What is a busker’s life like, during the COVID-19 lockdown?

Shanilee on Piccadilly Circus

April is usually a busy month for London. The cranky winter weather is finally swept away by a spring breeze, flowers are in full bloom and the sun is surprisingly out more often than expected. People swarm the streets of central London filling them with a bustle. Buskers stand on every corner from Piccadilly Circus to China Town and Southbank entertaining tourists and locals alike.

Shanilee Eleria is one of those buskers. Having quit her job as a barista last September in order to pursue busking full-time, she was excited for the upcoming summer season, when work usually kicks off after a long and tiresome winter.

Yet 2020 is a different year for everyone.

As the outbreak of the coronavirus has reached the UK in the middle of March and the government enforced a nationwide lockdown, buskers have been forced to stay indoors and fear of having to spend the summer season in isolation.

“Having to stop busking felt awful,” says Eleria. Having a job that does not guarantee a steady salary nor a health insurance Eleria stopped going out to busk one week prior to the lockdown: “I had to stop busking because I was gathering big crowds, people were drunk, everyone didn’t care. People didn’t care if they had to touch me or come near me and I was very paranoid with the whole situation.”

When times like these are nerve-racking for people with a nine-to-five job, how do buskers aim to survive?

“There are some associations that are giving financial support to musicians such as Help Musicians, but you have to apply for that and some people are entitled while others aren’t. I personally wasn’t,” explains the Spanish-born singer.

Help Musicians is an independent UK charity that helps musicians in times of crisis. During the outbreak, the charity has organised a Coronavirus Financial Hardship Fund as a means to “provide immediate financial relief to musicians while Government support options were revealed.”

Zoё Wren is a licensed underground busker who considers herself “lucky” to have had the opportunity to get this grant. Wren admits that the idea of having to stop busking made her “panic a little” even though she saw it coming: “When I did my last busk, I already had a feeling that it might be my last. People didn’t want to take out change because that is one of the most germ-ridden things … I was already earning half of what I normally would.”

Wren shares that the lockdown has not been “such a horrible experience like [she] expected,” and found ways to keep herself busy: “I started teaching piano and guitar lessons online. I’m also quite lucky to have a studio at home and I have been working on recording an album.”

Eleria, on the other hand, admits that the lockdown has left her feeling depressed the first few weeks: “For most of us performers the thing that gets us sane, is that we like to go out and perform for people… I did a live show a couple of weeks ago which was very nice and many people wanted to support me.”

David Anglin organises the Red Light Busking projects, now turned into a video series, which aim at having buskers perform in shopping windows. While buskers are self-isolating, Anglin came up with a game show idea where performers are given two songs and one hour to record themselves performing it. “It captures all of their creative process,” says Anglin, “because not many people understand the amount of effort that artists put in when they are creating something. And we also pay them for their time.”

“Music is universal. It touches different people,” he adds, “personally I think that should be rewarded.”

When asked what we can do to help buskers in such a moment of crisis, Eleria and Wren do not ask for much: “At the moment of the quarantine it is becoming a very strong cultural moment in the way that everybody needs this art and culture," says Eleria, "everybody looks for ways to be entertained, people want and need to hear music. A little bit of support and recognition is all we ask for.”