Earlier today, Tone Deaf reported on a viral video that’s been doing the rounds on social media, depicting veteran Australian busker Declan Kelly in the midst of a confrontation with a disgruntled resident as he was performing on Sydney’s famous Manly Corso.

Sydney photographer Emma Leslie was on the scene when the unidentified man interrupted Kelly’s council-sanctioned performance, apparently complaining about the volume, much to the chagrin of Kelly and a gathering crowd of supporters.

“Yep this just happened at Manly Market,” Kelly wrote on his personal Facebook page. “Lil ol me playing tunes, then aggressively told mid-song to turn the Fff down. I gave him my calm response to step away though he would not.”

Kelly has since revealed the details of just what went down yesterday in an interview with Music Feeds, saying it all began when the man and a woman whom Kelly believes was the man’s wife came up to him and told him “to turn the ‘F’ down, while I was still half way through a song”.

“So I stopped playing and said: ‘For a start it would be good if you just let me finish my song and then came up and talked to me.’ That’s when the guy just started in on me, and it escalated from there,” Kelly told the outlet.

According to Kelly, the man explained that he’d been living in the apartment block behind the Manly markets for 30 years and that he was “just sick and tired of the music”, complaining that Kelly’s music was too loud, though Kelly disputed this.

“I was playing very relaxed reggae songs of my own composition, and it wasn’t loud at all,” he said. “The council guy even came around as the incident was going on and I asked him, ‘How’s the volume?’ and he said, ‘It’s fine by me, keep doing what you’re doing.'”

“I’m sure there are plenty of musicians out there who’ve been through a similar experience where you’ll be playing in a venue, or outside or just busking and everyone is cool with it or enjoying it and one person will come up and spoil it and make it difficult for everyone else.”

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“The markets want to put live music and culture down there, but this one person could probably shut it down.” According to Kelly, what the viral clip didn’t show was his repeated requests for the man to walk away.

“I didn’t want confrontation of any sort,” he said, “and after I had told him three times to walk away, he was still coming closer to me. So I just started yelling out: ‘This guy won’t walk away, I’ve told him three times, he won’t leave me alone, and he’s getting aggressive.'”

“And that’s when the crowd started realising there is something going down here. Once they surrounded him though it felt like he was kind of getting put on the spot without realising.” Check out the infamous clip below.

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