By the beginning of lockdown in Dormont, Pa., Amy Kline had already watched the viral videos of Italians isolated in their homes, singing on their balconies to pass the time. Inspired, she posted a meme about it in a local Facebook group: “Messaging all my neighbors on Nextdoor, telling them they all better [expletive] have every single god damned line from Les Miz memorized for when we do the singing out our windows together thing.” It started getting some traction, so she wrote, “If 100 people like this by tomorrow morning, I’m in.” And then, overnight, she — and at least 99 of her neighbors — were.
Some days later, after a 30-person Zoom rehearsal, the Dormont “CoronaChoir” sang “Do You Hear the People Sing?” a protest anthem from “Les Misérables,” in front of their homes. Kline estimates that 700 neighbors participated. On some blocks, at least one person represented each household; on others, families joined in via Zoom, half a second off from the rest of the group. A few singers wore French revolutionary costumes; the mayor waved his own enormous flag. “It turned out so perfectly — people felt connected to each other,” Kline said. “I knew this sort of thing was happening in other parts of the world, but it still felt really special.”
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Those first few weeks of shelter-in-place were especially bewildering and lonesome, our fingers and shoulders itching to make contact with another patch of skin, our brains struggling to find anything to discuss beyond Netflix. Neighborhood singing was a balm — connection without the pressure of having to make conversation.
Music, blessedly, morphed to fit the pandemic with relative ease, be it professional musicians sitting around on Instagram Live playing their hits, like on the webcast Verzuz, or gig musicians streaming tiny concerts, trying to expand their fan base. For some, web shows were a financial lifeline: Even if they brought in only a fraction of what artists would be making from in-person gigs, they were better than nothing.
When shelter-in-place orders began in New Orleans, Sam Williams, a bandleader and horn player, figured that he and his band would hold off playing for two weeks, and then the world would return to normal. But as the lockdown stretched on, Williams, who goes by Big Sam, told his bandmates they had to do something, even just prop up a phone to livestream sets from his driveway. If they were lucky, maybe they could get some tips.
Williams is the sole provider for his family; as the pandemic continued, his bank account dwindled. Music had been his career for 25 years. So he kept playing, and sometimes after his shows, viewers would contribute to his Venmo account, or his neighbors would come by with tips or even a dish of food. How else was he supposed to survive an edict that banned horn players from performing indoors?
He and the band did shows every Sunday: first church music, then funk. They didn’t face the street when they performed and never told their online audience exactly where they were — Williams, worried about social distancing, was reluctant to draw a crowd — but that didn’t keep neighbors from creeping out of their front yards and onto the sidewalk to watch. People would drive to Williams’s block and listen from their parked cars; delivery workers might take a quick break to enjoy a song or two. “It helps the whole neighborhood to feel some type of normalcy when they can have live music,” he said. Indoor entertainment is limited in New Orleans, but Williams is still singing, trying to give something to his people in the hope that they can give back to him.
Jennifer Parnall, a Canadian transplant locked down in Spain, also wanted to give back: One day last March, she plugged her keyboard into an amp and played “All You Need Is Love.” Soon her neighbors started requesting songs, shouting them from their windows or scrawling them on a chalkboard and hanging it where she could see. Armed with only a guitar and a keyboard, Parnall tried her best at the Cranberries and Radiohead. In all, Parnall played four songs a day for 100 days.
For the very last song of her very last show, she ran up to her roof with her guitar and performed “Dreams,” by Fleetwood Mac; passers-by and neighbors joined for the chorus, their voices undoing all those months of silence. Not even the GoPro she brought with her could fully capture the exuberance of that moment: Parnall saw one woman across the way, who had been pregnant for months, watching the concert while cradling her newborn baby. It felt like magic, creating something so beautiful for her community in a time of such isolation.
In Brooklyn, a year later, I watched everyone’s videos: Kline and her neighbors in Dormont, recorded by a local videographer. Williams in New Orleans, doing the two-step in his driveway. Parnall in Barcelona, playing to the building facing her own; in one video, she began a song, only to be interrupted by a blaring car horn.
The pandemic changed our relationship to noise: With people stuck inside, the atmospheric sounds of the world — car alarms, barking dogs, ambulance sirens — felt amplified. The human sounds, though, lessened. Even the online concerts were sort of eerie without applause. Parnall waited until the car horn stopped, then began her song again. When she finished, more noise trickled in from the outside: clapping and whooping. People had been there, listening. Somehow, it was the best part.
Jazmine Hughes is a reporter for The Times’s Metro section and a staff writer for the magazine. More
