A nation as great as India, in this dire state, deserves a song like this, says Sonu Nigam

The singer is releasing a new song titled One Nation One Voice in association with ISRA (Indian Singers Rights Association) with 100 singers from across the country

While most of us may be struggling to kill time during this lockdown, there are a few who are stopping 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, with his family, says that he is very busy doing online concerts, and with other projects which he is involved with, in order to uplift everyone’s mood with his art.

Sonu Nigam is releasing a song dedicated to the Covid-19 warriors along with Asha Bhosle, Alka Yagnik, Hariharan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Kumar Sanu, Mahalakshmi Iyer, and many other singers.

One of the passion projects that he is going to release today is the One Nation One Voice anthem, which the singer will release in collaboration with 100 singers from across the country. “It is an acapella rendition in 14 languages without the use of any musical instrument. This idea was brought to me by the popular south Indian singer Srinivas ji [of Kaisi Hai Yeh Ruth; Dil Chahta Hai (2000) fame]. 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 whatever we could do in our capacity. We tried to find singers from every region but of course, we could not 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. Not everyone has access to technology etc., which was required in the making of this song, but we managed as much as we could, says Nigam, adding that this is being done in collaboration with the PM-CARES fund.

Nigam admits that while it was not difficult to get singers to agree to be part of this project, a few people 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% people were very supportive. They loved the idea of creating something which I don’t think even the West has been able to create. It was a herculean task to bring together so many artistes and to ascertain whom to connect with and who to approach and whether they would have access to microphones or not. We are our own engineers and cinematographers now, so we had to figure out who could do these technical things on their own. 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, Hariharan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Kumar Sanu, Mahalakshmi Iyer, Papon, SP Balasubramanian, Shaan, Srinivas Talat Aziz, Udit Narayan, Shankar Mahadevan, and 87 more artistes.