Comrade Miller
His band of flunkiesWhat do the dodos at City Hall have against didgeridoos?Shibaten Spirits, 29, wants to know. So do his fans. Me, too.
Mr. Spirits is a world-famous, globe-trotting busker. He plays 12 exotic instruments, most notably the didgeridoo.The who? The didgeridoo. It's that long, wooden horn used by Australian Aboriginals.Shibaten, who's Japanese, has played his didgeridoo on the streets of 26 countries.Folks like his music. It is primal and soothing. He is all over YouTube and has a CD.Even the picky police of Singapore let him play, a rare honour for a foreigner.Never a problem for Shibaten Spirits and his didgeridoo.
Until this week at Dundas Square.Shibaten was three minutes into his first number, his didgeridoo humming, his new permit in his pocket, his heart full of joy.He loves Toronto, returns every summer, and has a huge local following.Never a problem here, either, until ...
Out of the blue, the music cops pounced on his didgeridoo. Five city bylaw officers cut through the enthralled throng and confronted Shibaten.Step back from that didgeridoo, you!"I'm a professional," the shocked Shibaten told them, "and I have to finish this song."So they unplugged his speaker.
"This is noise pollution," a music copper told one of the spectators who protested."He can't use an amplifier."Shibaten finished the song anyway, his mournful horn and drums drowning in the mid-afternoon din of the square. Then he took his didgeridoo and went home to stew.The heat gave him a warning and said if he fired up that amp again, anywhere in town, it was a $185 fine, for starters.
"I could survive on shows and festivals," Shibaten tells me. "But the street is my first love."Making all those different kinds of people smile, if only for a moment."But my kind of music needs amplification."Sadly, it looks like this didgeridoo has met its Waterloo.Chalk up another triumph for the Dundas Square Sterilization Squad (DSSS), as I call it.
Why does City Hall persist in squeezing the heart out of the heart of Toronto?
You may remember I wrote last year of Harold Garnett, a souvenir seller at Yonge and Dundas.Bylaw officers ran Harold, 66, off the square because he squawked when they tried to force him off the beaten track, where he'd been for 21 years.The mucky-mucks at City Hall have their sphincters on too tight. They don't understand characters like Harold and Shibaten are Dundas Square. Otherwise, it is a steely desert.
STERILIZED SQUARE
"They've pretty much sterilized this place," says Curly Reynolds, 47, resting his bagpipes between Honey in the Bag and Banjo Breakdown. Curly's been suckin' and blowin' in these parts for 30 years.Frankly, he's not a big Shibaten fan, or of any busker who imperils his turf.
But, he says, "we buskers have to stick together, or the panhandlers will run us out of town."
And the red tape?"They seem to be clearing us all out, so corporate Canada can have downtown Toronto."True, most of the colour of Dundas Square is in the giant ads screens."But what about all the people of the street, the crazies, the artists?" wonders Sarah Muir, 24, dispensing flyers outside the Eaton Centre. "They're what make Toronto fun."
Fun is a word rarely heard around City Hall.And, whoop-de-do, what's more fun than a didgeridoo?"What drew our attention was the large crowd gathered around this busker, upwards of 70 to 100 people," says Lance Cumberbatch, director of investigations, municipal licensing and standards division, City of Toronto.
You mean, he's popular, so you shoo his didgeridoo?"It does look conflicting," concedes Cumberbatch. "Good buskers are good for tourism, but if they block the sidewalk, that's not good."And there was the issue of amplification, which is not allowed. And he had his CDs for sale."Horrors! Boot that didgeridoo to Kalamazoo.
You can't blame guys like Cumberbatch and his coppers, except for zealousness.Politicians always set the tone.I am happy to say "the street" is already rising to Shibaten's defence.Fan Tracey Hayes has launched a page -- Keep Shibaten in Toronto -- which is gaining steam on Facebook."We really don't want to lose him," Ms. Hayes, 44, tells me.She's an event planner from Bowmanville.
"Shibaten is such an asset to our city, a free tourist attraction. And his music is so calming and tranquil."I'm proud when he says we're the warmest people he's met anywhere in the world."Maybe we are. But our leaders often are cold and grey.I mean, such a to-do about a didgeridoo.
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