This exploratory study engages with eight case studies of music performances broadcast online to investigate the role of music in facilitating social cohesion, intercultural understanding and community resilience during a time of social distancing and concomitant heightened racial tensions. Using an online ethnographic approach and thematic analysis of video comments, the nature of audience engagement with music performances broadcast via YouTube during COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 is explored through the lens of ritual engagement with media events and models of social capital. The eight case studies featured virtual choirs, orchestras and music collaborations of various genres, including classical, pop and fusion styles drawing from European, Asia Minor, South African, West African, North African, Arabic, South Asian, and East Asian cultural origins. Five overarching themes resulted from thematic analysis of video comments, including Interaction, Unity, Resilience, Identity, and Emotion. The paper contributes important theorisation that ritual engagement and social learning fosters intercultural understanding through engaging with music both cognitively and emotionally, which can in turn shape both individual and collective identity. Online platforms provide scope for both bonding and bridging opportunities. Community resilience is supported through the sharing of knowledge, sustaining music practice during social distancing, as well as emotional support shared among audience participants, with potential wellbeing outcomes.

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As COVID-19-driven lockdowns and social distancing became the new normal in 2020, musicians experienced a reshuffling of their social networks. This article uses in-depth interviews with nine community arts practitioners in Australia, Norway and the United States to explore the impact of COVID-19 on their ability to practise, collaborate and connect with their musical communities. Results showed that, while social distancing has significantly disrupted active connection with localized communities and musical networks, participants reported increased connection and engagement with wider networks through technology. Applying Putnam’s concepts of bonding and bridging capital, the authors posit that COVID-era music engagement has seen a shift towards decentralized communities through an emphasis on bridging capital. Ultimately, however, analysis showed Putnam’s concepts to be unhelpful in describing online music connections, and ‘crystal capital’ is proposed as a possible way to theorize the subjective nature of online music engagement.

This contribution details methodological adaptations of face-to-face ethnographic and participatory research approaches for the digital realm and examines emergent ethical concerns. It developed while a research team in Melbourne considered the implications of COVID-19 lockdown for their research on social connection through intercultural music engagement. Pursuing the proliferation of online music activity aimed at maintaining social bonds during the physical distancing of the first months of the pandemic, the team turned to digital platforms as the field of research. Projects included observation of audience engagement with YouTube music broadcasts during COVID-19 lockdown and a participatory action research project exploring asynchronous multitracking performance. The pandemic underlined the world’s increasing interconnectedness, where social ties can span the local to the global. Through an appraisal of the research and consideration of existing discourse about online research approaches and decolonizing methodology, the article also examines the implications of global interconnectedness for interdisciplinary inquiry and the study of different cultural identities and their music and dance practice.

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