Busking is the practice of performing in public places, such as on the street, for tips or gratuities or voluntary donations. It comes from the Spanish word Buscar—to seek (fame and fortune ) or the Latin word Buscare – to procure, to gain. Busking could take many forms, clowning, dancing, singing, fortune telling, mime, living statue, one-man band, puppeteering, juggling, reciting poetry, even Christmas carolling. One’s ‘pitch’, where one performed, was very important. It had to be a place where there was a lot of traffic, lots of people, high visibility and little background noise.
The earliest ones were called troubadours or minstrels. A troubadour composed and performed lyric poetry, and a minstrel was a medieval bard who wrote lyrics and sang songs about places or real or imaginary events. Some of the earliest Irish buskers would sing out on the street and then go from door to door hoping for a few pence or maybe something to eat. Others would travel from fair to fair selling ballad sheets, singing in the open air without acoustics or reverberations.
In Galway around a hundred years ago, Johnny Doran, the piper, and his family would play at the Races and later outside the Imperial Hotel, where Paddy Philbin would dance to their music and draw large crowds. After them came the Reaney Brothers, also travellers who played at fairs in north Galway, Athenry and Conamara as well as in the city. Do you remember ‘Madame Bridget’, who used to be outside the Imperial Hotel telling fortunes, or ‘Madame Helena’, who had a caravan on the prom where she also told fortunes?
For many years, the races would not have been the same without the Dunne Brothers, two of whom are in our first photograph (A ) today. There were three of them, known as ‘The Blind Dunnes’, who travelled the country by horse and caravan. They would play outside Fallers on Williamsgate Street in the morning, at the racecourse in the afternoon and outside the Oslo Hotel in Salthill in the evenings. They were dignified men, gentle personalities, but when they played, their music was full of passion and heart and spirit, and they always attracted crowds.
Our second image (B ) is of Terry Smith singing outside the Ulster Bank. He was from Manchester and found himself busking outside the Town Hall and the Savoy, but soon he became a fixture outside the Estoria, where he entertained queues for 21 years. He became an expert on movies, not as a critic but on which ones appealed to the public and which were a flop. The film Mandingo brought out several devout religious protestors who recited the rosary and as a result, attracted a lot more cinema-goers and more money in his guitar case. It was Terry’s most successful film.
Robbie Grayson (C ) was a small man with a cap, an accordion and a booming voice. Many people stood in awe in front of him, wondering how such a little fellow could have such a powerful voice – if he was singing in Shop Street, one could nearly hear him in Eyre Square. Behind the scenes, he was a very generous man; he walked into the Fairgreen hostel on one Christmas Eve and emptied all of his takings on the counter to be shared among all of the clients there.
Pat Bracken (D ) was a Dublin man described as a “brilliant, talented, humorous artist who loved life and defied it". His family were seven-generation stonemasons and he trained with them. He moved to Galway, where he still worked in stone but also began working on the “soft, pliable malleability of foam and latex”, making puppets. He helped form the Galway puppet theatre with Matty Hynes and Annette Moore. Pat would often be seen on Shop Street or at the top of High Street with his ‘Bridie’ roaring insults and making raunchy suggestions at passers-by. He had other puppets too, including the much-loved concert pianist (who bore a striking resemblance to our current president ), who moved and played beautifully to recorded music.
There were many others, of course, such as Joseph Gaynor, a blind accordion player who always played outside Glynns and later the Treasure Chest. The Diceman was another who decorated the streets before he moved to Dublin. A man with a cardboard dog and a cardboard guitar who stood outside Murphy’s pub on High Street and just sang “plink a plinka plinka plonk” to whatever tune was requested.
Buskers are among the most engaging people you could meet, and some who started on the street have gone on to become international stars, such as Ed Sheeran and Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel. Some of the problems facing them on the street are getting soaked, getting sunburnt, drunks, headbangers, thieves, and occasionally the gardaí.
