This exploratory study engages with eight case studies of music performances broadcast online to investigate the role of music in facilitating social cohesion, intercultural understanding and community resilience during a time of social distancing and concomitant heightened racial tensions. Using an online ethnographic approach and thematic analysis of video comments, the nature of audience engagement with music performances broadcast via YouTube during COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 is explored through the lens of ritual engagement with media events and models of social (...) capital. The eight case studies featured virtual choirs, orchestras and music collaborations of various genres, including classical, pop and fusion styles drawing from European, Asia Minor, South African, West African, North African, Arabic, South Asian, and East Asian cultural origins. Five overarching themes resulted from thematic analysis of video comments, including Interaction, Unity, Resilience, Identity, and Emotion. The paper contributes important theorisation that ritual engagement and social learning fosters intercultural understanding through engaging with music both cognitively and emotionally, which can in turn shape both individual and collective identity. Online platforms provide scope for both bonding and bridging opportunities. Community resilience is supported through the sharing of knowledge, sustaining music practice during social distancing, as well as emotional support shared among audience participants, with potential wellbeing outcomes. (shrink)

In a newly designed collaborative online music course, four musical novices unknown to each other learned to play the clarinet starting from zero. Over the course of 12 lessons, a special emphasis was placed on creativity, mutual interaction, and bodily movement. Although addressing these dimensions might be particularly challenging in distance learning contexts, a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with the learners revealed how the teaching approach proposed has generally facilitated learning. Qualitative findings highlight the importance of establishing meaningful relationships (...) with the musical instrument as well as with other students to build musicality, and of the interplay between creativity and control in individual and collective music-making activities. We suggest that remote music tuition with a small group can be a valuable resource to start learning music and that a creative, collaborative, and movement-based approach can contribute to musical growth. (shrink)

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic restricted public worship in many religious communities. This article explores how the amateur singers in Eastern Orthodox Christian church choirs coped with the 2-month liturgical lockdown in Finland during the spring of 2020. During the lockdown, only a limited number of singers were allowed to perform in worship, which was live streamed on social media. Based on a mixed-methods online survey, the article focuses on the psychological impact of the lockdown on individual church singers; (...) their views of the spiritual, physical, mental and communal dimensions of singing in worship; and the methods of coping that their responses reveal. The analysis uses the religious coping theory developed by Kenneth Pargament and his colleagues. The results highlight how the church singers sought to maintain control of their lives in times of great uncertainty by focusing on individual religious activities and participating in live streamed worship. A new kind of autonomy was generated by the accessibility of worship on mobile devices, not confined to time or place. The results also reveal the negative effects of the lockdown on the social dynamics of the choir, the sense of being excluded from the community, as well as the guilt for having the privilege to sing in worship. (shrink)