How we've managed to connect despite the isolation brought about by 2020.
It’s been six months since the country was put into lockdown, and, just a few months after relaxing restrictions, it seems that new constraints are now imminent.
Confusion has been the predominant National state of mind for most of this year, and things don’t look like getting clearer anytime soon.
The future feels more uncertain than ever, and we’ve never been more isolated from one another than we are right now.
Just the simple things like seeing friends and family have become a complicated dilemma of emotions, ethics and regulations.
And, the music venues, bars and clubs that used to bring us so much joy, echo only with the ghosts of former mayhem.
Music is best when it is a shared experience, and that’s not an option for us at this moment in time.
So we have had to find ways to do that in the current circumstances.
Live streaming has been really good for attempting to re-capture the experience of a gig or an event, but unfortunately it’s transient and inconsistent, there’s nothing for people to hold on to afterwards.
It seems then that Radio is the last bastion of hope for bringing people together around music.
Although we could never have known it when we started to build The Buzz Mcr, perhaps our timing was fortuitous - that’s what people keep on telling us anyhow.
We called ourselves The Buzz because we wanted to be a hive-minded radio station.
We understood the value of community, of a collective consciousness, of wanting to belong to something meaningful.
We wanted to give people the experience of listening to great music and knowing that other people were also having that same experience in that very same moment.
And, when conversations start up on our social platforms with people sharing their appreciation and musical memories of particular songs played, or for the DJ set they are listening to; then something else starts to happen.
The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
And so across the barren, social wastelands caused by our isolation, people are reaching out through their love of music and associating with one another in ways they haven’t done for so long; relationships are being forged, friendships ignited.
Communities and tribes are powerful ways for us to feel connected and remind us that we do belong, especially in our current remote predicament.
But what’s even more special is that it reminds us all of the role that radio used to play in our lives, in our city and indeed in our hearts.
Radio is dead. Long live Radio.
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