BY CHANTAL NGUYEN
The first thing to go was the sound of planes.
My suburb, an unassuming huddle of Victorian workers’ cottages, lay ordinarily under a flight path. But travel restrictions meant the roar of jet engines was noticeably missing, replaced instead by a dewy tranquility. Just me, the sunshine, the birds and –
– then I heard it.
Two streets into my morning walk: an oboe. A slightly flat, before-school oboe. The notes cycling on unsteadily; soon gaining a teetering, hopeful confidence; then speeding, freewheeling, panic breaking the breath and soon I’d hear – SQUEAK! – silence.
“C’mon, kid!” I yelled down the empty street. “You can do it!”
Funny. I’d walked past that house countless times but never heard an oboe.
I turned the corner to hear piano arpeggios. Further down – a saxophone? Then: another piano!
Was my neighbourhood trolling me? The under-Boeing suburb was hardly a music haven, after all.
The next day, I heard a grimly determined third piano (Rondo alla Turca, right hand only), an enthused ukulele (Jason Mraz cover), and a grateful violin (Bach minuet) that paused to give thanks for every string crossing.
Day three brought, to my tiny street-end park, what I dubbed a ‘contraband’: a group of kids unlawfully gathered to play brass instruments.
Lockdown was making a musician of everyone. Or had I been surrounded all along? I kicked a pebble and thought through recent events. What was it, again, that my professional artist friends were telling me?
The times they are a-changin’.
They had felt first the seismic shifts in the arts sector; the heightening of existing tension with the government as, one by one, theatre spotlights turned off and ghost lights flickered on.
Then came the glow of a thousand laptops as the industry moved, en masse, online. Suddenly, virtual collaboration was everywhere (the Royal Danish Academy of Music helpfully reminding us to Zoom with “original sound on”, thank you very much); and news outlets buzzed with feel-good stories about virtual choirs and worldwide balcony-singing. On cue, the Sydney Conservatorium choir sang Dies Irae into their smartphones.
You didn’t have to be in the industry, though, to notice the sudden glut of riches in streaming availability. I swiped out of Dies Irae to see post after post of announcements as leading opera houses, ensembles, and dance companies around the globe opened their treasure vaults to stream gems of performances previously difficult to access (unless you had a lot of money or knew the right people). It was accessibility on an unprecedented scale. Live concerts straight to your lounge! Household names giving online tutorials! For free!
As one regional-area composer friend exclaimed, a good internet connection became the ultimate leveller. Suddenly, your postcode didn’t matter. Heck, even your continent didn’t matter. Amid the upheaval, artists discussed how coronavirus proved the community needed the arts, and how artists could lead social change.
Lockdown was making a musician of everyone. Or had I been surrounded all along?
I listened gratefully – with one ear. The other was distracted by the neighbourhood violin (having now progressed to a Bach bourrée) and the ping of notifications as my non-arts friends excitedly updated each other on the latest performance-streaming. Half a world away in locked-down London, I was told, my former housemate had taken up guitar again. This was someone I’d only ever seen, at best, with a guitar case. But now his sister was eagerly showing me a video of him and his cousin performing Nowhere Man in perfect harmonies. “Don’t they sound exactly like The Beatles?” she beamed proudly.
Impressed, I admitted they did.
The fact was, the discussed social change was already happening. And it was coming not just from artists but, unawares, the community itself.
Yes, the community had turned to the arts. But what was less emphasised was that community members were doing this by turning into artists themselves.
While we all lauded the balcony phenomenon as displaying the transcendent power of music on your regular, relatable, tax-paying, balcony-occupying everyman, we didn’t focus quite as much on the fact it was the everyman making the sound.
In other words, no music could have come from those balconies without music-makers on them; without, in the most fundamental sense of the word, musicians on them.
But the music came. And there were an awful lot of balconies.
The community is not an artistically passive agent
Because, for all our talk of leading the community, that same community had already begun to demonstrate its own creative resilience. It had expressed itself spontaneously, and had instinctively begun to invest in its ability to artistically self-nourish. And as soon as democratised streaming made the arts really accessible, people gratefully engaged.
It’s true that this behaviour built on pre-existing professional activity. But focusing just on that, or on the abstract “power of music”, misses a heartening insight. The coronavirus, for all its horrors, has given stage to the community’s own creative voice and desires. It proves the community is not an artistically passive agent (and never was), but capable of initiating its own genuine expression and moving on its own creative impulse.
This has huge implications for how artists view and engage with the community, especially now when building community support is so vital.
Although music creates community, it was the community who originally created music
As classically trained musicians, we tend to engage in dialogue with the community-as-audience rather than the community-as-creator. “I play, you listen!” Our unspoken norm is that artists hold the cultural know-how and provide the art, and the community holds the purse strings and provides the appreciation.
But what would our coronavirus response look like when informed by a greater critical appreciation of the community’s own artistic agency?
We are reminded of our common creative thread: that, although music creates community, it was the community who originally created music. After all, in music’s origin stories it was communal and participatory. Our current model, where the active on-stage artist performs for the passive seated consumer, is extremely recent in the grand scheme of things.
The pandemic has restricted that model, and we now find ourselves in a situation where artistic resilience is a priority. It helps, then, to think about this latent community artistry, even if it’s not something a highly trained musician would automatically think of as serious “art”.
This is not to suggest community activity replace professional artistry. But if artistic survival is to be a project of both the community and the arts sector, it will be better where all voices, interests, and potentials are acknowledged.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that a more generous, mutual awareness creates the best response.
Meanwhile, if you want me, I’ll be on my balcony. Probably trying to play the oboe.
Shout the writer a coffee?
[purchase_link id=”20175″ text=”Add to Cart” style=”button” color=”red”]
If you like, you can shout Chantal a coffee for volunteering her time for Australian arts journalism during COVID-19. No amount too much or little.
Pay what you like securely via PayPal, 80 per cent goes to the writer and 20 per cent to our volunteer editor for getting this show on the road.
