Research Guides
Nathan Ma
Ben Fisher
A Case Study in
Busking Culture
September 25, 1991: a newborn in the heart of Georgia swallowed a microphone and learned to pluck a 6-string.
And his name was Ben Fisher.
Since then, Ben Fisher has spent every Sunday at the Ballard Farmers’ Market, singing a mix of traditional folk songs, Bob Dylan covers, and original tunes. We sat at Trabant, sipping on iced lemonade and a macchiato respectively. Surprisingly enough, his guitar case was completely absent from the scene.
“Isn’t it interesting?” he asked, referring to his baby blanket in a black case. We were talking about a controversial busker situated everyday outside the Buffalo Exchange on the Ave. The busker didn’t break any of the unspoken rules: he wasn’t too close to another busker, he didn’t have an amp, and he wasn’t a brass band or a drummer drowning out those around him. Instead, the aforementioned busker stood outside the secondhand store mumbling anti-Mitt Romney sentiments, and cursing about the debt crisis.
“If he wasn’t a busker, I would call the cops on him,” I say, only half joking.
“Exactly!” Ben agrees, jumping into a discussion of how in the McCarthyism period, slinging a guitar over his should would have been a target on his back for communist inquiry. Instead, the status of a busker as a community, musical, and cultural icon grants permission and privilege for those willing to step up to the challenge.
For Ben, busking has been a childhood friend. He was handed a bow-backed guitar in his Atlanta middle school’s mariachi band, and started singing in Spanish. He moved to Seattle soon thereafter, joining the busking community before he could do so by himself.
“I was at Pike Place, and I was 15, and if you’re under 16, your parent has to be with you,” he said, recounting a fond memory of a full-time busker most commonly found playing the cello in the Westlake bus tunnel. At 15, having lived in Seattle for only a few months, Ben found himself being cut in line by another busker at a popular stop, when the cellist came to his defense. “He didn’t speak a word of English—but he shoo’d them off.”
And such is the camaraderie of the busking community. Ben mentioned his thankfulness for the Pacific Northwest that raised him musically and communally multiple times over our drinks. After we finished at the café, we headed to a local grocery store, where he proceeded to nitpick the quality of the produce.
“I’m spoiled,” Fisher said, turning over the shrink-wrapped button mushrooms Trader Joe’s had to offer. “I got a nice piece of lamb from Melrose Market yesterday; what goes good with that? Couscous?”
To Ben, buskers reach out not only to the shoppers picking out the ripest tomatoes and freshest eggs, but also the vendors wheeling and dealing and making a living. He admits—the vendors influence his perch. “I got my whole family to boycott a salad vendor whose only slightly redeeming quality was a cheap pun for a name,” Ben said, regarding the only negative reaction to his music from the vendors. Other than that, Ben said, the vendors are just another part of the community—just as much a part of his musical practice as the fans paying his rent through the nickels and dimes landing in his guitar case.
Outside of a sour grape in the produce section, Ben had only positive things to say about the community support of buskers in Seattle—professional and otherwise.
“There are plenty of bad buskers,” he said. “But they get money, of course!” He then asked me if I had ever been to Folklife. I had, and I agreed as we launched into a discussion of the harmonica playing grade-school kid asking for money to help send him to camp. “There’re bad buskers here in the U-District. Streetfair?” Ben prompted, again, critical but still positive about those around him.
To Ben, the Pacific Northwest is the land of opportunities. “There are great musicians, great producers, great music blogs, great stations,” he rattled off, shaking his head. Though his sound is old-town folksy with a bellowing power and a slight Southern twang to his guitar, Ben finds his musical home is far from the typical Nashville-country-rising-star studios. Far from it, actually—“Even down in Atlanta, they wouldn’t do this.”
Seattle has played an integral in developing his musical career, according to Ben. Though only twenty, Ben’s got an arsenal of accomplishments under his belt already: a full studio album, countless concerts across the country, a 5-song EP, and a brief stint as a live musician at a Puerto Rican bar.
“Mariachi music,” Ben sighed, recounting his failure to catch the attention of his audience until he turned to his middle-school repertoire of mariachi hits to which he learned the guitar.
Describing his sound, Ben has a choice few words. Specifically, “bellow-y”. His recognizable belt echoes down the market, and has been known to intimidate other buskers from drawing too close to his hot spots. Nevertheless, his voice is an instrument. “If I didn’t lose my voice, I’d busk all summer, and never have to pick up a second job to pay my rent,” he said. Still, six days out of seven, Ben hops on the Metro busses to Kirkland, Magnolia, Ballard, and to the ever-familiar University Farmers’ Market. Saturdays, he hits up two. Usually Sundays, too, but, “Friday, some guy got shot two blocks away from the market, so I’m not going there….”
