Ágnes Huszár: Street Musicians in Budapest and Bratislava between 2001-2002

The topic of the thesis is the fundamental issues of Street music in city environment. The author surveyed the activities of Street musicians performing inthe streets of two big cities – Bratislava and Budapest in 2001and 2002.

From the viewpoint of the fundamental problems of research, the thesiscan be divided intő two parts. The first part was based on interviews conducted with the Street musicians and attempts to establish the reasons of theirperforming in the streets. The goal in the second part was to establish howcity authorities regulate Street music in both cities.

In Budapest and Bratislava the author talked to 5 and 13 Street musicians,respectively. The interviews with the musicians indicated, that their most significant reason for performing in the streets is the possibility of making money.In Budapest, there was only one musician amongthe interviewed, who claimedto perform in the streets not exclusively because of money. His reasons included alsó his opinion, that people passing-by might become fond of classicalmusic due to his performance in the streets. In Bratislava the author found only two artists, for which the money was not the primary reason for their performing in the streets – first being a pavement artist occasionally playing theaccordion; the second one a professional musician performing in the streetsdue to his free time, who alsó claimed to enjoy playing classical music to people passing-by.

In Bratislava, Street music is regulated by a generally binding ordinance.However, there is no such regulation in effect in Budapest.

The registration of Street musicians in Bratislava for 2001 and 2002 indicated, that the majority of Street musicians play the guitar, accordion, and theviolin. Most frequently they perform on the Postová Street and Michalská Street and on the Kamenné Square. They perform in the streets all year long; thereare only slight ups and down as to the number of performances in the streetsin different months. The number of Street musicians slightly increases in thesummer. The overall number of the Street musicians in 2001 and 2002 was38 and 58, respectively.