Calgary buskers say the magic is fading with increasingly difficult landscape

Dan Duguay, the One Man Band, performed his final show at the soon-to-close Eau Claire Market on Saturday, wowing a crowd of people, some who first saw him perform there decades ago.

The market will be shuttered and demolished this summer.

For performers, it was a farewell to one of Calgary's most lucrative busking locations. 

"That was the great thing about Eau Claire," said Duguay. "It was indoors and it allowed me to busk whether it was raining or snowing or whatever. There were a lot of buskers. You'd get down here and you'd have to wait for the spots.

"It was a very vibrant time."

Duguay says Eau Claire Market initially drew him to the city. He performed there from 1995 to 2001. 

"I moved here because it was an indoor place that I could play, and in Canada you need to find indoor places to be a busker." 

A dying art form? 

"I don't busk very much anymore as I feel like it's a bit of a dying art form," Duguay said. "We're becoming a cashless society." 

Duguay said busking is also competing with social media performers, a desensitized society and a lack of viable spaces to perform. He now earns an income through corporate gigs, festivals and events.

"There's a certain amount of people who are desensitized to stuff. You know, back in the '90s, if you saw a guy playing a whole bunch of instruments at once, it was like, 'wow, I've never seen this before.' Now chances are you've seen it on YouTube," Duguay said.

The Downtown Calgary Association oversees busking on Stephen Avenue Walk and acknowledges the scene is struggling. The association is working to revive the mall to bring vibrancy to downtown.

"We see busking as a lost art and really we want to encourage busking. But we want to have it more prescriptive and more managed and a better quality, for sure," said Mark Garner, executive director of the association. 

This year, the association is introducing new rules around how close performers can be, where they can set up, and how loud they can play on Stephen Avenue. Garner says there have been issues with performers drowning out music on restaurant patios and other performers.

"We want to strongly enforce the amplification to make sure that it's not a high decibel level, that it's not hurting your ears as you're walking by one of the live performers," Garner said.

The city also encourages street performers through its busking program. Buskers and street performers must apply for a standard busker ID from the city. A city transit busker ID costs $25 and allows performers to busk at all locations, including transit stations.

For those who'd like to busk on Stephen Avenue, they must obtain a standard busker ID issued by the Calgary Downtown Association. 

A fragmented community

Longtime Calgary entertainer James Jordan said the difficult landscape might be contributing to a hardened group of performers.

He started performing magic shows in Eau Claire outside of the former Hard Rock Cafe when he was about 14 years old. He said that with the area largely under construction, due to the Eau Claire plaza redesign and the market soon to be demolished, one of Calgary's prime performance locations is nonexistent. 

"My generation grew up with a community of street performers. There was myself and maybe, you know, about a dozen other performers all working together, helping each other grow and learn and develop our craft," he said. "But now it seems like it's more of an independent art form.

"They just seem to argue over time slots and spaces."

While places like Stephen Avenue are home to an abundance of foot traffic, people don't often stop to watch a show for long, Jordan said.

"There's not much mingling traffic on Stephen Ave.," he said. "I find that a key element to being a good street performer, or a key element to being a good pitch, is whether or not people want to linger around in an area for hours at a time.

"With Stephen Ave., people go there for a direct purpose. They do that thing, they get back in their car and they go because of parking. They don't want to stay more than that hour because they already paid eight bucks." 

Jordan, who performs a blend of comedy and magic, now focuses on hired gigs and festivals. But he's looking forward to the return of Eau Claire after the market is replaced with an LRT station for the new Green Line.

"I'm way past all the five stages of grief. I'm way past acceptance. I'm now excited to see it rebuilt."

Blaine Muzyka has performed classic rock music with his guitar mostly during the Stampede for the past 10 years as a hobby. But this spring he decided to perform on Stephen Avenue.

He says he's witnessed unsafe situations for performers, and he, too, says busking is less lucrative than it once was. But for him, it's not about the money. He knows the declining revenues don't necessarily signify a bad performance. The moments of awe and appreciation are what keep him performing.

"I had a couple last year that I was playing a song that just happened to be their wedding song. So they started dancing, and when I finished the song, they came and thanked me and gave me $20."