Medieval performers

thumb|right|The troubadour Perdigon playing his fiddle

A jester, also known as joker, court jester, or fool, was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch kept to entertain guests at the royal court. Jesters were also travelling performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town markets, and the discipline continues into the modern day, where jesters perform at historical-themed events. Jester-like figures were common throughout the world, including ancient Rome, China, Persia, and the Aztec Empire.

thumb|The Bard (1778) by Benjamin West In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.

thumb|upright=1.35|The Minstrels of Beverley. Woodcut of 16th-century English musicians. Left to right: pipe and tabor, fiddle, windcap instrument, lute, and shawm. A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who sang songs and played musical instruments.

right|thumb|upright=1.3|Bersi Skáldtorfuson, in chains, composing poetry after he was captured by King Óláfr Haraldsson (illustration by [[Christian Krohg for an 1899 edition of Heimskringla)]]

thumb|Hans Sachs, leader of a famous 16th-century Meistersinger school in Nuremberg A '''''' (German for "master singer") was a member of a German guild for lyric poetry, composition and unaccompanied art song of the 14th to 16th centuries. The Meistersingers were drawn from middle class males for the most part.

Prince of Jin and then Emperor of Later Tang (885-926)

The fili (or filè) (), plural filid, filidh (or filès), was a member of an elite class of poets in Ireland, and later Scotland, up until the Renaissance. The filid were believed to have the power of divination, and therefore able to foresee, foretell and predict important events.

thumb|1902 postcard showing a badkhn addressing a bride at a Jewish wedding A badchen or badkhn (, pronounced and sometimes written batkhn) is a type of Ashkenazic Jewish professional wedding entertainer, poet, sacred clown, and master of ceremonies originating in Eastern Europe, with a history dating back to at least the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The badkhn was an indispensable part of the traditional Jewish wedding in Europe who guided the bride and groom through the stages of the ceremony, acted as master of ceremonies, and sang to the bride, groom and in-laws with the accompaniment