Music in the Street

We headed down to South Kensington today to wander around Exhibition Road Music Day, which included performances and exhibits on a pedestrians-only Exhibition Road this year in addition to the usual events in the area's various cultural institutions. Today's event teamed up with the month-long London Festival of Architecture, and although the pairing looked good on paper, it seemed to dilute both festivals, with the end result making for a nice stroll, but lacking notable standouts. We started off at the V&A, since I wanted to see their exhibit of artists' books before the show closed, and although I was also interested to see the latest garden installation, we found it created more of an unwanted distraction in the lovely courtyard than the "sumptuous garden space" the write-up touted:

In spite of this, I was curious about this odd area of cordoned-off bits which looked like some sort of contemporary art installation:

I soon realised that it was just the equipment for the maypole dancing that went on earlier today in the garden. :-) While Bob finished up in the book exhibit, I listened to a few English folk songs,

and then we walked down Exhibition Road, passing a New-Orleans-style jazz band;

some extremely quiet flute music, surrounded by industrial-cardboard stoops made for the architecture festival;

some lovely examples of London youth, kicking and dismantling public property while sporting a St George's cross;

and a bit of low-key indie rock near the end of the street.

Actually, the beginning of one of the last band's songs sounded just like a song of Bob's that he likes to strum around the house . . . too bad they're not famous so that Bob could sue for royalties!