By Mannu Shahi

The entire country has been locked down since 24th March 2020, due to the pandemic outbreak of coronavirus that has brought a global crisis. Since everyone's requested to stay at home and practice social distancing thus music field serves no exception to this rule. Musicians have been complaining about not having any income during this period as most of the field associated within the musical territory deals with a daily work and pay rule. Concerts being cancelled, music shops and studios closing down, schools and academies suspended by the government has already had its side effects specially on those musicians whose families depend upon their musical endeavors for basic survival.
The only positive aspect to these difficult times is the communal interactions we see musicians sharing on their social media platforms. The ones fortunate enough to live a quality lifestyle amidst this catastrophe have every now and then been sharing their musical activities straight from their bedrooms to encourage more creative works in this dull and fearful scenario. Some have been putting out their pending works, coming up with new music videos and even giving an online re-take to their classic hits. One of the online chain of events that started out live sessions from our favorite Nepali rock and pop artists on Facebook was titled Musical Outbreak presented by Social Café, Gairidhara that intended on spreading awareness about self-quarantine and entertain the listeners throughout the country.
The first day of the lockdown featured three fabulous artists on the musical outbreak series: Ishan R. Onta of The Elements, followed by Aarif Rauf and Abhishek S. Mishra leader of the rock outfit ASM. This was followed by many more performers such as Dr. Dhrubesh Regmi, Rushan Shrestha, Jyoti & Shilpy Ghimire, Jerusha Rai, Ashesh Dangol, Jyovan Bhuju, Shaurav Bhattarai, Jimi Blues, Sareen Deoja, Shirish Dali and many more. However, sadly Social Café could only continue their online concerts after 7 days of straight performances featuring over 32 artists but some other platforms are now seen implying similar strategies to their online events. The most popular and recent series apparent in social media platforms is the Ruslan Lockdown Series presented by Ruslan FM 95.2. Unlike, the previous musical outbreak series the Ruslan online shows seem to feature only one artist per episode and organize the performances skipping days in between. Rohit John Chhetri, Suzeena Shrestha, Sanjay Shrestha have already performed their live streamed concerts straight from their homes, while, Samriddhi Rai is the fourth guest on the list going live today at 3pm on the Ruslan FM Facebook page. More artists, not yet revealed, are due to perform for this site so be sure to like and follow this page and catch the live performances, support by sharing and talking about these events through your personal accounts, that's the least we all could do in difficult times like these to help our beloved artists grow their reach further.