A performer must apply for a free city permit to perform at one of three designated areas, all on State Street. The busk stops are marked with medallions in the sidewalk.

For details, contact the Bristol D...

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(WWW) Some job searches have started including busking and street performing as a viable means of employment. On an updated career page, an article by Brett Helling discusses definitions, salary, qualifications, responsibilities, skills, working conditions, experience, and employers.Walk-by acts: buskers perform their act continuously for a long time. This happens mostly with musicians and mimers who perform their repertoire while people walk by them. Occasional passers-by stop to hear a song or two but no defined audience forms.

Circle acts: these acts work more like a “show” and have a distinct beginning, middle, and a grand finale ending. The performers first attract a crowd that will stand in a circle around them to watch the show. Circle acts are well suited for theatre, dance, acrobatics, magic, etc...

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