Last year, Kristina Jacobsen, an American musical anthropologist, moved to Sardinia to do ethnographic (or fly-on-the-wall) research into the island’s vibrant street life and music culture. Fate, in the shape of Covid-19, intervened: Sardinia was placed in lockdown and its noisy street culture vanished.
So Jacobsen pivoted — and is now studying how Sardinian households have started to use online and at-home musical rituals to cope with the stress of coronavirus.
“Into [the] void of daily scents and sounds, a multitude of melodies has been born: balcony concerts, recordings and in-home videos,” she explains in an article for social science magazine Sapiens, noting that a plethora of performances have appeared online with hashtags such as #flashmobsonoro, #iorestoacasa (“I’m staying home”), #lamusicanonsiferma (“the music doesn’t stop”), and #tuttoandràbene (“everything will be OK”).