Ansari: Music helps us remember who we are and how we belong during difficult and traumatic times

Singer-songwriter Norberto Amaya, pictured in the hat, singing at a refugee camp for El Salvadorians fleeing their country’s civil war, in La Virtud, Honduras, 1981. (Photo courtesy of Meyer Brownstone/Oxfam Canada, author provided.)

Emily Abrams Ansari, Associate Professor of Music History at Western, explores our music listening habits during COVID-19 times in a recent article, "Music helps us remember who we are and how we belong during difficult and traumatic times."

Has the music we listen to, and why we listen, changed during the coronavirus pandemic?

Beyond the well-documented evidence of pandemic music-making at a distance and over social media, music critics have suggested there is an increased preference for music that is comforting, familiar and nostalgic.

Read full article (via The Conversation, May 7, 2020)