Famous Buskers

Lots of Famous faces have busked- from Kanye West to Elvis! Here is a collection of our favourite YouTube videos of celebrities busking …

Jessie J performs Price Tag and Who You Are on the New York subway

Legend Paul McCartney busking at Leicester Square

Travis busks in the West End

Newton Faulkner goes back to the streets

K T Tunstall busks in Glasgow

James Morrison busking in Birmingham

Tom Jones busking…

The Feeling busk in Covent Garden

 

Have you heard about the Portico Quartet?

This London-based group started performing together back in 2005. For two years, they played intimate gigs and busked outside the National Theatre.

Their sound is hard to pin down (although it’s evident they take inspiration from world music and contemporary jazz) this helps to separate them from their contemporaries.

A mix of percussion, tenor saxophone and double bass, their unique sounds is down to the Hang, an obscure Swiss instrument which helps give them their signature sound.

The hang is a percussion instrument and at first glance, the trio of pans resembles a series of UFOs.

The result sounds similar to steel pans but softer and more atmospheric.

In 2007, the band signed to Babel and their debut album, ‘Knee-deep in the North Sea’ was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize.

They have since recorded two more albums, the most recent being 2012’s self-titled release.