Covid-19 Pandemic’s Influence on Popular/Folk Culture and Tourism in Greece: Shaping the Future and Beyond

Popular/folk culture, mainly expressed through music and dance performances, was always very important for human societies. In addition to offering entertainment and being a tourist attraction, it can convey different messages according to the context, such as aesthetic/artistic, cultural, religious/spiritual and/or social aspects. Therefore, it is strongly linked to local identity and tourism, thus being an invaluable resource for local communities that needs to be preserved. Pandemics and their consequences pose a huge risk for this community asset, affecting not only the artists practicing it, but the entire associated culture and tourism industry. In this paper, we study how the recent covid-19 pandemic has affected the Greek popular/folk music scene and give insights on new ways and solutions, mainly based on modern information technologies, to mitigate these negative impacts.