Associate professor discusses making music in pandemic

When the COVID-19 pandemic compelled the University of North Georgia (UNG) to move online for the final two months of the spring 2020 semester, Dr. Esther Morgan-Ellis was disappointed. The old-time jam that she participated in every Friday at the Historic Vickery House on UNG's Dahlonega Campus was canceled for the foreseeable future.

"At the time, I could not conceive of making music with my friends in any way that did not involve physical co-presence," the associate professor of music said. "I assumed that we would not gather again until the pandemic had passed."

Morgan-Ellis was wrong. Thanks to technology, she engaged in more participatory music-making from March to May 2020 than in the six months preceding lockdown.

Morgan-Ellis chronicled her time during the pandemic and shared those experiences in a paper published in the "Critical Studies in Improvisation" journal. The journal plus Morgan-Ellis' article titled "Your network bandwith is low: Online Participatory Music-Making in the COVID-19 Era" can be read online.

"It was an account about my experiences with online participatory music-making in the first few months of the pandemic," Morgan-Ellis said.

She also completed a peer-reviewed project during several months that detailed how The Sacred Harp community singers developed ways to meet during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Online singing allows participants to access and celebrate their collective memories of the Sacred Harp community, carry out significant rituals, and continue to grow as singers," Morgan-Ellis wrote.

"'Like Pieces in a Puzzle' Online Sacred Harp singing during the COVID-19 pandemic" was published in  March 2021 in "Frontiers in Psychology."