Between the markets and class, Ben still found time for shows from Seattle to Atlanta to Chicago to Vancouver, as well as finishing up a 5-song EP of four originals and a Bob Dylan cover. He talked me through the process of recording his latest endeavor: working with a favorite producer, he also wrangled in a friend on the drums and a local musician on the steel-pedal guitar. Then, they painstakingly recorded each instrumental lick, drumbeat, and vocal harmony on old-school reel-to-reel tapes, later digitally transcribed and released for download over the internet. Describing the process, Ben mentioned the tedious recording and rerecording, linking new tracks to the cut-offs where old clips ended in mistakes.
Yet, there’s something comforting about the process, Ben said. “There are filters, on computers, that’ll do the same thing.” Ben compares these filters to Instagram or Hipstamatic: cheap tricks that make an homage to the past with its grain and grit, but without any of the unpredictability that draws people into 35 millimeter film cameras and dusty Victrolas.
Still, Ben faces the same 21st century dilemmas a pop musicians, reconciling new technologies and his Americana roots. As we rode the bus to Ballard, he pulled a white, plastic square out of his pocket. He explained: it was a plug-in for his iPhone, allowing him to accept credit card payments for CD’s at shows and concerts.
“Is it tacky, though?” he asked, as we walked off Market street, and he flipped his new toy in his hand, unsure if breaking out the iPhone for transactions at the farmers’ market was unforgivable. He put the plug-in back into his pocket, hoping the shoppers would have better sense than to ask if he took Mastercard or American Express.
His analog approach to music translates from the studio to the stage. Even at sold-out concerts, Ben has been known to step back from the mic, letting his booming voice echo through the hall amplified by two lungs and breath support that would make Aretha Franklin applaud. This, in turn, is what helps him develop as a street-performing act. By stepping away from the microphone, Ben has been able to create a musical style and performance repertoire dependant on two instruments: his guitar or banjo—depending on whether his nickel allergy is acting up—and his vocal chords of steel.
Among his pet peeves in performers, Ben cites musicians who need an arsenal of equipment and a toolkit of amplifiers. If you need a backing band on a CD-track, Ben says, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, Ben chooses to boil down his tunes into songs he can stomp along to, strumming out the melodies without the help of his album’s fiddles, mandolin, and occasional accordion.
Other peeves include performers who trap their audience—“Guys who play on busses,” Ben sneered. He asked, “Why not play a concert? Give people the opportunity to leave.” To Ben, it’s simply not fair to trap an audience. I anecdotally recounted a story about a brass band of seven players hopping on my train car as I rode from Pompeii to Sorrento. Ben shuddered at the thought.
“I can handle a fiddle, or a singer, or even a bucket drummer maybe,” he said. “But brass bands, drum kits, microphones—even I can’t compete!”
But when the drums aren’t drowning him out, Ben finds himself jamming out to fans of all ages. As I followed him through the Ballard Farmers’ Market, a solid fan-base of seniors clapped along to old John Denver classics, while their grandchildren scuttled in front of Ben, throwing bills on the ground until they land in his case. At this, Ben laughs, swaying back and forth as the beat takes him.
With his multiple performance styles and fans, Ben and other buskers present a dilemma for the archivist and ethnomusicologist. While studio recordings offer an insight into the fleshed out final products, live concerts offer a carefully scripted ritual: opening acts warms up the crowd, the headliner plays half a predetermined set-list, takes a cigarette break, finishes off the set, and closes off the night with an encore if the energy is flowing.
But what about the busker?
Situated somewhere between the live concert atmosphere and the lobbyist raising awareness for his cause, Ben and other buskers occupy a performance space that is dynamic, responsive, and challenging to the archivist. To address the busker, I have analyzed three issues that need to be addressed, as well as my takes as to how an archivist should deal with them.
Copyright Issues
As covered in the Stanford University Library’s article on fair use, there are extensive rules governing the production and reproduction of non-original art. While the original songs performed by Ben Fisher and other buskers are legally his own, and documentation by the archivist requires only the typical consent form and permission forms, buskers like Ben often perform cover songs or traditional songs. The buskers may not have the rights to record and release these songs professionally, but it is within their rights to perform them. What, then, is the archivist to do?
In my archiving of Ben Fisher, I completely ignored any cover song that isn’t in the public domain, not because they’re not important, but so that legal advise could be sought out before said material is archived by the ethnomusicologist. This practice excluded a fair few songs in Ben’s usual set-list—namely, Bob Dylan, John Denver, and Josh Ritter. However, his performances also included many of his self-penned tracks, as well as traditional folk songs that have been passed down for generations. Traditional folks songs at first seemed problematic, but as the nature of a folk song indicates that the author has long been lost from the records of the music community, the rights to the fair use of this song indicate that the song is in public domain. Consequently, the documenting of traditional folk songs joins the practice of documenting original songs by buskers in requiring only the typical permission forms from the ethnomusicologist.
However, this isn’t exemplary of a top-notch archivist, however. My time and resources limited my practice—if I was a professional archivist, I would have sought legal permission and obtained clearance to document and archive the cover songs played by buskers such as Ben in order to create a more comprehensive archive of busking culture. As buskers often play familiar songs to draw in the crowd, cover songs can constitute a large portion of a busker’s set-list, and are important to consider, as archivists.
