Busking booms in our city streets

He is 19. He has bare feet, ripped pants and his eyes hide behind long shaggy hair. He has a set of drumsticks and four empty industrial buckets; the crusty remnants of plaster still visible on one, the word Dulux on another. He turns them upside down and places them in front of him. He looks around at the small, curious crowd that has gathered and then begins. He lifts his sticks and brings them down hard onto the white plastic with rock-star confidence and precision.

His momentum surges, as do the numbers crowded around his stage on the pavement. The last bucket of the set is hit and before the sound finishes its bouncing ascent up the surrounding buildings it is replaced by cheers, whistles and coins raining down on each other. On a day like this, Lachlan Robinson will make at least $400 an hour.

In a time when most headlines read of unemployment and financial strain, one young drummer boy is still making serious money, “People are giving as much as they ever have. Last Wednesday was the best weekday I have had in ages,” he said. That Wednesday Robinson made $300 in 50 minutes.

After witnessing a small fortune collect in the bottom of a purple ice-cream container it’s easy to see why buskers are popping up all over the city. The trend is growing down at Circular Quay.

“I have been here for about four to five years and I am definitely seeing a lot of new faces,” said Djahn Doolan, a member of a traditional Aboriginal performance group.
“The other day a group of young guys set up an entire band down there, they were pretty good too,” he said, looking towards the Overseas Passenger Terminal.

Doolan doesn’t seem too concerned about the new competition or the global financial crisis. In fact, he explains, that they too haven’t really been affected by it, “If you are asking if this puts bread and milk on the table, then yes, yes it does.

“We are really here for the tourists and they are still giving a lot. On a good day I will make two to three hundred bucks an hour. I have made about $150 today.”

Kerry Hodge, who plays the guitar whilst balancing a skateboard on his head, agrees there had been a huge increase in buskers. Hodge has performed on the corner of Liverpool and George Streets in Sydney’s CBD for the last two years. He points to some bongo drummers across the street and at some other young men with a guitar and violin, “They have just started coming,” he said.

Hodge’s party trick is also his means of income and has even been a ticket to  celebrity status: “I have been on Burke’s Backyard, Sunrise, Kerry-Anne, Australia’s Got Talent and I am all over You Tube.”

It seems recession and busking go hand in hand. Sydney City Council Historian Lisa Murray checks back into archives for any records of this and finds a photograph from The Sydney Mail, Wednesday June 3 1931, titled Sydney Street Studies. The photograph is of a man and his dog standing on a Sydney street. He is wearing a tailored suit – a vest, shirt, jacket and handkerchief in his breast pocket. His hair is receding and beside him is a cardboard sign that clearly reads “Unemployed”. His dog is wearing little hat and the man is playing the violin with the same concentrated look of the drummer boy behind his buckets.

by Tess Morrell