MADAM, Andrew Meek, (Buskers cannot be stopped: Ross Gazette), like Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Josiah Franklin before him (Franklin banned his famous son Benjamin from busking because of the shame it caused) all wanted to control street music.

But playing the streets is legal. Street musicians – yep, I'm one – include the good, the bad and the musically inept. Yet American research indicates that street music enhances the mood of the passers-by and contributes to a reduction in street crime.

Roving minstrels brought folk music into the present age while buskers bore the jazz baby out of the American south into the wide world.

Former street musicians including Django Rheinhardt, Joni Mitchell, Joseph Hayden and Canada's Barenaked Ladies may not have played Ross, but the county has a tradition of welcoming buskers, as this Herefordshire resident remembers: "On Mondays and Thursdays a lovely old harpist, Mr Waters, used to play the most gorgeous tunes outside the old National Bank in Hereford's Broad Street."

I've always had a courteous welcome busking in Monmouth, Abergavenny and Ludlow. But, I wonder, how would I go down in Ross?