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As you all know, one of my other “hats” is music. I’ve sung since ever I can remember, sung in school and college choirs, musicals and in a multitude of classrooms across my 40+ years teaching career. I started playing guitar in my first year in college in 1969 and have hardly stopped since (though the jury is out as to whether I’ve got any better at it in that time). It has only been in the last 7 years or so that I have done any public performances, however, which does seem pretty weird, I know. But it wasn’t until I started doing nursing home concerts with my friends here in Wollongong that I have done any live performances at all in the last few decades.
Now, of course COVID-19 has pretty much put paid to our nursing home gigs. I can’t see them starting up again until at least the new year, if then. The double whammy of trying to ensure that volunteers coming into nursing homes are negative and safe plus the inability of the homes to allow large groupings of residents to gather for the concerts means that I see no change in this scenario for the foreseeable future. Am I peeved about this? Sure, I am, but what can you do?
However, the impact of the virus is being felt in increasingly wider circles. Not only are nursing home concerts off the radar but our other folk music gigs are also. We should be deeply into preparation for our annual appearance at Kiama’s Folk By the Sea three day event in September but it has been cancelled and no date has been set for the 2021 shows as far as I know.
The National Folk Festival, the biggest folk music event in Australia that usually takes place in January at Bulli Showground has ALREADY been cancelled for 20121, some 5 MONTHS out from the proposed dates. While issuing the usual apologies (which they don’t really need to do since the cancellation isn’t their fault) organisers have not even suggested whether the event will be happening in 2022. The local Folk Music Club is suggesting that there may be some return to local live music here with a monthly concert at one of the local clubs with restricted audience numbers and strict controls. I applaud the initiative but, with the ongoing emphasis on “stay at home unless you HAVE to go out” I don’t quite see how it will work. Groups like ours are not even able to get together to practise and every other group will be similarly hampered. Only solo artists will avoid this problem but the staple of the folk music concerts is group performances so I can’t see how this will work either. I hasten to add that I am not looking for difficulties neither can I, at this stage, offer any solutions. It sucks but that’s the cards we have been dealt.
But our difficulties in our little corner of the world pale into insignificance compared to the difficulties being faced by promoters and professional artists all over the world. It has been estimated that, worldwide, the concert industry looks set to lose 9 BILLION dollars in ticket sales ALONE in the wake of the pandemic. That’s just ticket sales; this doesn’t include TV revenue and endorsements and merchandising sales. I posted on Facebook the other day that this virus could see the death of live music as we know it and, while I hate to even think that, it is entirely possible that I could be right..
Say that a vaccine IS found and proves to provide immunity from the virus. Vaccines take anywhere from 3 to 7 years to be tested and approved and become commercially available in quantity. Thousands of scientists all around the world are working 24/7 to shorten up that time, but there are constraints that no amount of hard work and dedication can overcome. And all of them are working hard knowing, in the backs of their minds, that it could all be for nought. It is a sad reality that the reprehensible Chinese government, having sponsored the development of this virus as a biological weapon, could simply have their scientists change the parameters of the virus, mutate it into another, release it and we will be back to where we are now.
So what are the alternatives? Few that I can see. The pandemic has spawned a huge industry of online performances either by solo artists or by groups of artists working in isolation but “stitching together” their recordings in to one big performance. Most of these are sensationally good and, for the professional musicians involved, they provide a boost for their online presence and sales of online content. BUT the bottom line is that, good as these are, they are still not live performances in front of a live audience with which the performer/s can interact. While motor racing is taking place in front of empty grandstands, it’s not quite the same because the competitors are pretty much insulated from the crowd until presentation time. Musicians NEED the connection to the audience to give of their best and they can’t have it at the moment.
I am including all musicians here, not just my folk music colleagues. Imagine what effect this is having on symphony orchestras, for example, or opera companies, ballet performers and the list goes on and on.
Now I’m sorry that this article seems a little gloomy. I’m also sorry that it seems a little self-interested given that there are many fields of human endeavour that are being even more dramatically affected by the present crisis. However, this one affects me directly so I guess it’s no surprise that it is up near the top of my list.
I sincerely hope that the solution is found and found soon because a society without music is more impoverished than even it imagines itself. We NEED live music for so many reasons. Fingers crossed.