Quarantine and mourning aren’t a good mix. Mourning and lament have public aspects, serving to reassure the bereaved that a social, caring world of story, friendship and community can hear and hold sorrow and suffering.

This is one reason it’s so important that people in Nova Scotia and across Canada have been turning to music and virtual sharing in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. They’re also voicing their sorrow and processing their grief after 22 people died in Canada’s worst mass shooting in Nova Scotia, Heather Sparling writes today in The Conversation Canada.

The associate professor of ethnomusicology and Canada research chair in musical traditions at Cape Breton University considers how mourners are drawing on a long Atlantic Canada disaster song tradition and a musical heritage, from bagpipes to “broadside ballads,” as a way of consoling, honouring the dead and memorializing.

Also today, music neuroscientists Jessica Grahn from Western University writes that “music moves us at the level of the body, the brain and the group.” The story examines music in the context of the coronavirus pandemic at large.

Our other stories:

• How e-voting could close Canada’s political gender gap
• What is fair dealing in copyright? Here’s why it matters when moving classes online due to coronavirus
• What cities can learn from lockdown about planning for life after the coronavirus pandemic
• Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the role of public health workers is unrecognized

Regards,