A musician from Northern Ireland has broken the world record for busking
Marty Rafferty is a musician for County Armagh in Northern Ireland who had a dream: Break the Guinness Record for the longest continuous busking session. Just after noon local time on Thursday (August 28), he started playing. When it was all over, he played for about 27 hours, breaking the previous record by an hour.
He’d planned to go for 30 hours, but his voice was fading–and he had a broken thumb. The injury happened a week earlier, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him.
Marty told the BBC “The hardest bit was probably the early hours of this morning, I didn’t realise how cold it would get get … that was tough.” Fortunately, his brother brought along some jackets.
The rules were:
- He could repeat songs, but not more than once every four hours.
- A 30-second break was allowed between songs.
- No song could be less than 2:30.
- There had to be a continuous video record of the performance.
- He didn’t have to sing the entire time, but he had to be onstage with his instrument at all times.
Money raised by the marathon will go toward buying toys for underprivileged kids this Christmas.
