The Romano Viazzani Ensemble – Covid 19 Lockdown Video – Tango Italiano

Coronavirus Lockdown starts music making from people’s homes, windows and balconies

Humans are always ready to adapt to changing situations and nothing has demonstrated this more than in the current global lockdown situation. As country by country the pandemic spread from China towards South Korea, Iran and then on to Europe the first cases were announced in Germany, France and the UK . Then suddenly from nowhere, Italy, a popular tourist and business destination and with its ageing population started to accelerate past the other European countries which prompted the first lockdown in Europe, at first in two areas, one near Milan and one near Venice, and then the whole of the country. As it became inevitable that the rest of Europe would follow suit, concerns were raised not just about how many elderly people, people with underlying health issues as well as ordinary healthy people would succumb and possibly die from the illness, but also how the remaining population would cope mentally under lockdown.

The answer, for many, came in the form of making music in the home. It was Italy, first in Europe under lockdown that started to applaud their heath service and other frontline workers and then, being a very musical country, the home performances started. We started to see videos of families making music together posted on social media, singers belting out arias from their windows, accordionists and other instrumentalists playing music seated on their balconies in their slippers.  Videos went viral and with the death toll rising pretty soon other countries, now beginning their lockdowns, started posting videos singing Italian songs in solidarity with the thence worst hit country in Europe. .

As other countries followed the trend the music-making like the applauding became a regular occurrence which spread all over Europe and then the world.  As we go to print the first signs that the lockdown might me starting to ease very slightly in some countries following the decrease in numbers of deaths and new infections, The Romano Viazzani Ensemble posted a lockdown video of Tango Italiano on social media one the tracks featured on their recent album London Tango whose opening words really suited the times, to thank their friends and musician colleagues in Italy for being the first to lead us through this pandemic with music.  Music, that thing which is so underfunded and ignored by politicians (and one could say the same about many countries’ health services too) became the next most important thing in helping people get through the situation after the health service.

The words to the song translated into English can be found on The Romano Viazzani Ensemble’s Youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKgu8qagrq0  Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications as the ensemble will be posting more videos as soon as things return to normal.

You can see the video on the Romano Viazzani Ensemble’s Facebook page too: https://www.facebook.com/romanoviazzani/videos/10159790815479832/

and you can follow Romano Viazzani on Twitter too: https://twitter.com/romanoviazzani