For POSKOD.sg, 2013
Singapore Busker
The madness of modern minstrels in an effacing republic
Every Singaporean knows a busker. The blind man playing the accordion at the bus interchange; the dreadlocked Japanese hippy deftly manipulating crystal balls; the underpass guitar uncles who never grow old. In this nation, where long working hours and material wants overshadow the simple human desire to play, buskers are often spoken of as an ‘Other’—sometimes an unfathomable hobo, other times a race respected for its skill and tenacity. It is not easy to ply an art on the streets in a 21st century where modern technology has saturated us with easy access to feats and spectacles the world over, much less here. Busking, with the magic and madness it can conjure, is almost an anti-thesis to a collective consciousness that is often times placid, forgetting its own too much, or unforgiving to the marginal.
Busking dates back to ancient times, practised by gypsies, medicine men and other peoples working the streets by juggling, playing music, doing magic tricks, reciting poetry, telling fortunes—anything that was an innovative marvel could earn the next meal. It has always been, in essence, a rough trade. An artist can perform on the street and learn creativity, but a true busker will know the life of the street so that he knows which are good days, how long to play each set for, how to pass the hat around. The art is the trade; the trade is the art. In this universe, creativity is their skill, madness their wild card, and the mountain of jingling coins their deserving prize at the end of a hard day. Buskers may look forward to the difficulties of living on their trade; it is almost pride at being so despairingly human.
Every Singaporean knows a busker. The blind man playing the accordion at the bus interchange; the dreadlocked Japanese hippy deftly manipulating crystal balls; the underpass guitar uncles who never grow old. In this nation, where long working hours and material wants overshadow the simple human desire to play, buskers are often spoken of as an ‘Other’—sometimes an unfathomable hobo, other times a race respected for its skill and tenacity. It is not easy to ply an art on the streets in a 21st century where modern technology has saturated us with easy access to feats and spectacles the world over, much less here. Busking, with the magic and madness it can conjure, is almost an anti-thesis to a collective consciousness that is often times placid, forgetting its own too much, or unforgiving to the marginal.
Busking dates back to ancient times, practised by gypsies, medicine men and other peoples working the streets by juggling, playing music, doing magic tricks, reciting poetry, telling fortunes—anything that was an innovative marvel could earn the next meal. It has always been, in essence, a rough trade. An artist can perform on the street and learn creativity, but a true busker will know the life of the street so that he knows which are good days, how long to play each set for, how to pass the hat around. The art is the trade; the trade is the art. In this universe, creativity is their skill, madness their wild card, and the mountain of jingling coins their deserving prize at the end of a hard day. Buskers may look forward to the difficulties of living on their trade; it is almost pride at being so despairingly human.
Roy Payamal, one of Singapore’s earliest buskers who started experimenting some thirty years ago, is one such human. “We believe in doing things that are difficult,” he speaks of his tribe. Known to some as the Silverman, his acts have evolved from simple juggling and statue shows when those were novelties in the Eighties, to more conceptual, installation-heavy acts with poetry calling for peace, and a gold-bodied act at bustling Waterloo Street which prompted a New Paper article when elderly audiences made praying actions every time they walked by. Today, his busking home is in one of the busiest heartland towns of Tampines, where since last July, his performance-installation has allowed him to continue an ongoing exploration of the relationship between stillness and movement in a busy city. On weekends, his crowd thickens as the show peaks, with supportive regulars and new audiences whipping out recording devices. It is a magical, surreal sight amidst the malls and mobs of Tampines. Elderly people suddenly sport secret smiles, children dance, young couples whisper to one another. This is us, responding to street art.
His glimmering installation is the insane contraption of an eccentric inventor—a silver luggage fixed atop a short platform, fat wires connected to heavy-duty car batteries, Bosé speakers invested in to give audiences the best sound quality. He stands in the luggage, with a backdrop that changes every few months—from floral tablecloths bought at haberdasheries to rubber slabs and recently, garbage bags with metallic tape; the art of sourcing from the everyday. Slowly rotating lights shine psychedelically on his glimmering torso as he unfreezes into a flowing series of abstract movement to the sounds of anything from Queen and Bob Dylan to David Attenborough narrating the birth of the universe. At once raw and divine, it is also undeniably strange watching other Singaporeans witness this mirage amidst the grind of daily life, where his aura gently forces one into presence. Close to a dose of a bizarre dream, he says, “You’re in the moment. This is real. It is live, not an image people see in a film.” His favourite moments are when children “secretly wave” at him or discovering that “aunties like ACDC”.
