Editorial: Ubiquitous Music Making in COVID-19 Times

Résumé En

Picture a world with no mobility. Planes are landed. Urban transportation stopped. Large gatherings are non-existent and everybody is at home. That’s 2020, today. Most countries have reduced social interactions to a minimum. Food markets, drugstores and gas stations remain open. But shopping malls, cinemas, coffee shops and pubs have closed their doors for the foreseeable future. The Covid-19 pandemic is among us, ready to strike the most vulnerable and sometimes also the healthy, rich and posh. Covid-19 impacts every social strata. This is a key difference between this disease and the plagues that have been taking lives in the peripheral countries for decades. Pulmonary and respiratory diseases are among the leading causes of death worldwide. But according to the WHO 1 (2018), the so-called Group I conditions (communicable diseases, maternal conditions arising during pregnancy and childbirth, and nutritional deficiencies) are particularly devastating among the low-income populations. Until today, music making has predominantly been done through face-to-face, synchronous interactions. While it is true that some forms of music making ⎼ for instance, studio post-production or karaoké ⎼ rely on resources that are prepared offline, the implicit target of musical activity is to make sound together, if possible in person and at the same time. The current pandemic has turned the traditional forms of music making into high-risk and in some cases potentially deadly activities. So is music making becoming an activity for a select elite, secluded from the mundane buzz and divorced from community exchanges, again? The answer from the ubimus community is a strong no!