With the non-stop bom­bard­ment of grim news about the toll of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic sweep­ing the world, sto­ries about the kind­ness of strangers and in­di­vid­u­als who have sac­ri­ficed for oth­ers and the tri­umph of the hu­man spir­it over ad­ver­si­ty are al­so emerg­ing. In coun­tries all over the world like Spain, Italy, Eng­land, USA and Chi­na mu­si­cians and cit­i­zens are singing and play­ing to ho­n­our and praise the coro­n­avirus he­roes who are on the front line such as the doc­tors, health care work­ers, nurs­es, sci­en­tists, law en­force­ment per­son­nel, gro­cery work­ers and farm­ers.

Here in Trinidad, the six-sib­ling mem­bers of the mu­sic band GOOD­vibesING--Joshua, 21, Luke, 19, Nicholas, 17, Liam 14, Christi­na, 11, Do­minic, five--the chil­dren of Al­lan and To­nia Good­ing, from San­ta Cruz, make hap­py, up­lift­ing mu­sic videos to show fam­i­lies how to cope dur­ing the lock­down.

Joshua, Luke and Nicholas play the pi­ano and gui­tar, with Nicholas, who al­so sings, play­ing one more in­stru­ment--the sax­o­phone. Liam plays the drums and pan and is the main singer, while Christi­na and Do­minic play the pi­ano, pan and gui­tar. Christi­na al­so sings.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Luke Good­ing said "Since the be­gin­ning of the quar­an­tine we've been putting out two mu­sic videos per week across a whole genre of mu­sic; we hit jazz, so­ca, con­tem­po­rary, ca­lyp­so, church mu­sic, and reg­gae.

"We start­ed off pri­mar­i­ly do­ing jazz as that's what peo­ple were in­ter­est­ed in us play­ing, but peo­ple al­so love our reg­gae and so­ca, so we're mix­ing up our reper­toire and giv­ing them a va­ri­ety.

"You would see it on our chan­nel pop songs by Michael Jack­son, we did col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er mu­si­cians, 15 in all and we put them to­geth­er our­selves.

"Cur­rent­ly we're mak­ing Sa­van­nah Grass as every­one seems to like it and we are con­tin­u­ing to ex­plore more fu­sion sounds."

The Good­ings, who post­ed their mu­sic on­line dur­ing the lock­down, said they have been on tele­vi­sion "a few times with Liv­ing Wa­ter."

The fam­i­ly de­scribed their My Day Tar­rus Ri­ley cov­er on YouTube as "bring­ing some pos­i­tiv­i­ty in­to your lives with this Tar­rus Ri­ley banger."

They said this song in­spired each and every per­son to use their time wise­ly and be cog­nisant of and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ac­tions. "So at this time, as we ful­fill our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to #stay­home, sit back and en­joy the mu­sic, and we hope we in­spire you to use your time wise­ly!" they urged.

For their In The Mood jazz ren­di­tion on YouTube, the band said they did pop, reg­gae and hymns. They de­cid­ed to treat the pop­u­la­tion to some jazz! "In the mood, com­posed by Glenn Miller, has been a fam­i­ly favourite for many years. We hope it light­ens your mood and brings a smile to your face!" they added as they post­ed the video.

Luke said when the lock­down be­gan, Nicholas had just got­ten some pro­duc­ing soft­ware and hard­ware. They were in the Mu­sic Fes­ti­val which was sched­uled to com­mence on March 1. How­ev­er, the event was can­celled due to the coro­n­avirus.

He said they were all geared up and ready to per­form, they told them­selves that they had put in all the time and prac­tice al­ready, so they de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue play­ing.

He said they have been play­ing parang for the last five years and do­ing Christ­mas con­certs at home. They grad­u­al­ly played at Christ­mas gigs and be­tween the sea­son they were get­ting gigs to do con­tem­po­rary mu­sic.

Luke said with six kids in the Good­ing house­hold, they al­ways had some­thing to do to­geth­er.

He said they played games out­side in the yard like bad­minton, ta­ble ten­nis, minia­ture golf with ten­nis balls, bas­ket­ball, rode bikes and played board games, but there were no video games in the house.

To­nia Good­ing, the chil­dren's moth­er, said their pur­pose was to put a smile on peo­ple's faces and light­en the mood of every­body dur­ing this pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.

She said the band's mu­sic was al­so for cit­i­zens to re­mem­ber to al­ways look at the bright side and fo­cus on stay­ing pos­i­tive.

GOOD­vibesING can be found on YouTube and on In­sta­gram and Face­book un­der good.vibes.ing