Roy is part of a little-known path of history here charted by one of the oldest forms of entertainment. Street performances were common when our grandparents and parents watched wayang and bangsawan (Chinese and Malay opera) telling epic stories and myths that captured the imagination in a simpler time. Busking was banned in 1994 but suddenly allowed again in October 1997, weeks before the first Singapore River Buskers’ Festival, organised by the then Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, which brought in a slew of international acts. The license required an audition; buskers had to be part of arts groups, could not interact with audiences and had to donate part of their takings to charity—in a seeming bid to avoid endorsing the art.
Today, the license obtained through the Busking Scheme is a Letter of Endorsement from the National Arts Council (NAC) for an Arts Entertainment License and Public Entertainment Ad-Hoc License. There is still an audition, but buskers do not need to donate their takings to charity. However, scroll to the bottom of the NAC site and it states in bold and italics that ‘busking should not be seen as a source of income’— odd advice largely dismissed by buskers, and problematic given NAC’s inherent general mission to support artists within a flourishing arts scene that necessarily includes busking. Buskers also cannot sell merchandise (disallowing artists from gaining greater reach for their works) or actively solicit donations (though ‘passing the hat’ after a circle act is an ancient art inherent to busking). The scheme is managed by The Presenting Company (TPC), an arts and entertainment production company. The list of current buskers, previously published on the TPC site, reveals wide-ranging acts from circus tricks to exotic instruments, with the list lacking mainly in theatre and dance.
Husband and wife duo Sounds of Soul busks three times a week for a living at the mouth of the underpass linking Takashimaya and Lucky Plaza. Nana is a strong woman with a robust voice, Mann a reggae incarnate with soulful eyes. They are easily one of the best street musicians here, and have consistently maintained their license, but it isn’t easy. After Mann suffered a serious illness some years ago and faced difficulty getting employed, they turned to busking and independent gigs to feed their family. Still, their voices reverberate beautifully, without desperation, amidst the marble and shoppers hurrying by. They tell me about how they saved up to buy their current amplifier; amidst the hardship, Mann says, “singing is happiness”.
Faizal Bohtiar is someone else with a voice. In the old underpasses of Clarke Quay, you might find the sweet-faced Beirut of Singapore with his accordion, belting out, like a passionate drunken sailor, self-composed tunes in gypsy tango style. Once shy, an accordion that called out to him in an antique shop changed everything. He now runs a local accordion movement and his band The Lost Hat, made up of an international cast, was formed as he encountered musicians at his beloved underpass. “I’m not afraid to do what I want to do in my life,” he says. This is the power of busking: having courage to face the world with one’s art can create a push to greater things—starting with an unshackling of psychological fear. Echoing across the seas at sideshows I watched in Adelaide this year, I heard more than one performer end his show with the adage, ‘This is my heart, and this is my art.’
But busking is also about smarts—ask any busker and they will tell you location is everything. It is where regulars, new audiences and chance find you, where you become part of a culture somewhere on a street corner. The contentious list of roughly 136 designated busking locations include 14 spots in the coveted Orchard Road belt, five in Chinatown, two in Sentosa, 45 in heartland parks where human traffic is low, and a handful of others that, according to buskers, are void decks where no right-thinking troubadour would ply his trade. Busking in underpasses and MRT stations—where glum commuters could use a lift, and more importantly, where the pulse of the city reverberates—are not allowed. Each busker can pick five locations, subject to the prior approval of landowners. Waterloo Street, which used to be a bustling enclave, was stripped years ago from the list despite its popularity with tourists.
