Curly Reynolds busking downtown Toronto
Buskers and Waits: Piping Street Musicians
by Pat Beaven
reprinted from Celtic Heritage Magazine (now Celtic Life)
Today’s piping buskers – street musicians who can be found (heard!) playing the bagpipes on street corners and at subway entrances all across the country – are part of a rich tradition that stretches back at least six centuries. Probably called ‘tinker’ pipers in days gone by, their history can be traced back to the ‘waits’ of British history, and the wandering minstrels of the 1600’s.
In 15th-century Britain, night watchmen on duty in castles, camps, and walled towns used various instruments to announce arrivals and departures, gather the troops, and sound warnings of war or imminent attack. These guards were called ‘waits’, from the Anglo-Saxon “wacian”, meaning to watch or guard. Originally, waits played only wind instruments, as their sound carried well and they were best-suited to playing out-of-doors: the oboe was popular – early literature refers to it as the “wayte pipe”. Trumpets, trombones, recorders, shawms (a Medieval double-reed wind instrument), and a variety of other music came to be used, although in Scotland, apparently, only bagpipers and drummers were hired as waits. First employers were royalty and members of the nobility, and sometime in the 15th century, separate municipalities began appointing waits, first the English boroughs, and to a lesser extent, the Scottish burghs. These musicians were paid a small wage, but were also free to accept gratuities for playing at private weddings, dinners, and other functions.
About the same time, Britain was crawling with wandering minstrels who travelled about making music (and money) where they could. Alexander Barclay writes in Ship of Fools in 1508:
“That by no means can they abide or dwell
Within their houses, but out they must go
More wildly wandering than either buck or doe
Some with their harps, another with his lute,
Another with his bagpipe, or a foolish flute.”
Sir Walter Scott mentions the Bordertown Pipers (probably from Cheviot Hills), who seem to be somewhere between waits and minstrels - town pipers who played for dancing and ballads …
“The Pipers, of whom there was one attached to each Bordertown of note, and whose office was often hereditary, were the great depositories of oral and particularly poetical tradition. About springtime and harvest, it was the custom of these musicians to make a progress through a particular district of the country. The music and tale repaid their lodging …The town pipers received a livery and a salary from the community to which they belonged; and in some burghs they had a small allotment of land, called Pipers Croft.”
Inevitably, a rivalry grew, with the waits, who considered themselves officially employed and hence more respectable, resenting competition from the minstrels. We’ll never really know if they perhaps pressed their employers to do something about the situation, but the Act of the 39th Year of Elizabeth made wandering minstrels outlaws, referring to them as “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars”. After that, in order to distinguish themselves and escape punishment, “legal” itinerant musicians had to wear badges displaying the coat of arms of whichever nobleman or corporate body they served. Later, the Municipal Reform Act of 1835 led to the disbanding of the waits altogether, but many musicians continued the custom of playing in the streets, especially around Advent and Christmastime.
And the tradition continues! What about our modern-day bagpipe buskers? Where do they play? Why do they do it? Meet some of Canada’s pipers – from varied backgrounds - who’ve carried forth and preserved the busking legacy. Let’s listen in as they share their stories…
Iain MacDonald has been a piper since 1965, playing with bands in western Canada as well as with the Renfrew Pipe Band and the Babcock-Renfrew Pipe Band in Scotland. His piping has landed him on prize lists at numerous competitions and championships. He has been pipe major for bands including Strathfleet Pipes and Drums in Saskatoon, Regina’s Fraser Pipe Band, Clan Scotia Pipe Band, and the City of Regina Pipe Band, for whom he has served as pipe major since 1992 to the present.
Curly Reynolds has been piping for thirty-four years, and has covered a great deal of the world doing it. He attributes his start to “kind of a family curse”, and started learning to play in his backyard in Picton, Ontario. Since then he’s had a varied career, playing for the military, World Cup football events, the clientele at Chateau Lake Louise, the Olympics, and Keifer Sutherland’s wedding guests!
Graham Batty hails from Pointe Claire, Quebec, and has played with the Montreal Air Force Association Pipe Band for almost a decade. Many career highlights include being selected as the sole “Fantasy Bagpiper” to work at Tokyo Disneyland in 2000, playing as a member of the Canada Millenium Pipe Band assembled by PEI’s College of Piping for their historical re-enactment unit, and piping with the Canadian Massed Bands in Hong Kong in 2003.
Joe McDonald has been a professional musician in Vancouver for over twenty years; he plays at weddings, funerals, and other gigs, and has piped for the Lieutenant-Governor of B.C. and the Governor General of Canada. He currently plays with Brave Waves, a group formed in 2001 to celebrate a multicultural, multi-instrumental mixture of musical styles including tabla, piano, sax, harmonica, and of course… Joe’s bagpipes!
Where did you busk, and when?
Iain: I’ve busked in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fort William, and Paris in the late 1970’s. On street corners and near the subway. Best was at noon in busy downtown areas – lots of people, more money than usual, and few drunks or thugs.
