Last week I attended a community meting with reporter Greg Mocker of PIX11 NEWS & fellow busker Bathabile Mthombeni. We, along with other NYC buskers were covering & speaking out against the city’s proposed crack down on buskers here in NYC. I do not think any of us foresaw the City Council ruling so quickly and so harshly on this subject. But they did & we are now facing fines in the hundreds & at times in thousands of dollars for making music & art publicly here in NYC.

http://pix11.com/2013/04/19/nyc-parks-review-rules-about-musicians-and-artists/#axzz2QwhQNDdS

It saddens me greatly to see this happen to such a vibrant and formerly artistic mecca such as NYC. This ‘sanitization’ of such a once eclectic city is going to ultimately make New York City into nothing more than an overcrowded cement version/clone of every other city in the US. Contrary to the belief of ‘the powers that were’,  it’s not the money or power that makes NYC a fantastic & magical place to visit, it’s the overflowing of creativity that spills out daily, nightly, hourly, minute by mintue onto the streets of this small East Coast Island. Remove that & you have…well, Wall Street & cement. Not something I’d pay to see or visit.

We buskers here in NYC have fought a long, hard & extremely tiresome fight to keep our voices, music & art heard & seen. Daily as we put ourselves in the public eye we risk arrest, ticking, fines, confiscation of our belongings &  physical beatings by the NYPD. It’s not an easy gig trust me, but we are artists and when you are an artist nothing, (not even Bloomberg’s ‘third largest army in the world’) can stop you from expressing what is in your soul. We are not paid puppets of the establishment with huge sums of money backing us. We are not on highly funded mind controlled music or art campaigns being flown all over the globe to spread political or other agendas through music & art. We are true artists who do this because we must express & uplift. It’s not just how we eat, it’s how we breath.

I am, as are so many other street musicians & artists, hoping & praying we can somehow overturn this ruling. Here is the ruling voted on over the weekend:

http://newyork.newsday.com/news/new-york/new-rule-limits-nyc-s-street-musicians-1.5122138