Fabulous show-offs

OPINION: It can just be a happy discovery; serendipity of sorts. You turn a corner and encounter someone playing or acting out in a street performance that catches your attention. Maybe in an idle way, just as you pass, with a song now in your head. Or maybe you pull up and pay attention because, well, dang, they've just hooked you, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

Often it's happenstance. Every now and then, though, you've become part of something more organised. Invercargill this weekend has a welcome taste of that, with the inaugural Southland Buskers Festival, a satellite event from the recently concluded World Buskers Festival in Christchurch.

In Queens Park, Wachner Place, and a raft of other venues, world-class performers, are disporting themselves in a host of implausible entertainments.

We have a contortionists and escapologists, acrobats, a strong-woman, a slackrope master, a guy who torments his face with rubber bands, a living angel statue, and we shudder to think what else.

For the most part it is indefensibly silly; but it is sophisticated silliness even so. These people are unassailably expert in their essentially infantile activities. And if you're too purposeful a personality to pull up and watch these people for even just a few moments, then you're probably too purposeful a person full stop.

What it adds up to is a weekend of educated eccentricity for those willing to partake – and this at a cost of some gold coin donations.

On the one hand, these pros may be seen as a world away from the rather shabbier buskers, often musical, whom people tend to sniff at in downtown environs. There's no denying that some of these are embarrassments.

More commonly, however, if you are prepared to give them half a chance, you may find that their honest performances do hold some appeal. It can also happen that they can captivate. It has happened that famous faces such as Bono, or Paul McCartney, Tom Jones, Bruce Springsteen have hit the sidewalks and pavements; and not always as publicity for various causes. McCartney tramped up his appearance and put on a beard because he wanted to see how he got on. The answer, it turned out, was OK, but no better than that. The lesson here is less that we should be on the lookout for stars incognito, than we should be alert to the possibility that these buskers may have hidden talents that emerge only if you give them a little attention in the first place.

It's tempting to say that you'd need to be rather self-obsessed to walk pass famously good New Zealand buskers like The Topp Twins or Luke Hurley without registering, pretty darned quick, that they represented something interesting. More likely, however, is that what stops us from honestly checking out a busker of any sort is shyness. Most of them can help you with that, because they seem to learn, soon enough, the art of affability.

It might also be the case – either through a little financial hardship or just as likely because fewer and fewer o fus carry much in the way of cash any more – that you're not immediately in a position to fish into your pocket and pull out a reward for them, even if you are minded to. No doubt they would prefer it if you could, but quite often you're doing them a favour by helping draw attention to them, indicating to others that something arresting is going on.

As agents of laughter and lightness, buskers, be they theatrical or musical, are often more capable of rewarding our attentions than we tend to give them credit for. And this weekend is a particularly good time to start showing an intelligent interest.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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