Teen ‘soft-folk’ busker warned against using amplifier in Napier CBD

Maraekakaho teenager Grace Haliburton hopes to head to university to study law in 2024.

But there was a momentary blip in the funding plan when her “soft-folk” busking at the height of a busy Boxing Day in the Napier CBD was shut down even before it started, when city council Napier Assist staff told her she wasn’t allowed to use her new amplifier.

“I’ve been busking for a few years now,” said the 17-year-old, a student at Woodford House, Havelock North, who has found a regular prime spot in the middle of the Emerson St block between Hastings and Dalton Sts, and has been using the permit required by the Napier City Council to perform in the street.

She asked the staff if it applied to buskers with the permit and said she was told: “With or without”.

“I don’t amplify myself very loud at all, and it hasn’t been an issue before,” she said. “I never really knew it was a rule.”

But, she was told on Monday it was a condition of being permitted to busk in the CBD, which was thronging with Boxing Day shoppers, Art Deco tour walkers and passengers from two cruise ships but otherwise close to devoid of street entertainment.

She gave it a go for a while without amplification, but said she could barely hear herself sing, and it was “such a disappointment” and “embarrassing”, because she’d only just bought her small amplifying gear and it would have been the first time she’d used it on the street.

Busking in Napier, Grace Haliburton was told she couldn't use her amplifier. Photo / Paul Taylor

When passersby asked her to put a bit of volume to it she decided to ask the nearest shopkeepers if they had any objection.

They didn’t, so amplify she did, with her song list on the cellphone, ranging from Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, Radiohead and other well-known names to other “random stuff”. She is particularly fond of American country music singer-songwriter Blaze Foley, who was shot dead in 1989 and had he still been alive would have turned 73 last week.

Haliburton is self-taught at guitar, having been more formally taught music and piano, and plans to keep busking whenever she can before she goes to Victoria University to study law, now with a bit of learned experience in how to deal with city councils and noise control.

The Napier City Council website confirmed “No amplification allowed” is one of 10 conditions in an online application to busk.

It says council permission is needed, and as a courtesy buskers should seek permission from owners of nearby shops or their staff.