“Being positive, and playing music has a very positive effect on people, and doing that makes me feel good.”- Felix Koçibelli, a highly skilled pianist, said.
There is an unlikely spiritual cure for coronavirus. Now whilst it will not rid one of COVID-19, it can help lift spirits during the start times and this cure has been around since the dawn of time.
This cure is called music. Yes music, a cure and soother for the soul as many people would have said. It seems that music has helped many people throughout many different situations. The coronavirus pandemic is no exception.
Now one of the most popular ways to listen to music was to listen to it being played live. Whether it is from a huge baseball stadium to the smallest coffee shop, music has been played in every corner of the globe in many different styles.
Due to the pandemic, not everyone can listen to live music anymore due to the the practices of social distancing. However, some countries are lucky. For example, the country of Italy has a lot of its citizens playing music from their balconies and everyone playing and singing along, bringing the people of Italy together in a different way. Unfortunately a lot of other places around the world are not as fortunate as Italy. However, there is one common tool that almost everyone around the world has to share their musical abilities and that tool is called social media.
Now performances on social media are fairly relevant even before the pandemic. However, these performances would only appear once every so often as performers and bands would usually go out to play for a live audience. Due to the quarantine world wide, all live performances have been either postponed or canceled so bands and soloists have now turned to social media to perform their music.
“I like to play and share it with people, but I also know that social media these days is full of bad news, so a little bit of music couldn’t hurt,” Pat Bell, a Cabrini junior psychology major, said. Bell usually posts on his social media accounts snippets of himself playing some music on his guitar and singing. Bell says that he not only plays for himself but he wants to give a little joy to the world because of quarantine.
“We really miss making music together. We also miss seeing all of our music friends so we do live stream our stuff or try and get others involved to make everyone’s day a little better,” Katie Rice, a junior mechanical engineering and music dual major at Lafayette College, said.
Rice and her band called “The Woman Splainers” had just recently held a virtual performance on Instagram. However it was not just the band that was performing. Rice and her fellow band mates also invited some of their fellow students to join their live stream and perform some songs as well. Rice and her band mates love to make music and performed a number of live performances before the coronavirus pandemic. Even though a virus is keeping them apart, “The Woman Splainers” continue to make music through social media.
“I like going live or posting videos of me playing music because I want to connect with people who are spending most of their time, especially now during quarantine on social media,” Felix Koçibelli, a senior at Marple Newtown High school, said. Originally from Albania, Koçibelli is a highly skilled pianist who has been playing for all of his life. Koçibelli has played at a vast majority of gigs by himself, for his high school, and for his band named “Up Dog.”
”We’re experiencing very hard times and we could only get through them if we keep having positive energy and staying connected to others online.” Koçibelli plans to make more videos of himself playing the piano on his Instagram account.
These are not the only performers that are trying to help bring back some happiness during the COVID-19 Quarantine. Famous musicians and bands such as Billie Eilish, Green Day, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Grateful Dead and Post Malone either have or will be doing either a live stream concert or upload a video of themselves playing music to help bring some joy to the world and help ease everyone’s stresses.
In a time of darkness such as the quarantine, hope and joy is being welcomed anywhere and music has been bringing joy and hope to the people of the world since the dawn of time and will continue to due so until the end of time.
