As well as buskers there are stalls full of arts and crafts as well as every type of food from every different culture. It's like a big Pako Festa with much more street entertainment.
I did look into the possibility of being able to busk there myself but the applications had to be in long before we arrived here, so it was nice to stroll the streets with Mel on a beautiful warm day checking out the sights, tastes & smells of BuskerFest.
As for the buskers themselves, on the whole there were some very entertaining acts. There were some amazing installations from troops and organisations that had been invited to present some kind of act and then and there were your regular street performers juggling three spinning basketballs.
The first act that we came across was a human birdcage where brightly coloured, leotard wearing bird looking performers slinkied their way around the birdcage making all kinds of contortioned movements to a music track that was playing in the background.
Further along the festival crowds of people had gathered around a very loud male building up his big finale. He and his partner spent a good part of 20 minutes describing what they were roughly going to do and that's if they were able to pull it off then everyone was watching should pay them for the entertainment. And that is so true. Unlike an official performance in a venue where you have to pay for a ticket first before you see the show, a busker has to perform first before the audience decides whether or not it was worthy of some monetary compensation. Some buskers are very good at just leaving it up to the audience to make the gesture, others love to boast about how it is a living and that it would be offensive not to pay after watching the whole act. Unfortunately these performers were the latter. The grand finale itself was very impressive, with the lady standing on top of the gentlemans shoulders as they both played a classical duet with violins with their bows on fire while turning 360°. It was a sight. But unfortunately it was ruined a little bit because as I mentioned they spent over 20 minutes telling us in their own words " if you are going to watch the grand finale and not pay afterwards, then you can just imagine us doing this act and you can walk away now". We were a bit taken aback by this demand and thought that was a bit presumptuous. The act itself was definitely worth paying, the lecture beforehand wasn't.
We were soon reminded though of how humble artists can be, especially when they are from down under. As we came out of one street we heard this music over to one corner that sounded like a mix of John Butler Trio, Xavier Rudd & Cat Empire. When we pulled up close to the act we were amazed to see a young scruffy blonde headed kid, the typical Queenslander surfer look, playing the guitar, harmonica, foot drum and singing all at the same time. And he was really rockn'. He had a crowd of around 100 around him clapping their hands and tapping their feet. There was nothing fancy about him, it was like he was just playing down on the beach around the fire with his mates, and you could really tell that he just loved being there and sharing his music with an appreciative crowd. All the way through his act people were going over to where the money hat was and were dropping in coins left right and centre, as well as purchasing CDs that he had strategically placed in the same spot. We bought one ourselves and felt very proud of our fellow Aussie and enjoy listening to his music at dinner nearly every night.As we started to leave the festival we passed many statue performers. There was a great Silver Elvis who robotically moved to his Elvis tunes and we were able to get our photo taken with a porcelain doll like figure who must have been sweating like crazy underneath her dress in the 34° temperature.
Roxy even got to meet a fellow busker ........
No comments:
Post a Comment