The Year We Stopped Singing

Five years ago, when Covid hit, we did some extraordinary things. We avoided one another, met only online, covered our faces. Closing offices and schools, we stayed in our houses, counting statistics of Disease and Death, wondering if it would hit us, and hit us how hard, hoping to save lives by suspending animation. We got angry, variously, at the statistics, the scientists, the politicians or one another.

Let’s leave aside, for the moment, the arguments on what we should have done differently. Whether “following the science” was the safest path; where the true balance lay between epidemiology and sociology; which repercussions we should have been able to foresee. It was an ugly equation to solve: pitting hard-to-quantify danger of death against even-harder-to-quantify disrupted lives and societal damage. 

Remember, there was something peculiarly terrifying about Covid-19, in the early days, before real infection rates could be measured, while death rates were still emerging, and before we had any effective treatments, let alone any prospect of a vaccine. It was a Mystery Virus with strange symptoms and unknown long-term effects. 

And, as the first few months of 2020 passed, some of the horror stories began to come true: hospitals in Europe overwhelmed, running out of oxygen supplies, people dying of suffocation as they queued for triage. Some countries slammed shut their borders, leaving travellers stranded. Other countries prioritised maintaining their economies. Here in the UK, fear ran especially high because our latitude and our grey skies tend to mean high infection rates with all types of coronaviruses. Even with hindsight, it would be hard to draw up a framework of best practice in anti-Covid measures for any specific country.
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Necessary, effective, dubious or draconian… several Covid restrictions hit hard at the time. The lockdown on travel felt particularly cruel to those whose close relatives lived far away. The hiatus on non-emergency medical procedures ended up costing lives. The reduction in social work left vulnerable people in danger. The closing of offices put some people out of work. And the dodging of restrictions by those in power hit like an insult on top of an injury. 

And then there were other restrictions that didn’t feel too painful at the time, but carried unexpected after-effects. Nobody anticipated how school closures would impact children’s behaviour and attainment, and nobody imagined how polarised and angry social networks would become when based predominantly online.

Here’s another thing that I think deserves a moment of silence: We stopped singing.

Honestly I can’t argue with the science on this one. Gathering into shared spaces, opening mouths and throats wide, exhaling long and deeply—that was identified early on as a “Superspreader” scenario. It was about as necessary as any anti-infection measure could be. But please mourn with me on this one. A thing can be necessary but still grievous. We stopped singing.
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Schools and social spaces opened up, in “Covid-secure” mode, and a staple part of early socialisation/education was missing: we didn’t sing. We were allowed to play alphabet or number songs, and we weren’t expected to forbid small children’s vocalising if they felt inclined, but songs were not sung. Churches and social events opened up, unrelieved by singing or chanting. For nearly two years, singing together was dead and almost forgotten. 

How nearly forgotten, I never realised until I attended an outdoor event with live music, and the singers were all off-key and out of practice. And until the restrictions were relaxed and I sang a simple song to a class of 5-year-olds, and they stared at me, open-mouthed, as though the last time they’d seen a person doing that outside of a screen was before they could well remember. And until I attended, in the course of my duties, a School Show rehearsal and applauded what I assumed was a plain-tone chant by the 11-year-olds. It was a song, not a chant, but they had forgotten how to sing.

If it’s true that communal singing is good for your physical, emotional and social wellbeing, then surely it’s time to climb out of that hole? A daily singing session in schools, maybe. Family-and-friends singalongs. Social events to include interactive music. Informal choirs. Whatever brings voices together and reduces tensions and rage.

We need to remember how to sing.