Mass Perception about Music during Lockdown in Nepal: A Case of Fine Arts Campus

Article Information ABSTRACT Received: August 27, 2021 Revised: September 30, 2021 Accepted: October 15, 2021 Online: November 15, 2021 Engaging along with music during lockdown is a kind of common behavior of human being. This article mirrors the mass perception about music during the specific situation of lockdown in Nepal. Descriptive online survey design was used by taking 136 participants from Fine Arts Campus by purposive sampling technique. Frequency, percentage and presentation of chars were major statistical techniques used in this research. Finding indicates that most of the participants were enjoying by listening and participating musical activities during pandemic. Whatever the purpose of listening, singing, dancing, composing, recording, playing the musical patterns, mass people knowingly-unknowingly connected with music during lockdown. So, concluded that almost all respondents voted for the need for musical activities and varieties of music for managing their stress..

IJAE Page 473 nutritious food. Music is one of the most beautiful works of human art (Tiwari, 2021). "Music is ubiquitous in all human cultures and is listened to by persons of all ages, races, and ethnic backgrounds" (Danhauer, 2005). Its soothing effect has the power to affect not only the human mind, body and soul but also trees, plants, animals, birds and other living beings in this world. In Eastern society singing, playing and dancing are all studied under music while in western society dance is not included under music, which helps human beings to connect with one's inner self and also serves as an excellent medium of self-expression. Music has the super power to bind people together due to its divine eloquence, which is a great source of entertainment (Pradhan, 2014). Since ancient times, music has been one of the main sources of entertainment, when there was no radio, television, internet, video games or any other way to entertain oneself, music helped people deal with boredom. The, so called lockdown in Nepal, is also matter concerning with isolation, study and work online, stop visiting, stay jobless and others.
So, in this article, how people passed their time at home during lockdown with the application of musical activities. What kinds of music did they entertain and why, when, how? The answer to these questions are articulated in this article through the questionnaires forwarded to respondents, randomly. This article aims to find out the interest and perception of general people about the music and its activities, especially during the lockdown.
A few studies have been published associated with the applications of music during specific situations. A study on uses and perceptions of music in times of COVID-19 (Cabedo-Mas et al., 2021) concluded that the an improvement in their perception of the value of music in personal and social wellbeing during the lockdown in Spain. Likewise, another survey (Ribeiro et al., 2021) in Brazilian society concluded that most of the respondents applied music during their confinement due to corona infection. Another study was titled "Changes in uses and emotional reaction to music under stay-athome restrictions with reference with Covid 19 and music" conducted in Israel (Ziv & Hollander-Shabtai, 2021). Most of the studies are found about the music and its efficacy. Still, music during the lockdown is mostly the new research subject to study in coming days. No other studies came into my sight, especially focused in the research field in Nepal. So, this study is advantageous for addressing the importance and application of varieties of genre of music especially during critical situation, such as, lockdown in Nepal.

Description of the variables
Gender, age, profession, genre of music and preferences are major socio-demographic characteristics used in the research. Here, gender has two categories male (76.47%) and female (23.53%). Similarly, age has been categorized into 3 groups: below 20 years, 20-40 years and over 40years and professions into 3 categories such as students, teachers and others. The genre of music is classified into 7, namely, classical, modern, spiritual, filmy, folk, western, and all types, so as to know the musical preference of each respondent during lockdown. The time routine for engaging with music has been segmented as morning, afternoon, evening, all the time and some times.

METHODS
This study was based on online survey by using a Google Form. A random sampling technique was used to form a sampling for this study. 136 respondents were participated in the survey. Selfconstructed tool consisting 14 items was employed during the research. The collected data were analyzed, using percentage, frequency, figures and bar graphs, in descriptive nature.

RESULTS
Music plays a very important role on people's life because it helps to lessen the stress and anxiety (Van Buladaco et al., 2019). During the lockdown session, people have been suggested to stay at their shelter for certain time period. As the situation arisen at Nepal due to Covid 19 infection, all the population have been urged to stop their movement around the office, market and society to break the infection chain (Prasain, 2021). Thus, the environment along with anxiety, stress and pressure has been created in human life due to lockdown. In this situation, most of the people adopted music in their daily life. The purposeful adoption of music in one's life varies one to another. The results are as follow as per the following figures.

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In accordance of figure -1, 32 female and 104 male among the respondent group 136 people were classified into three groups, below 20 years, 20-40 years and over 40 years for the survey. The 3 age groups respectively enroll 26, 80 and 30 respondents, who found to be 55.79% students, 23.53% teachers and rest 20.59% others. In this figure, male students of age group 20-40 years were found more than female students, comparatively.  Figure 3 focuses to the preferred time to engage with the music. 71 respondents used to enjoy the music all the time whereas 9, 13, 11 and 32 respondents be with music during morning, afternoon, evening and sometimes, respectively. 32 people seemed to be random to engage with music.
According to figure 4, among 136 respondents, near to 55 (40.44%) found with no feeling of mental stress during lockdown whereas 81 respondents (59.56%) found to be stressed. But, some of those who did not feel tension also agreed that music is important for forgetting the tension and 105 (77.21%) people felt that music is important forever. Coincidently, 72 respondents has adopted music as their profession. Likewise, 44 people were found with music for entertainment purpose and only 20 people knowingly followed the music for stress management during the lockdown session in Nepal. So, this figure shows that most of the people except music professionals has a conception of music as just for entertainment purpose. Figure 5, concentrates with five major aspects, where the frequency of respondents who admire music or not, specific time, duration, genre and musical activities during the pandemic. 130 (95.59%) respondents agreed with importance of music. Moreover, among them 80.77% expressed their view that the role of music exists forever in their life, 105 respondents voted as per figure 4. Similarly, 31 out of 130 people said "music is best means to forget stress and tension in human life". For another question raised among them about the genre of music they engaged with during lockdown, 62 (45.59%) people were found loving all genre of music, 33(24.26%) were found following classical music, 13(9.56%) for modern music, 11(8.09%) for spiritual (devotional) music, 8(5.89%) for filmy music, 5(3.68%) for folk music and 4(2.94%) for western music. Amazingly, the 6 people who said "music is not important" also were found engaged in western, folk and spiritual music as well as watching music video, singing, listening and dancing activities. In the answer of another important question "how do you manage stress with music?" 59(43.38%) were found for listening and dancing, 43(31.62%) for singing, 18(13.24%) professionals composed the music and 16(11.76%) people were found watching the music video during the lockdown. Thus, all the participants somehow, sometime were found to be with music during the pandemic situation.

DISCUSSION
Aim of the research was to find the types and genre of music which were mostly preferred and how people engaged with music and why? Was their choice helpful managing their stress level? What about the importance of music people think? Almost of the respondent argue that the music is important for the individuals. The study carried out by Rama and others 2020 also found similar result that listening to music at home was the safest mechanism to combat this grave situation. A study on "Music is for everyone", stated "we can't escape music, even if we would (Horn, 2016). In this research also almost all respondents except 6 stated for the importance of music in their daily life. Those 6 people who did not think the importance of music in human life, 3 out them were interviewed through telephone call that why they didn't think "music is important". One replied, "There are many other jobs to do in daily life and no time to even remember about the music". Other answered his business in farming. Likewise, the last respondent found to be a sportsman that he loves playing rather than