Licensed Buskers?

At Commercial-Broadway station, I heard the haunting sound of Guantanamera played on the zampona, the Andean pan flute. I hadn't heard that song since it was a major radio hit by the Sandpipers. I was a sentimental teen in a northern town, and little as I understood it, I loved it.

Today the dark-skinned, dark-haired musician was wearing a South American style serape, and that seemed appropriate. I stepped away from the moving river of people heading for the escalator to listen, and to drop a toonie into the open instrument case.

Was he a qualified Olympics busker? Translink has been auditioning them. To play for the Olympics, they have to compete and then pay for their licenses.

Licensing a busker seems wrong. Buskers are artists. Willing to live on the edge for the sake of their art. Willing to have faith that the increasingly jaded commuters will check out the world beyond their ipods long enough to hear the live music of the city's dedicated street musicians.

The first busker I ever heard was in London, at Kensington Tube Station in the early seventies. The soaring voice of that tiny long-haired woman wailing Mary Hopkin's lonely ballad, The Streets of London, is a memory that remains with me still.

Buskers are a special breed. If they want to make music in the train stations, they should be allowed. No quality control necessary, not even for the Olympics.