The Sounds Unheard: Music and Nightlife in the Time of Corona
Eva Solorio, Reporter
Entertainment and Culture
Coronavirus: it’s ruined a great deal of our plans. Before our brains could process the insanity of a pandemic, the virus spread within the local community. Fear was rising everywhere. Music venues have been a staple for many cities—Seattle’s culture has a special spot for its sounds—but lately with the pandemic, the nightlife in Emerald City seems to be fading.
Companies from all over the world began to adjust to this new kind of work environment. In Washington, current cases (at the time of writing this article) have increased to around 127,000 and unfortunately have been getting higher and higher. With the spread increasing, businesses worried about their fates; how could they adjust to rising cases of a virus while working hard to earn enough money?
I’m an avid concert-goer, and once I heard that the coronavirus took its toll, I began to worry about how the music industry would adjust. How would music venues and their workers make money?
Seattle has had its fair share of music: Seattle-based bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and more. Karli Ingersoll, owner of the Lucky You Lounge in Spokane, explains, “It’s a really tough time for all of our venues since we can’t have shows to generate income, but we have to pay insurance and utilities.” Employees earn all their money from shows and concerts held at the venue. “We have to put money in the bank for these venues. If that doesn’t happen, they will shut down, they will be bulldozed, and condos will be put in their place.” No shows, no money, no income. It’s a domino effect.
Bjork Del Riego, an employee at a nightclub, has been working in the nightlife industry for years; seeing the downfall of her favorite venues, including her own workplace, she has voiced her concerns on social media platforms. The pandemic has affected all sorts of businesses, but the arts community has been totally pushed under the rug. I had the privilege of speaking with Del Riego and was able to ask her questions. As I got ready to get on Zoom, I pondered what it’s truly like to be in a position where it feels like your job is unstable and your professional world is collapsing.
Q: “Where, in your personal experience, have you seen change in your line of work?”
A: “Because I do nightlife work, when we heard of a pandemic coming, I guess we didn’t quite know how it was going to come at us and everything evolved so quickly… At the beginning of March, we knew there was a pandemic but we weren’t quite sure, so we did two more events, and honestly [during] the last event we were like, ‘Should we even be doing this?’ We didn’t know if it was worth the risk… We were like, ‘Okay, this is the last event for a couple of weeks.’ And then a couple of weeks turned into months, and then we started to feel lost. You start thinking of these people—it’s not one or two, it’s you know, 20 or 25 people—and we started to realize that we were not going to be making money for a long time… It was so much lost business. It kind of hit us that we need to figure out how to give money to our workers. We began going online and asked for donations, but that was nothing, we’d have to divide $200 between 20-25 people; it didn’t do much. It’s just watching your business completely tumble.”
Q: “It’s sad to hear that your business has completely failed. I imagine at times it feels like a grand loss, but of what manner have you maintained the business?”
A: “We really made an effort in maintaining the party. We felt that if we live streamed consistently, that it would keep people in that cadence. That was it. We thought ‘If we keep doing the party, they wouldn’t forget about us.’ And then we realized this was going to be much larger than we thought it was. Handling the business like that stopped being useful, and it’s kind of like we’re stuck in a hard place. We can’t give our artists any monetary relief. But I guess COVID-19 has allowed us to take our time.”
Q: “Oh, yeah I can’t imagine how difficult that would be. But I wonder, how has your social life changed, and how have you accommodated to it with all this going on with your job?”
A: “Yeah, honestly, it’s quite interesting to see how our lives would change. I went from having a full-time job and having these parties on Saturdays and working all day, to quitting. Our friendships have changed, because it’s shown us who really are our friends. Taking all this time for myself has been nice. It’s interesting to see friends who thrive on those going-out events.”
Q: “What can we do to help?”
A: “One of my friends actually runs an Instagram account of Keep Music Live (@KeepMusicLiveWA), and it helps music venues with earning money. You can either donate to them or help the artist(s) directly. Buying merch and buying their music on bandcamp helps a lot. A lot of musicians are struggling because they all thrive on the act of performing. But there’s these images [reference to image on first page] of Keep Music Live on venues like The Crocodile, informing citizens that that's what it would become.”
There are several different ways to inform yourself about the effect of the coronavirus on the music industry. A great way to help is to hop onto Keep Music Live’s website, www.keepmusiclivewa.com, and donate —even a small amount helps.
Washington is the home of great artists and musicians who are at risk of losing the venues that connect us with them. These venues need our help, and as they were there for us, hosting our favorite artists, we must be there for them this time.