Singing ‘without’ company? Multipart music of the Ionian Islands in the time of pandemic

Abstract

Since 2020, COVID-19 restrictions have forbidden any activity of choral singing and, more generally, musical practices through which people used to gather in the same place to enjoy their time together. As a result, also in the Ionian Islands multipart musical practices came to a halt for the entire lockdown periods. In the years 2020-2022 people from these islands did not manage to cope with social distancing nor gathering via online musical activities, apart from school ones. In the summer of 2021, during a fieldwork, both for me as a researcher and for them as performers, it was the first chance after the various periods of lockdowns to be able to come together again, to sing in ‘real’ company. The investigation continued remotely, thanks to the use of digital ethnography, and this article is the first opportunity to comprehensively show the results of this specific aspect of my research.