NEWS
Performing for pennies: the life of a busker
FIREDANCER: Dmitrijs Pudovs makes his living by spinning, spitting,
and swallowing fire, both on the street and at special parties.
In many cities in Western Europe, buskers take to the streets just so that people can hear their music or see their art. They harbor dreams of fame and fortune and see busking as a path to stardom, taking their cues from the numerous world famous performers that started out by busking – Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Robbie Williams, to name a few.
In Latvia it’s most often a different story however. Here buskers, in need of scraping enough together to earn a meager living, often have no option but to perform on the streets. The Baltic Times spoke with four of these performers to find out what life is like for a busker on the streets of Riga.
The painter
Andrej is a 39 year-old artist from Estonia. He paints eerie scenes from far away planets that feature towering rock formations and bright moons. His paintings rely heavily on the contrast between neon-bright objects on dark, swirling backgrounds. Heavy use of a paint scraper allows him to produce the sharp lines that seem to make the moons rise out of the painting. His performances often draw large crowds. People huddle around to see him produce the fantastic images that he can sell for anywhere from 15 to 200 lats.
Andrej is at peace when he paints. While it is impossible to tell what he is thinking under the mask he wears as he works, as soon as he takes a break his countenance is filled with serenity. He wears a black artist’s smock that makes him look almost like a monk. The painter said that busking was his destiny. “We all have our path in life, our calling, things that we are drawn toward. We are where we are, these things just sort of happen.” While Andrej has never had a bad experience performing on the streets, he prefers the atmosphere in Latvia to Western Europe. He complained that people in the West have no spirituality, and that they always check their account book before buying a painting. Andrej makes enough money to live simply, and has the luxury of only going out on the street to perform when he feels like it. He said that he could make four times as much money as he does now if he decided to work full time, but he prefers to only paint at dusk when the weather is nice.
Laura
Many of the buskers in Latvia are not so lucky. Laura is an old Russian woman who sits on the outskirts of the main squares in the Old Town and plays her accordion. She is missing her front row of teeth and looks as if she has not been able to afford a new instrument for 50 years. “It is very difficult as a pensioner. The way the state works, I am not technically a citizen and so the system makes it very hard to live. I am only doing this because I need the money,” Laura said. She noted that while 95 percent of the time people just ignore her or drop a few santims in her jar, sometimes drunks give her problems.
The most difficult thing about the job, however, is actually going out onto the street. “I need three or four cups of coffee and five or six cigarettes to work up the courage to go out and play every morning,” Laura said. Despite the difficulties, Laura does sometimes enjoy playing on the street. “When I play, I am happy,” she said, explaining that “it is a way of communicating with the street, a way of complimenting the street.”
Fire Spirit
Dmitrijs Pudovs is a highly professional busker, complete with a business card and an appointment book. He primarily performs at special parties, mostly for businesses, but he also takes to the streets where he spits flames and twirls fire sticks to draw huge crowds. “I play a lot of big parties because they pay well, but I play in the street for my soul,” he said. Pudovs learned a bit of juggling in the circus, but has acquired most of his skills simply practicing on the street with his accomplice, who plays the bongo while Pudovs dances.
He said that people always react differently to his shows, sometimes cheering wildly for simple tricks and sometimes standing passively after his best moves. He explained that the worst audience is often the richest, the people from large firms. “At the parties, sometimes the people from big firms are very cold, they cannot relax and enjoy the show. They look at their boss before they will do anything,” he said. Playing at special parties allows him to continue his craft, mostly indoors, throughout the winter and still make enough money to live comfortably.
The cello kid
She is one of the best street musicians in Riga, and she is still in high school. The teenage girl, who asked not to be named, plays intricate classical music that seems to breathe life into the surrounding buildings. She said that almost everyone is nice to her and that some people even “give me flowers and propose to marry me.” She plays on the street to help support her family. She explained that her mother had said that she needed to go out and try to find a way to make some money to help the family make ends meet. Busking is the only way that she can help. The more that she plays on the street, the easier it gets. “In the beginning I was not happy about it, but now it’s getting better. It always better when I have friends there to listen to me and support me,” she said.
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