Where did buskers go?

Maybe we don’t need to have celebrities anymore.

Live music used to be a much more common and more casual endeavour than it is now. You wouldn’t have to spend a third of your fortnightly pay for a full stadium show performance, that we dress up and queue for, where you can only see the actual artist through the screens, and the audio comes through digital means.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have sobbed at many, many, shows, where the tiny spec at the other end of spark arena is someone I have loved for some time and suddenly I’m technically in the same room as them.

But in the past, if there was music playing around you it was because someone was playing it. A job as noble as a cobbler or a carpenter. Now whilst I’m aware this was reserved for the wealthy in a lot of historical contexts, I see thousands of artists online that I think would love to see their work in the world more often, as I would mine, and maybe it wouldn’t have to be that way in a new age.

Imagine if we treated arts the way we treat trades. You go to study art so you can paint portraits of families, document landscapes of their holiday, paint their dog and their kids and their strange dream they had one time.

You call your usual musician to play for a dinner party you’re hosting, because “I think jazz will pair well with the wine tonight”

Music is inherently a human activity. It’s so natural. And I think with the rush and excitement of technological advancements we’ve robbed ourselves of the life we could be living, surrounded by talented people who can do what they enjoy AND afford to eat.

I was stuck in a (confession) 8 hour doom scroll today, And I was stopped in my tracks by this video of two brothers playing guitar for their niece. This is what inspired me to write.

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS5pdFV29/

It reminded me how badly I yearn for live music in my everyday life. Not in a going to gigs way, but in a busker way, in a piano in a mall way.

I actually don’t want to pay a gazillion dollar conglomerate who funds arms to perpetuate wars and who pass minimal money along to the artists that without whom the business would not exist. I want to listen to my friend playing piano. I want to sing in a courtyard. I want to hear my friends play guitar together.

It feels so cringe to perform for my friends. I’ve been making an effort to be more casual about signing around other people or playing the guitar in the living room instead of being confined to my room like I’m doing something innately taboo or bothersome.

But we all know the scene in the Barbie movie - where all the kens are performing on the beach - and I can’t get that out of my head every time I do it.

I find the perceived ear of a witness crippling for my musical expression.

Though I’m trying to get better. I can smell the smoke from my neighbours cigarette waft over my fence, so I have become more comfortable knowing that the sounds of my third run through of Olivia Deans album wafting over their fence a little easier to palette.

But it’s comments like being a bar and you can see there’s a band setting up and the flurry of groans from the people I’m out with that push me back into my shell.

It was only in the last few months where my gorgeous flatmates told me they enjoyed hearing me sing, following an apology I’d made for maybe being too loud, that I actually let myself feel comfortable to sing in the house more.

When I was 19 I wrote an album that I was really proud of; and I showed my at the time partner, who after hearing the whole thing (I shit you not) went “meh. Cool I guess” and proceeded to launch into a full 30 min gush about how their other friend sounds JUST like Amy Winehouse and I should go see one of her gigs some time. It knocked the wind out of me completely, and I never released it.

Immediately after that relationship crashed and burned (shocker) I dated a musician. Except, he didn’t really make music, just talked about it a lot. I don’t remember singing much at all for the entire year and a half that I was with him.

Later, at 23, I had a three year relationship with a man who was entirely indifferent about my voice that I’d grown to be quite proud of.

So the barriers that I’m slowly trying to break down have been built, reinforced, and set in stone by many people across my life, but I continue to try nonetheless.

Healing is when I played guitar with my uncle at Christmas, and it felt so special. I felt so connected.

Healing is when I went to see one of my coworkers sons who was playing with his jazz band in a mall for Christmas.

Healing is when I walked slower than usual and made myself late for my Physio appointment because the cut through strip mall has a piano in it, and someone was playing it so beautifully.

Healing is seeing strangers step over the invisible line in the sand that says “CRINGE” and enjoying their craft publicly, and unembarassed.

Apparently singing is really good for emotional regulation. The vibrations through your chest and the humming in your throat are said to calm the vagus nerve - a core pillar of your nervous system.

I connect with my friends who I make music with, who hold space for me and let me be so vulnerable as the free flow of new lyrics slip out into the melodies and weave into beats. They don’t ask me what they’re about. They already know.

The thought of performing for people makes my skin crawl. But maybe it’s something I need to try in 2026. My dream has always been what I’ve called my “couch concert” where a bunch of my buddies are all sitting on different couches, in a garage maybe, and I sit amongst them with my guitar, and I can play for them the songs I’ve written.

Maybe it’ll happen. Maybe it won’t. All I’m saying is that I think part of trying to slow down and build stronger communities in this crazy age is to create safer spaces to be cringe - because actually I think we’ll find that it’s not that cringe at all, and we’ll discover new parts of our friends that bring our homes and our spaces to life, one strum, song, or hum at a time.

Until next time,

Becks