‘India, in this dire state, deserves a song like this’
While most of us may be struggling to kill time during this lockdown, there are a few who are topping every chart of productivity there is. Among them is singer Sonu Nigam who says he actually has no free time nowadays. The singer, who is currently in Dubai, UAE with his family, says that he is busy doing online concerts, and other projects, in order to uplift everyone’s mood with his art.
One of his passion projects is the One Nation One Voice anthem, which the singer will release today in collaboration with a 100 singers from across the country. “It is an acapella rendition in 14 languages. This idea was brought to me by the popular south Indian singer Srinivas [of Kaisi Hai Yeh Ruth; Dil Chahta Hai (2000) fame] ji. After he came to me with the idea, I thought we could do something on a larger scale. So, along with Sanjay [Tandon; CEO of Indian Singers Rights Association] ji, we did what we could in our capacity. We tried to find singers from every region but we couldn’t find popular singers from every region of the country because it is quite difficult to do that in such a short period of time, especially during a lockdown,” says Nigam, adding that this is being done in collaboration with the PM-CARES fund.
Nigam admits that while it wasn’t difficult to get singers to agree to be part of this project, some were hard to tackle. “A few of them acted pricey, of course (smiles). There are all kinds of people in the industry, but I think 99% of them were supportive. They loved the idea of creating something which I don’t think even the West has been able to create. It was a very cumbersome thing, but a nation as great as India, in this dire state, deserves a song like this, says Nigam.
Apart from Nigam, this anthem has been sung by popular singers such as Asha Bhosle, Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Hariharan, Kumar Sanu, Mahalakshmi Iyer, SP Balasubramanian, Shaan, Srinivas, Talat Aziz, Udit Narayan, Shankar Mahadevan, and 88 more artistes.