I've occasionally busked later in the evening in the main outdoor covered
shopping arcade in Kochi city. This is an arcade that people ride their
bicycles through and at night there are ramen tents set up on some corners,
fortune tellers and lots of teenagers or men and women in their early
twenties usually playing folk guitars and harmonicas. Sometimes I've
joined acoustic guitarists and other times have played with a slit drum
player, but usually with a certain slide guitar player who has busked for a
living for six or seven years time in Europe (Fuji has a book of photos of
buskers from around the world appropriately titled Buskers, which I do
recommend; though there are no shakuhachi players featured in the book, he
has busked with another shakuhachi player named Tony Lloyd who lives in
Amsterdam who I believe has done a good amount of playing on the street).
I busked on the Philosopher's Walk in Kyoto once when broke in Kyoto but
didn't make any money, though one guy took my photo and gave that to me.
My Japanese nephew and I once busked for a few hours in Cambridge, England;
the only time people put money in the hat was when we played Tamuke.... A
group of guys with their heads shaved walked by at one point and one guy
yelled out "Where's the snake?"; perhaps they thought we were playing
Indian instruments. Later that evening I played in the candle lit prow of
a punt going down the Cam river with five other people on board...Rumanian,
Brazilian, Japanese, Saudi Arabian, and British nationalities represented;
we became a target for volleys of bottles from a rowdy pub before managing
to drift into the less inhabited nether regions of the river, wreathed in
mist and overhung with weeping willows with only swans for an audience...
Dan
Ribble
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