4 Haziran 2020 Perşembe

Music of the Coronavirus*


We have been going through extraordinary times in the last months. A tiny little virus has locked almost all the people around world in their houses, affected all our everyday habits, the social and economic life of the whole world, and probably the politics as well. After almost half a year it seems a little bit under the control, and many countries are trying to ease the very strict restrictions, normalising the life again, but the threat is still there and experts are already talking about the second wave. On the other hand it seems that somehow we got used to live with this crisis.

During this global outbreak we all have faced ourselves and the institutions that we have built as well. For example, it has shown us how fragile the "unions" are that we have founded, or maybe the “real” foundations that they were built on. The actions (or "non-action" at all) of "European Union"; the very modern countries stealing the protective masks from each other; or confiscating each other's medical supplies. Probably the world will not be the same as before if the outbreak continues for some more of months. But the aim of this article is not making assessments about politics, though.

This - propably the first in the world history as such - global outbreak has affected/is still affecting all our everyday habits, cultural and social activities and changing them, too. One of those affected has been/is also music and musical activities. Because of the precautions and restriction to go out many cultural events, and also concerts, had to be cancelled which put musicians economically in hard situations. The cancelling of weddings, concerts and festivals in which music has a central role, are also opportunities for musicians to continue their musical and economical life. Though the concern of some people was not only economical, but to sing their song freely. Helin Bölek and Ibrahim Gökçek, members of Turkish protest music band Grup Yorum lost their lives in a hunger strike to protest banning on their music/musical style in those Corona days. Bölek was in the 288th, and Gökçek was in the 323rd days of strike when they lost their lives.[1]

However, music is coming from social and cultural life, affected by what is going on around, and is a way of expressing the feelings, emotions, ideas of individuals as musicians or also community. Though the concerts and festival were cancelled, some lost their lives for the sake of their music, music did not stop as well as musical activities.

During Corona days many songs were composed and sung related to either coronavirus itself or the situation we were/are in. There are some researches such as the Global Corona Playslist at the University of Arizona and articles and news about corona and music.[2] The most interesting one to me was the one about setting the structure of the virus to music, which made me think about the AI (Artificial Intelligent) and making music, and also music of the future.[3] The Project is led by Markus J. Buehler who is not a musician but a material scientist and engineer at the MIT.[4] They used a sonification technique in which they assigned each amino acid a unique note in musical scale and converted the entire protein into a musical score, which can be called “music of Coronavirus”. The research team choose the instruments and the main one is Japanese koto. It is music coming from the movements of the molecular elements of the virus, taking 1 hour 43 minutes 48 seconds, like a senfonical concert.  It is amazing, and I would say it is very calming in contrast to the danger of the coronavirus itself. (Here to listen: https://soundcloud.com/user-275864738/viral-counterpoint-of-the-coronavirus-spike-protein-2019-ncov).

The question here is; even though the notes were given by the researchers, is the composer also a “human being” or AI (Artificial Intelligence)? At the final stage, the product can be considered being from the “human being”, but what is next? Will making music need a human itself anymore? Or are we going to listen to more music made by AI?

It seems that the coronavirus has already changed our everday life, it probably will change our perception towards music, too.

* This article was first written in April and before finishing, my computer had broken with all my data inside it; and because of the restrictions due to Coronovirus I couldn't get it repaired until the end of May. Then, I wrote again and made some small changes...



[3] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/scientists-have-turned-structure-coronavirus-music
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_J._Buehler