Listening to the songs of coronavirus

One of the newest – and perhaps most unexpected – sounds of the Covid-19 global lockdown is the creation of new songs about the pandemic in various places around the world. Here are two great examples from our #StayHomeSounds project.

The first is an anti-coronavirus song from Senegal, as Luca Piparo describes:

“”I was on a trip with some friends in Senegal just few days before the lockdown in Europe and on my way to the Dakar Airport I recorded this song directly from the radio of our driver.

“The piece is in Wolof and is about Coronavirus, the singer is “praying” that the virus will not reach his community and will go away soon.”

The second was sent to us from Kerala, India, by Ihsanul Ihthisam, who writes:

“We Mappila Muslims of Malabar are producing Corona songs in our oral tradition of Mappilapattus.

“These songs offer a general awareness of the coronavirus outbreak along with its religious outlook, finding idiosyncratic causes, giving an ideology to counter, and finally seeking the ultimate refuge in God.

“I share here one of them sung by a local Mappilapattu artist Vidal K Moidu.”