The world is unfortunately moving towards a similar model of controls and permissions, only that busking cultures differ vastly across countries. In London, the annual subway licensing is a colourful campaign attracting even established artists who relish the chance to get in touch with 3.5 million tube passengers daily. Covent Garden in London, a Mecca for busking, is a playground of madness where performers queue daily for licenses and indoor selections are picked from a hat. The Melbourne City Council has a 20-page pdf of guidelines for buskers, and does not hold auditions for quality but safety (except in the most coveted street)—which the local government could take a leaf from in the name of relaxing regulations and allowing the market to self-select.
We do not have enough conversations about busking. A prominent cultural work that references local busking is Tan Pin Pin’s acclaimed 2005 documentary Singapore Gaga, about the sounds of the nation. She casts a sentimental eye on an elderly busker in the Raffles Place underpass, performing his own circus-inspired feat with Chinese kok-kok shoes, a harmonica and juggling balls, as commuters hurry by without a glance. It is almost a subtle plea for fellow Singaporeans to care. People’s Association’s Community Music Time is an initiative for members of the community to volunteer their talents performing in heartland spaces. It might have stemmed from good intentions, but resources could instead be channelled to supporting heartland busking enclaves—where buskers get to enjoy monetary appreciation and spaces still get to be enlivened. Essentially, it is an endorsement of busking that is culturally shunned. Instead, the busking scene is allowed to chug on, quietly, as long as it causes no harm.
On the other hand, busking festivals are grand celebrations of foreign acts, when strangely enough foreign buskers are supposedly illegal on our streets. The Singapore River Buskers’ Festival, which grew to be one of the biggest of its kind in Asia, saw 25 international acts in its last edition in 2003. Last year’s Sentosa Buskers Festival highlighted mainly—or only—foreign talents. Faizal was rejected when he called to enquire if he could be part of it; Roy was once asked to ‘be polite’ and tone down an act in a festival when it drew crowds much larger than the foreigners’. This is a core gripe of local buskers I spoke to; it is their hope these festivals can recognise them. Why have programmers seldom honoured what local busking has invented for the nation; could we one day see a festival with an elderly busker charismatically singing and dancing to Hokkien songs? After all, said busker’s roaring popularity in Chinatown and Ang Mo Kio—with a queue for dedications—is testimony to the people’s tastes. Chuck familiar notions of ‘quality’; let’s try bravely looking at our culture in the face.
The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), which oversees NAC’s work, released the Arts and Culture Strategic Review last year, a 110-page report of which busking, vital to any country’s cultural life, received a small mention with a recommendation to create ‘No Censorship Zones’. NAC declined to reply to questions about the busking scheme due to a review taking place over the next few months, but their day-to-day challenges might be understandable in a landscape that is likely to be more complicated than it seems. Sadly, buskers seldom speak of NAC as an organisation championing their art, a friend they can go to in times of need, especially in an industry where one often needs help and encouragement. Not discounting the black sheep, buskers seem to find support in one another instead, in bumping into old busking pals not seen in years, sharing of news down the grapevine, turn-taking of spots and looking out for one another. But today they are largely a scattered bunch, with no unifying guild. Internationally, more are becoming aware--The Busking Project documents and celebrates buskers all over the world, including Singapore, and aims to be a portal for buskers seeking advice on anything from legal aid and equipment to permits and activist movements worldwide. In a way, busking has always been about community.
Whilst the lack of a local movement for street art in its myriad forms could be why other performers haven’t been rallied outside, others cite a host of other roadblocks. Acoustic-folk duo One Hat Town did well at the audition, only to be rejected by the Ministry of Manpower without a reason—one of the band’s members is an Employment Pass holder, thus necessitating an extra level of permission. Dancer Bernice Lee wanted to busk as physical research for a project about movement in the city, and passed the audition. But she gave up when Millenia Walk, from whom she sought location permission, was overly controlling, requesting a grander setup with sets and costumes. Even if, through advocacy and other efforts, these obstacles are surmounted, there needs to be, amongst Singaporeans and the local arts community, a shared belief in harnessing busking’s power—Rod Stewart and countless musicians started on the streets; Cirque Du Soleil was founded by buskers; street theatre goes way back to antiquity. If the issue is a matter of license type, definition or even the spontaneity-killing nature of annual auditions, the government needs to create an encouraging environment that facilitates a smoother process.
