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).