Many of us saw the videos and they brought a smile to our faces — people in Italy under Covid-19 quarantine, coming out on their balconies and playing music for their neighbours. There were similar videos from Spain. And Germany. And elsewhere. Soon, we started noticing a recurring tune. We wondered what it was. It even made its way to a Netflix series called Money Heist .

Soon enough, it was as if the tune was everywhere. You could hardly check your WhatsApp messages without someone forwarding a version of it. I even got a wedding mehendi version, complete with Money Heist masks. Personally though, for me, two instances stood out for their simplicity and power. One, a father and daughter playing the tune in Gaza, Palestine; father on an oud, a guitar-like Arab instrument, and daughter, all of maybe 10 or so, on a harp. The second was a version of the song in Kashmiri, recorded by a group of young women cooped up in a room. Both these were powerful reminders of lockdowns that pre-dated the virus.

The song, in case you haven’t guessed, is Bella ciao (‘Goodbye, beautiful’), and as the planet went into lockdown, it seemed to become an anthem of our essential humanness. It didn’t matter if you understood, or didn’t, the meaning of the words in Italian. It did not matter if you knew, or didn’t, the history of the song, the story of its journey. The popularity of the song demonstrated, on the one hand, how music transcends barriers, and, on the other, how virality in the era of the internet erases — or, at least, obscures — specific histories or meanings embedded within cultural artefacts. If you watch the Indian mehendi version of the song, you’d never imagine that it was originally a folk song of Italian peasant women of the 19th century, which got refashioned as an anti-fascist anthem during the ’20s and ’30s.

One could go on talking about the song and its various appropriations and meanings. But the point I’m trying to get at here is a little different. Under the lockdown, Bella ciao has provided strange, hard-to-define succour to millions — and, in doing so, has brought home, all over again, not just the power of art, but its usefulness . I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that, all over the world, there’s a dominant attitude that is more or less philistine in how it views art. Art is a diversion. Art is a luxury. Art is trivial. Art is recreation. Art is superfluous. Et cetera, et cetera. All this is inherent in the simple fact that whether one talks of countries or corporations or households, when there’s a (real or perceived) crisis, the budget head that gets slashed first of all, and without any major protest, is art.

And yet, think about it — how would humanity have coped with the lockdown without having recourse to art? As soon as the lockdown began, in various parts of the world, artistes, whether professional or amateur, began reaching out to fellow human beings through their art, providing succour, a sense of companionship, humour, and compassion. All over the world, people began to read much more — not just news or opinion pieces, but fiction and poetry, too. It goes without saying that the role of first responders — medical professionals and caregivers — has been absolutely heroic. What is not as much recognised, however, is the role played by art and artistes in this period of extended crisis. There has been, rightly, concern and comment on the mental health toll of the lockdown, particularly on people who live alone, or who live in abusive or hostile home environments. But there has been hardly any comment on the role of art in preventing emotional or psychological breakdowns.

It is time we changed society’s attitudes towards art and artistes. Under capitalism, a handful of artistes get celebrated, feted, exalted, and their work commands unimaginable sums of money. The majority of artistes, however, slog away in conditions of near- or relative poverty, unappreciated and unsung. It is time we recognised art as an essential commodity, and artistes as workers providing essential services.

In some European countries, encouragingly, governments have seen books as a commodity that needs support in the current period of lockdown, as well as in the coming period of economic downturn and uncertainty. In Kerala, the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Front government has shown great sagacity in allowing bookstores to open twice a week, even as the national lockdown continues. But these are exceptions. Governments all over the world need to do more. They need to provide real support to the arts — all the arts, and to the industries without which the arts would not exist, such as publishing — in a variety of ways. Art is not confetti. Art is bread. And the people who create art are workers who nourish our souls. Without art and artistes, our souls would simply wither and die.

Sudhanva Deshpande is a theatre actor, publisher, and author of Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi

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