Yep, I knew it all along.  This quarantine is just an excuse to ruin us and yes, I’m taking it personally.  What I can’t figure out is what do people have against musicians?  Yes, you heard that right – musicians.  Yes, I understand we tend to be heavy breathers and yes, we (singers) can spit pretty hard when we’re enunciating just right.  But that’s no reason to keep us from getting together, right?

In the last couple of days, I’ve read and heard some scary things, studies by people who understand all things air and music and they’re telling us that we’re not going to be able to sing in groups for up to two years.  Have you ever tried to get a vocalist NOT to sing?  They sing EVERYWHERE.  Other musicians use practice rooms, but singers use the hallways, bathrooms, cars, literally everywhere.  I watched a small group of singers at the White House today for the Day of Prayer and I’m telling you they were not wearing masks or staying 6 feet apart.  It’s just not in their DNA.  They seriously have to hug each other when they get together and singing is just an extension of the hugging, only it’s done musically.  Jazz hands from across the room just aren’t enough.

Someone is also doing studies with wind instruments to see just how much air comes out of the instrument and into the environment.  I hope they don’t find out just how much hot air trumpet players put out.  The one study I read actually said that other than flutes, there not that blast of air coming out of instruments you might think – it stays in the instrument. Drummers – I mean – percussionists,  are just laughing at all of us right now.  They can just keep banging away on whatever they want – tables, walls, pots and pans –  and it doesn’t affect anything.  I would have named other instruments, but they may be stuck in a building somewhere and you can’t get to them.

And I hear that some schools are checking the ventilation systems in ensemble rooms.  NOW, they’re checking the ventilation?  I’m not sure I ever rehearsed in a room that was big enough to handle the number of players involved.  I understand how Wagner felt when he began creating larger ensembles. Musicians are their own ventilation systems.  Everyone is breathing in and out together and there is no space in the room for fresh air because they’re packed in like sardines.  Have you ever smelled an ensemble room after the ensemble finishes?  ‘Nuff said. Chances are the rooms we’re in were never designed correctly in the first place, and certainly never considered ventilation.  Just a big square box with tile on the floor and some acoustic tile thrown on the walls is enough, right?  Musicians don’t care, remember, I told you we sing and play just about anywhere and everywhere. We could do all our music outside, but then we would all be marching bands.

Yes, musicians are flexible and hard working, no mater the circumstances.  That’s why the powers that be have created this conspiracy.  No matter how badly they treat musicians, we just have to keep making music.  We’re unstoppable.  Unless we’re mandated to shut down what we do.  Unless we’re told that as teachers we can’t make music with our kids in ensembles anymore.  But the joke is on them.  You see, as I’ve said before, music is organic.  It is part of who we are as human beings.  So, no matter how hard they try to stop the music, it will keep pouring out of us.  From tiny toddlers who make up tunes to trained opera singers, from kids that bang on pots with wooden spoons to those who play on steel drums, the music won’t die.

Perhaps to speak to people whose wallets speak louder than words, according to Economists Incorporated in Washington D.C. for the Recording Industry Association of America , in 2016, the music industry contributed $143 Billion to the U.S. economy and created 1.9 million jobs either directly or indirectly.  And where do you think these future musicians come from?  From those toddlers who grow up to be elementary students, who study general music, who are encouraged to participate in various types of ensembles, who continue to practice and improve in those big square, poorly ventilated rooms where they blow and spit on each other so that their music can help heal and calm and entertain and inspire the world around them.  Oh, the conspiracy is real.  From those who would prefer that musicians not make the world a better place.  Little do they know that it only makes us want to do it more.