Curly: I’ve busked pretty well all over the world, ever since I was a teenager. Started out here in Canada: Toronto, Kingston, Montreal…I’ve played in Paris, Amsterdam, Edinburgh…I love Paris in the spring just before the tourist season. Copenhagen in July. I like to winter in Marseille or in Malaga, Spain. And summer here in Toronto is wonderful. I move around – I find wherever I am I can make it work, balance out the cost of living.
Graham: Montreal. Downtown at Philip’s Square in the heart of the shopping district. And outside a metro station to get the crowds. Mostly at Christmastime, but I did play on other occasions.
Joe: My first time busking was in Calgary during the Olympics of 1988. At night I would play with an Irish band at the Unicorn Restaurant. During the day I decided to get out on Stephens Ave. It turned out to be an unqualified success. Of course when I got home, I decided I had a new career - the carefree life of a busker! Alas, the folks in Vancouver didn’t seem quite so generous. Hours of busking on Granville or Robson yielded little more than I might have made working at McDonald’s. Undaunted, I decided to head to greener pastures – Los Angeles. My first stop was Venice Beach, and later I went to Santa Monica Boulevard.
What was your main reason for giving busking a shot: moola? to show off your skills? to make people smile? as a preserver of a cultural heritage?
Iain: Money, money, and fun – it was all three.
Curly: Busking has a special kind of magic that you don’t find anywhere else. Hard to explain…I’ll see an old guy down the street walking slowly along with a cane, and as he gets closer and hears the pipes, he stands a little taller, I watch forty years melt off some old war veteran. It’s a kind of magic…
Graham: Mostly for bucks and for the attention. Good chance to make some decent coin.
Did you busk in civvies, kilt, full uniform?
Iain: Full #1 in Glasgow, civvies in other places.
Curly: Civvies – and sure, sometimes a kilt in the warmer weather.
Graham: Never in uniform. Often times in jeans and gloves with the fingers cut off to keep my hands warm. I never looked like a beggar – however, I never gave the impression that I didn’t need any donations either!
Joe: I always played in my kilt, and this turned out to be beneficial as a large part of my tips came from posing for photos with tourists. Full dress can be a little uncomfortable after hours and hours, so I generally wore an Argyle jacket.
What did you play? Would you get/do requests?
Iain: Often I would practice solo contest tunes, or play long sets of jigs and reels. People would ask for tunes, like ex-army guys, who wanted to hear a tune such as “Cabar Feidh”, that was meaningful for them.
Curly: Everything! Of course the old favourites, but I’ve played it all. Some wiseguy’ll ask for “In-A- Gadda-Da-Vida’ and I’ll do that. Or some Ozzy Osbourne – which actually lends itself very well to the pipes!
Joe: When I busked, I would set my pipes up with the easiest reeds and then play for four hours straight. In the course of that, I would play every tune I knew as well as some I didn’t know. Requests inevitably and predictably turned out to be “Amazing Grace” and “Scotland the Brave” which I cheerfully played again and again.
Can you talk a bit about the reaction of the public? And what was it like for you?
Iain: I used to get North American and Japanese tourists taking my photo in Glasgow as a “real Scottish piper”. People generally liked it.
Curly: I call it ‘guerrilla theatre’; people are out maybe just walking along, and they don’t know what they’re going to hear. So the reactions you get are honest and candid - a natural, spontaneous response. I already mentioned the kind of magic that can happen…like a mother and her little one are walking by and the kid’s cranky and tired of being out shopping all day. And then he hears the pipes and they stop to listen and it distracts him a bit and when they move on, they’re both happier.
Graham: Usually mixed reactions. I only really busked during my early years, so you can imagine the quality of my playing! Some people really enjoyed listening though…
Joe: When I was in L.A. – Venice Beach - I might as well have just landed from the planet Venus, the way people reacted. Lots of strange looks, but little in the way of spare change. One day a Mexican lady came up and ranted at me in a rage about how I was driving customers away from her restaurant. I looked off in the distance in every direction, but I couldn’t see her restaurant anywhere! Santa Monica Boulevard, though, was a busker’s heaven: lots of folk strolling to movies, cafes, and bars, eager to support a starving piper. The only catch was that there were a lot of other buskers hungrier than me and they were decidedly cranky that my loud pipes were drowning out their guitars, accordions, and saxophones. The thought of having to stake out and defend my turf night after night in a big American city left my career choice in doubt.
Any funny or unusual busking experiences?
Iain: I once had my photo taken as part of an impromptu Tennent’s lager photo shoot, complete with TV comedian and gorgeous model holding oversize tin of lager. They gave me a Tennent’s T-shirt and a bunch of beer. I was the right age for that to be a great haul.
Curly: Funny experiences? Only the last twenty-odd years of my life! Seriously, ‘way too many to remember. Oh, about a week ago a big bus with a touring choir over from Holland parked along Dundas Street while I was doing my stint outside the Eaton centre. They stopped to buy hot dogs from the street vendor, and of course they heard the pipes. Next thing I knew I had a request for “Amazing Grace” and I was accompanying a fifty-person choir – they just about drowned me out!
Anything else you’d like to share?
Joe: I still pine for those glory days of piping at the Olympics when I was bringing home sacks of money!