Downtown festival did city’s buskers few favours

It gives me no pleasure to write this on behalf of many of the local buskers who perform on or around the Inner Harbour.

It is very disheartening to feel so disregarded, as many of us have spent substantial amounts of our lifetimes performing for the public — local and tourist alike. It is obvious to us that the public really likes us, often telling us we made their holiday, they are thrilled we are still here on return visits and many other compliments of the sort.

Victoria is a beautiful place to live. It naturally encourages busking, and over the years, this has grown into a culture, a busker-friendly environment.

However, this didn’t just happen. It was built over many years by dedicated individuals who made a lot of effort to build something good. There was a time when locals (and tourists) sought out buskers on the harbour, as it was new and exciting.

I remember this well, as I was one of the buskers. Over time, many locals stopped coming to the harbour, often saying that it was “too touristy” or the like. However, tourism grew and busking played a small part in that growth.

For many years, the city mostly ignored us or put up with us. Every so often there would be an issue and someone would take it to the city for resolution. But by and large, we got along and worked things out amongst ourselves.

In recent years it has gotten worse, with many loud acts performing at the tourist-information spot above the causeway, in disregard of the basic courtesy of “not setting up so close as to impair another’s performance,” a common-sense rule, included in the city licence.

However, this letter is about the new Downtown Victoria Buskers Festival. Busking is worth celebrating, so the idea of a buskers’ fest is a good one. However, while it’s undoubtedly very popular with the public and I hope a big success, unfortunately the very people who helped create the culture that led to its happening were the ones negatively affected by it.

Disregarding (or maybe not being aware) of the setup of previous John Vickers-run festivals, the city set up the main stage facing directly at us on the harbour. The PA system was allowed to be turned way up, beyond what was needed (way beyond; many of us even heard it distorting) and it drowned us out, made working very unpleasant or, in the worst cases, impossible.

I wrote an email after the first night and was assured the issues would be dealt with, and the stage was set up that way because of structural flaws in the parking lot. However, Saturday night I got clobbered by the way-too-loud sounds, as did others in our group. Many in our group lost sets throughout the six days.

I wonder why it was put there. Why not at the spot where Blues Bash takes place? Why was it so loud? I wonder if the elderly and little kids liked it that loud.

Can anyone understand how galling it is to be drowned out by way-too-loud canned music, at a buskers’ festival, when one is busking live music?

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps was quoted in the Times Colonist article, saying: “in the spirit of community where we all work together.” Obviously, we got forgotten in that comment.

I propose a solution: Have the festival minus the PA system. Let the performers use battery amps as they would in a normal situation. At least this would allow us all to “work together.” Include us in the conversation, as did Vickers. Yes, we had issues with his festival, but we worked together to work them out.

All we want is the chance to work, within the guidelines set out in our licences. We get that we are only one interest. We already lose many weekends (even weeks this year) to other festivals. It would be a shame if this were another of those events, and very counter to the “spirit of working together” and being busker-friendly.

Now that this festival is over, I hope we can go back to entertaining tourists and locals and being the goodwill ambassadors for our fine city that we always are.