People are asked to stay at home and avoid social contacts to stop the spread of the unusual coronavirus. Meanwhile, musicians are getting creative.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/A. Solaro
Advertisement
The coronavirus pandemic is very serious, but it's part of human nature to deal with even the worse situations with humor and creativity. The viral videos of Italy's "balcony singers" demonstrate this well.
Now that even the most intimate concerts have been cancelled in Germany, a growing number of artists are offering a live-stream of their music.
Among the forerunners of this trend, star pianist Igor Levit has been streaming almost every evening concerts to his 58,000 Twitter followers, garnering thousands of likes.
British crooner James Blunt also offered a live broadcast version of his concert in an empty Elbphilharmonie; it was watched by millions.
Similarly, Sir Simon Rattle conducted a concert on Thursday with the Berlin Philharmonic, also streamed for free online.
Smaller bands who've cancelled their gigs because of the coronavirus have been offering live streams of performances in their apartments.
To allow independent musicians, concert organizers and small venues to survive, people who've bought concert tickets are recommended to show their support by not claiming a refund despite the cancellation of the events.
Many humorous musical videos are also being shared online, from rapped songs on washing hand to parodies of famous pop songs, such as The Knack's "My Sharona" (1979), which can easily be switched to "My Corona."
Musicians and music fans worldwide have been posting parodies and serious songs online, with some of them obtaining millions of clicks.
Playlists against panic
A growing number of Spotify users have also been creatively reacting to the outbreak with their playlists. Classic hits take on a new meaning amid the crisis — from "Toxic" by Britney Spears to "Don't Stand So Close To Me" by The Police, from "Down With The Sickness" by Disturbed to "Heal The World" by Michael Jackson.
Described as "The sickest playlist on the worldwide web," the Spotify playlist "COVID-19 Quarantine-Party" created by user @chadwickjohnson has 85,000 followers.
There are dozens of similar playlists. Spotify user Raphael Angelo Fernandez Rios, who usually doesn't draw much attention with his lists on the music streaming platform, drew 8,000 followers with his list labeled "Coronavirus beats to panic to."
For all music lovers, there's reassuringly still tons of good beats and timeless melodies out there to accompany us through this exceptional crisis and all the bad news that comes with it.
Epidemics in literature
Boccaccio, Defoe and Camus: Over the centuries, many world famous writers have told stories involving deadly infectious diseases.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Hiekel
Thomas More: 'Utopia' (1516)
On a faraway island, a sailor discovers an ideal society: There is equality among the locals, it is democratic, ownership is communal. It was the opposite of life in England at the time. And: there were no epidemics, unlike England that had suffered from the plague more than once. The above photo shows Dresden Semper Opera dancers as "Utopians" in a musical theater project based on More's novel.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Hiekel
Giovanni Boccaccio: 'The Decameron' (1349-1353)
Seven women and three men flee the plague to a country house near Florence. As cruel as the descriptions are at the beginning, the 100 novellas in the collection are surprisingly entertaining. To pass the time, each of the fugitives determines a topic per day and everyone has to tell a corresponding story. Subtle or crude, tragic or comical — a whole world unfolds.
Image: picture-alliance/imageBROKER/O. Stadler
Francis Bacon: 'New Atlantis' (1627)
Bacon envisioned a utopian island by the name of Bensalem, home to the people of the lost city of Atlantis. They are very involved in research and science, and inventions including the submarine, wind turbines and hearing aids are anticipated on "New Atlantis." Foreign seafarers were initially quarantined to protect islands from possible diseases.
Daniel Defoe: 'A Journal of the Plague Year' (1722)
Daniel Defoe, five years old and whisked away to the countryside to keep him safe during the Great Plague in London, relied on eyewitness accounts and meticulous research for his description of the devastating events. Defoe tells the tale of a city in a state of emergency, faced with hysteria, superstition, unemployment, looting and fraud.
In Camus' "The Plague," a doctor by the name of Bernard Rieux describes how first rats die of the plague, followed by thousands of citizens in the Algerian port city of Oran. Everyone takes a different approach to the fight against the Black Death, but in the end, it kills the innocent and the ruthless alike.
Image: Getty Images/P.Baz
Stephen King: 'The Stand' (1978)
A mutant virus breaks out of a military research laboratory and kills almost the entire US population. Only few are immune, left to assert themselves in a depopulated world with a collapsed infrastructure. Two groups — basically the "good" and the "evil" — emerge, both headed by charismatic leaders.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Ohlenschläger
Jose Saramago: 'Blindness' (1995)
The inhabitants of a nameless city go blind all of a sudden. To prevent the spread of a potential disease, they are housed in an empty psychiatric ward, and attended to by a doctor and his wife, played by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in the 2008 film of the same name (picture). The situation quickly escalates, but in the greatest chaos, some people regain their eyesight.
Image: Imago Images/Cinema Publishers Collection
Philip Roth: 'Nemesis' (2010)
The novel is set in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944 during a severe outbreak of polio. It recreates the terror, fear, poor information and feeling of powerlessness among the population faced by a paralytic disease that mainly affected children, crippling one child after the next. A vaccine wasn't available until 1955.
