Gaia Draws 100-Plus Singers to LA One-Day Choir as Loneliness Fuels Communal Singing
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jul 13
Gaia Draws 100-Plus Singers to LA One-Day Choir as Loneliness Fuels Communal Singing
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 13
Summary
More than 100 strangers gathered near downtown Los Angeles for Gaia Music Collective’s three-hour one-day choir, learning and singing Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb” three times with no outside audience.
The $15-to-$35 event was designed less as performance than connection, with organizers framing group singing as a secular, healing space for people seeking community, queer belonging and what participants described as transcendence.
Gaia, launched in a Brooklyn apartment during the pandemic, has since brought thousands together in New York and expanded to other cities, helped by viral TikTok clips including a Brooklyn “Unwritten” performance with nearly 10 million views.
The format is spreading in the US and abroad as organizers tap pop songs and low-pressure participation to attract nonprofessionals, while some spin-offs such as New York’s Mycelium Choral Project pair the gatherings with activism.
The appeal lands amid a broader US loneliness crisis: the surgeon general warned of an epidemic in 2023, dinner-or-drinks meetups have fallen 30% over two decades, and weekly religious attendance dropped from 42% to 30%.