Live Music is an Essential Service

— Five Reasons We Feel on Hold Until the Music Returns

Live music is therapy, it is joy. Music runs like blood in the veins of humanity.

Music has been essential to human wellbeing, togetherness, and strength since long before recorded history began.

The making and use of musical instruments date back at least 42,000 years.

For an equally long time, practices involving rhythmical instruments have been a fixture of human bonding and ceremony. Instruments made from dried gourds filled with small stones, pounding rocks, and drums made from animal skin stretched over wood.

The human voice singing, making sound, humming, clicking, and yelling likewise is perfectly suited to creating music.

Humans are music-making beings.

Music performed live, where the vibrations of the sounds move our bodies as well as our souls, has served as an essential part of our development as homo sapiens.

Music was there when we needed courage (preparing for or going into battle); when we were going through difficult times (death and burial rites); when we needed to understand our world (seasonal shifts, fear of darkness, search for meaning); when we had something to celebrate (rites of passage, birth, marriage, and coming-of-age).

We created music for all kinds of community bonding ceremonies. Music has been there so we didn’t feel alone.

Music performed live communicates feelings in ways words, recorded music, and other activities cannot.

Music moves us as one.

Fans of blues and blues-rock in the twenty-first century speak with a very consistent voice when asked about what music does for them.

Music provides:

1. Fun. Hearing live music is a good night out on the town. It is play time. It is a place to let go, feel a sense of flow, and feel free.

2. Authenticity. Music performed sincerely invites others in. Music played spontaneously, improvised, and requiring deep listening to others requires honesty.

3. Connection to one’s own feelings. Through the musicians sharing their experience in song, storytelling, and…