Much of the narrative around the effects of the lockdowns focuses on our loss of social interaction and the impacts on our individual mental health. Less explored is the loss of communal social relationships - the festival, the street party, the choir, the ritual, the dance party, losing oneself into the community.

Much of the narrative around the effects of the lockdowns focuses on our loss of social interaction and the impacts on our individual mental health. Less explored is the loss of communal social relationships - the festival, the street party, the choir, the ritual, the dance party, losing oneself into the community. At these events we experience a kind of social relationship that cannot come close to being replicated through digital formats. What does the loss of these rituals really mean for us as people, and as a society, indeed why do we do them in the first place?

The social purposes of musicking (more on this later), dancing, moving and ritualising together are far more than hedonistic release, but are a fundamental tool of maintaining and developing social order and relationships.

In The Ritual Process, Victor Turner argues that these rituals are methods that create the shared liminal - inbetween - state of ‘’communitas’’ and are crucial for maintaining social harmony and order. In the unstructured state of communitas, social hierarchies dissolve, the weak become strong, the strong weak, and we are (temporarily) placed on an equal footing.

The rituals that lead to communitas transgress and dissolve the norms that govern our daily, structured, and institutionalised relationships. In these shared ecstatic and potent moments we see people “in their wholeness”. Hierarchies dissolve and we feel an intense sense of connectedness and togetherness.

In the moment of communitas people stand outside society. We step into these liminal spaces to experience a greater intensity than in normal life, but we also recognise that this state won’t last very long. It is a temporary experience that will eventually dissolve back into the structure of daily life. 

This is a dialectic of the structure of everyday society and the anti-structure of ritual and communitas. Structure allows people to go about their daily lives with some confidence and surety. Communitas allows us to experience the full joys of being with people, sharing experiences, singing and dancing, living in a community.

Music is the primary vehicle for these experiences The best way to understand this connection is through the concept of musicking (Small, 1998). This holistic understanding of music, not as simply nor something that a musician or performer produces, but a participatory state co-produced and shared by musicians, audience, events producers, staff and all those contributing to the production of the experience.

Musicking ‘’ís an activity by which we bring into existence a set of relationships that model the relationships of our world, not as they are but as we would wish them to be’’. Music’s primary power is not in direct individual to individual communication, but in shared and social communication. Through participating in music, dancing and singing together, we celebrate our relationships to one another. It is a human way of understanding the world and the people around us, in an experiential and relational way.

The pandemic and the lockdowns have imposed extraordinary levels of structure on society. Music -- while still playing a vital role in keeping people happy, inspired and engaged -- has ceased to serve its primary function, as a vehicle for the celebration and development of collective relationships.

Music has become a commodity, a product to be individually consumed.

The longer we live in a world of pure structure, the greater the urge for communitas. We crave it, it is coming, and when it does the party will be exceptional. We need to understand that our festivals, rituals and celebrations play a critical role in communities, particularly in modern, multicultural societies. They keep us together. It allows us to collectively celebrate and create new meanings together. The state needs to invest in, and support, these events.

These ideas are explored through ideas expressed in Elizabeth Grosz’, Chaos, Territory, Art, Thomas Turinos’ Music and Social Life and Victor and Edith Turner's The Ritual Process & Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy. 

All the above are attributable as quotes to SHOUSE & those seeking veracity can find it at www.shouseshouse.com