In times of coronavirus, tuning in to tune out anxiety
New Delhi, March 17: In another time, another place, Bertolt Brecht had memorably said, “In the dark times. Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.”
The context of Brecht’s verse, written in exile in the late 1930s, was Nazi fascism, but the lines strike more than a chord in these days of the coronavirus pandemic with many people using poetry and music to keep their anxieties at bay and their spirits high. From Florence to Mumbai, people are tuning in to tune out their stresses, standing in balconies to sing out loud to each other in symphony, pressing a button to let the music flow or sometimes simply sharing their playlists on social media platforms.
In Italy, videos of musicians and others standing in their balconies with their clarinets and cellos, drums and in some cases utensils, making music and singing have been
A worker sprays disinfectant to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic at Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai on Tuesday. shared over and over on social media platforms, their joie de vivre spreading in ripples across the globe.
The country is one of the worst affected in the world with more than 27,900 cases of the coronavirus and over 2,100 deaths.
The famous Italian resistance poem “Bella Ciao” (goodbye beautiful), “Forza Italia” (stay strong Italy) and “Nessun Dorma’ (none shall sleep) were some of the songs that saw people come to their balconies for a sing along with their neighbours.
In India, composer Ankur Tewari, who was the music supervisor on “Gully Boy”, held an online jam on Sunday for his followers confined to their homes. The singersongwriter said the trigger to livestream a music gig was a mix of his concerts getting cancelled and the general anxiety about India entering a crucial week with the number of coronavirus cases on the rise.