Elavi - Musician and Peddler in Leeds

First a question... When is a busker not a busker, that is the question.

And the guy in the photo should know the answer to this simple question, as I will explain or at least try to.

In the photo you can see Elavi who is a musician and I spoke with him and took this photograph in the centre of Leeds.

As some of my readers will already know I like to photograph the various musicians busking around Leeds city centre and do a story about them on my Leeds daily photo blog. The buskers in Leeds are very good, indeed it would be difficult to say who I think is the best musician busking in Leeds at this moment. I had a discussion with another Yorkshire photographer on this subject quite recently, he did not know about my blog and he was surprised that I had photographed most of Leeds busker at work. We compared notes and found that we both had spoken with Holoman here in Leeds and thought how good he was.

Here in Leeds as in other towns and cities across England busker need a licence from the council. Elavi was selling his music on the streets of Leeds on CD for less than a cup of coffee. We discussed his pricing strategy and I think it really is a winner. I was happy to buy one of his music albums for the money and also to promote his website on this blog.

He had fallen out with the council over a trading license which they want him to have costing £ hundreds, he much prefers and I cannot say I blame him to get a peddlers licence from the police. There have been peddlers on the streets here in England for at least 800 years at least the first known use of the word is in 1225.

Here in England peddling is regulated by the Pedlars Act of 1871, which provides for a "pedlar's certificate" these are obtained from the local police and cost £12.50. Over the last few years local councils have been trying to do away with the idea of peddlers and want to issue their own street traders licences to rake in much more money and also to have control of "their" streets. Now maybe I am wrong, but I think that the streets are ours. I would be the first to agree that you cannot have a free for all but I am sure that the police enforce the peddlers rules.

You can listen to Elavi on his music and media website.

Just to please Anonymous I should also plug Hannah Trigwell another Leeds musician and busker.