Then there is word passed around that people think busking is like begging. If street artists are beggars, “then insurance salesman are too”, says Roy, who has busked in France and Japan, and represented Singapore in an Italian busking festival. He is often advised to “join Mediacorp since you are so good” but wonders why busking is seen as a stepping stone, rather than a serious art. He is adamant that buskers need to regard what they are doing with more importance. Performance artist Lee Wen tells me, “we are beggars with a conscience; we are doing work the country needs”. He regards Roy as a “busker extraordinaire”, and a case of how “something as simple as origami can become a conceptual sculpture in a gallery”. Despite being accessible as a marvellous spectacle, he tiptoes into the realms of conceptual and performance art, with a sometimes anti-art aesthetic and his view of busking as more than a show but a serious experiment in living and culture-creation. A deeper artistic, even philosophical, mission is at work, shining peacefully with a befitting gleam of silver.
Nonetheless, the begging theme could be an issue of quality for some who complain about noise pollution or less-than-perfect vocals. But busking is more than the way it looks or sounds; it is the busker and his conversation with culture, wherever the conversation takes us. Roy says, “Whether it’s ugly or not doesn’t matter. The thing is that this is reality…this is it, this is your Singapore.” Then the elderly busker in Singapore Gaga is beautiful because he is what he is. Our musicians—blind or not—are doing what they can. Even the other uncle with his giant bead act in Orchard is, in his own way, culture.
In the past, buskers freely travelled through vast lands, their mobile art the means to survival. Singapore is a city and also a country; we are naturally robbed of the romance of a life on the road traversing exotic landscapes, encountering different peoples, foods, tongues. Here, buskers have to make their own romance in a biting republic, and in the overwhelming strain of modern living, an almost-too-simple but genuine desire to make people smile—even a duty to de-stress—is motivation enough for some. It is also one of the most unstructured ways of making a living in the world—which means freedom for some of these souls who cannot be accepted or bloom elsewhere.
The truth is, busking is many things. It has serious potential to enliven and activate society, especially one more afraid than others to live and love. Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls, who busked as an eight-foot bride for six years after graduating from university, described busking in her controversial TED talk as “the best education”. She also cites as important the opportunity it gave her to meet many lonely people in the city, who were touched by her act—testimony that at the core of street art is human exchange, which opens doors to hearts. The word ‘busking’ came from the Spanish ‘buscar’, meaning ‘to search’. It is a search for soul, or a collective spirit, through extraordinary encounters in the everyday.
Finally, busking is also about possibilities. Buskers can invent anything from their wildest imagination—and many have, in a worldwide community humming with possibility and joy. And when they want to, buskers can develop themselves exponentially through constant innovation and discovery. The public space that is the underpass is Faizal’s realm of inspiration, and Roy, whose intense working days can last up to 16 hours, says, “being able to push yourself is a gift” The possibilities engendered are responses to culture in its never-ending dialogue with street art. When Sticker Lady happened, Senior Minister of State Indranee Rajah said, “whether it is art on the pavements or on manhole covers, art per se is not an issue if you get approval”. But a culture of possibilities cannot be inspired without some space for spontaneous magic and wonder.
The opening and closing scenes of Singapore Gaga plainly feature guitarist Melvyn Cedello at the secluded exit of Novena MRT, slowly singing “'Wasted days and wasted nights, I have left for you behind. For you don't belong to me, your heart belongs to someone else’”. While government agencies can find roles as advocates of local buskers, leading to a host of new possibilities, and artists can harness a collective belief in busking’s magic potential, a nation at the danger of becoming wasted, that constantly forgets and seldom speaks out, needs to turn to its big, open—and clean—streets, and see, really see, those among us who are our own special form of one of the world’s oldest breed.
Images by Salty & courtesy of Roy Payamal
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Bibliography:
Many fear control may kill spontaneity. The Sunday Times, October 5, 1997.
Fringe brings buskers out in Singapore. The Nation, July 21, 1998.
Singapore River Buskers’ Festival. Singapore Infopedia.