Releases
In a live concert setting, archivists can set up a camera at a vantage point that can document the performer, and the performer only. On the streets, however buskers don’t exist in a vacuum. Instead, there are people circulating in front of, behind, to the side, and all around the performer. Consequently, in attempts to document the culture of busking, I ran into an issue in that my camera work not only documented Ben Fisher, but also all the people in the surround area. Unless I wanted to crop the video in so close to his face that his mouth was all I could see, there was no way to exclude extraneous subjects from being documented. Furthermore, it was important to me to document the movement of Ben’s body while playing in order to demonstrate the dynamic of his performance, and his physical responses to the environment around him. But with all these extraneous subjects in the video—many of them minors—it came to my attention that my records could be contested on the grounds of my lack of a release waiver from the participants.
I consulted the Stanford University Library in order to determine on what kind of grounds the archive could be prosecuted without the individual release on behalf of every person depicted. I found a checklist for characteristics to avoid in my documentation: invasion of privacy through depiction in a false light, disclosure or private facts, or intrusion, defamation, and violation of right of publicity. I crosschecked my videos to make sure that they weren’t contradictory to the fair use law. While the documentation passed through most clauses without fail, I’ve found the “right to publicity” problematic. The right to publicity indicates that the use or apparent use of someone’s name or likeness requires a release. However, I’ve mediated this issue through deciding that the video documentation is not being used to sell products, promote political campaigns, or other exploitative measures. Consequently, by carefully combing my video for any potential segments that would require a release, I’ve eliminated the need for release waivers to be signed by all the dozens of people who walked in and out of my camera’s frame.
Logistics
One final problem I was confronted with in documenting an atypical subject as an archivist was the documentation of the performer-viewer interaction. As I’ve mentioned before Ben’s performance was dynamic and responsive, waving to friends in the crowd, smiling at the babies, and thanking people for their time and money. Contrasted to a concert, the main difference I observed in a busking performance and a live performance on stage was the movement and migration of people during the performance. While at a concert, where people arrive late and leave early, there is a very different feel to a busking performance. Buskers like Ben don’t expect people to stand and listen to the entire set-list of tracks. Instead, they are prepared for people to listen to a tune or two and walk off, if that at all. In my documentation, I realized that a minority of people actually avoided Ben, speeding up or, in the case of one little girl in particular, covering up her ears as she ran by. Consequently, I was confronted with the issue of how does one document a busker and this new paradigm of performance?
For me, the resolution laid in the simplest form. In documenting Ben, I moved around him, circling him with the camera and capturing shots of the onlookers as he performed. I hoped that this practice would allow for a more comprehensive archive of what the performance felt it. The video captured not only the captivated audience who were clapping along, but also those who walked by, ignoring Ben for the large part. In doing this, I attempted to create an unbiased visual survey of the reaction to busking, and help document not only Ben’s performance, but the cultural reaction to it as well.
Conclusion
Just as Altanta’s own Ben Fisher has grown and matured from a mariachi strummer to a staple of the local markets, the dissemination of tunes has developed, moving past the concert hall and studio and into the streets, the markets, and the subways. Approaching buskers as a cultural phenomenon not only offers a fascinating network of relationships, but an innovative but problematic challenge for the modern archivist and ethnomusicologist. However, as demonstrated through my documentation of Ben Fisher, the busker is not only an interesting subject for such documentation, but also a necessary component of an archiving of contemporary musical practices in the Pacific Northwest.
References
Elliott, Gwendolyn. "Roanoke Ups The Country Twang For Ballard Balladeer Ben Fisher." Seattle Weekly Blogs. Seattle Weekly, 22 May 2012. Web. 04 June 2012. <http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2012/05/roanoke_ups_the_country_twang.php>.
"Interview with Ben Fisher." Personal interview. 29 Apr. 2012.
"Interview with Ben Fisher." Personal interview. 27 May 2012.
Radmer, Sarah. "Sounds from the Street." Sounds from the Street. The Daily, 8 Mar. 2012. Web. 06 June 2012. <http://dailyuw.com/news/2012/mar/08/sounds-street/>.
Scully, Lindsey. "SSGtv: Ben Fisher." Ben Fisher. SSG Music, 27 Jan. 2012. Web. 06 June 2012. <http://www.ssgmusic.com/ssgtv-ben-fisher/>.
Sutton-Holcomb, Joseph. "Sidewalk Folk." Sidewalk Folk. The Daily, 13 Feb. 2012. Web. 05 June 2012. <http://dailyuw.com/news/2012/feb/13/sidewalk-folk/>.
Thompson, Erin K. "Through at 2: Ben Fisher." Seattle Weekly Music. Seattle Weekly, 18 Jan. 2012. Web. 05 June 2012. <http://www.seattleweekly.com/2012-01-18/music/through-at-2-ben-fisher/>.