Performing artists are among the people hardest hit by COVID-19’s economic blows. Their events were the first to be shut down — and will likely be the last to resume.
Many had pieced together a living from several different jobs, and now they’re figuring out how to replace that income. One such artist is musician and vocalist Sarah Larsson.
Larsson sings with a few different groups, including The Lacewings and The Nightingale Trio.
Larsson’s also a musical anthropologist. She’s traveled to places like Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia to interview elders about their folk songs. She learns their songs and the stories behind them, and then keeps the music alive by performing it.
But when COVID-19 began making its way across the globe, suddenly all that work came to a halt.
“My income really stopped March 10 or so, that was like the last date I had a gig that I did get paid for,” she recalled. “I spent probably a solid week and a half feeling depressed and confused, knowing that everything was changing, and worrying about people being OK and being healthy. And then I kind of climbed out of that darkness and was like, ‘I guess I should do something.’”
For the past 18 months, Larsson has worked entirely as a freelance employee. She says she earned about $25,000 last year, after taxes. Much of that money goes back into her work.
“I'm paying other musicians essentially to work for me,” she said. “I am paying stipends to the teachers I work with. I am traveling to do the work. All of those kinds of things — the marketing time, you know, renting studio space.”
Larsson lives simply on what’s left; she shares a house with four roommates.
Sarah Larsson practices playing the bouzouki on her front porch. The bouzouki is a Greek instrument.
Christine T. Nguyen | MPR News
When I first talked with her in early April, Larsson had created a spreadsheet of all the emergency arts grants she might qualify for. And she was navigating her way through applying for unemployment as a freelance employee — which she found frustrating. Still, Larsson was staying positive.
And she was brainstorming ways she could make some money in the meantime. One of her projects? Singing telegrams.
“So I'll record that, either just myself at home or I'll even dub myself singing multiple harmony parts on a song, and then secretly sneak this into someone's email inbox with a sweet message,” she said. “And folks have been paying me 20 bucks, 25 bucks for each of them. And then people are like, ‘This is such a good way for me to reach out to my family that I can't see.’ So it's been both a good little mini-income earner and a super sweet thing to do.”
I checked in with Larsson again a month later. Things were looking up. Since we last talked, she’s received a couple of emergency grants — one from Springboard for the Arts for $500, and another from the Twin Cities Music Community Trust for $100. Those grants paid for another month’s rent. Her application for unemployment went through, so she’s now getting weekly checks, although they don’t add up quite to what she thought. And she got a federal stimulus check for $1,200. She says financially she’s feeling much more stable than a month ago.
But she worries about what happens when the disaster relief and unemployment run out. Larsson is trying to figure out what to do next.
“It's making me wonder — should I apply now for a remote full-time job, which I don't want to do?” she said. “I don't want to find myself with an office job or doing transcription work or something like that. But it doesn't feel like the type of activity that I had going before is going to really be back by the summertime.”
Larsson said she knows she’s lucky to not work in a meat plant or other place where conditions may be unsafe. But still, she feels pressure to be productive.
“There is an implied external demand that says, ‘Work yourself to death in order to exist in this society.’ It's like the regard for human life, including a life well lived. … It needs to be part of the conversation,” she said. “So it's kind of tricky.”
Larsson said she’s going to spend the next few weeks balancing “doing” with simply being, as she figures out her next move.
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