When the country's finest musicians and biggest stars come together for just one song, it certainly is bound to get the expectation radar blinking hard and fast. And when the man behind it is George Peter, yes, the same face and voice that once was synonymous with 13AD, the band that caught the fancy of rock lovers here in the late 80s, and who has been part and parcel of A.R. Rahman's troupe for several years now, the excitement potential just cannot be written off.
They say India will start singing the unity song on Wednesday after Chief Minister Oommen Chandy releases the music video at Hotel Mascot at 3 p.m. here. Now, when that is something yet to be seen, the enthusiasm that beams from the faces of George and his producer Apu John Joseph says why this could take off from where a similar initiative that has been on Indian minds for long now, the ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara' song, signed off.
“This is a song, focusing on brotherhood and unity across linguistic diversity that will cross all borders inside India, making all Indians stand as one, reminding us that we are Indians first and then only Malayali, Bengali, Tamil, or Telugu. It has English lyrics to reach out to the world and 16 Indian languages and 59 voices, including those of K.J. Yesudas, Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Mohanlal, Mammootty, Vikram, Vivek Oberoi, Zayed Khan, Shankar Mahadevan, K.S. Chitra, Usha Uthup, and Vasundhara Das, just to name a few,” says George.
The video has 144 personalities, apart from those mentioned above, ranging from Major Ravi and Abhijeet Sawant to Sreesanth and Saina Nehwal, Ranjini Jose to Blaaze to Naresh Iyer and so on.
Apu, a techie himself who once ran the rock band Purple Haze and the son of Minister P.J. Joseph, says it all started off as a minor project, one that they aimed to complete in two weeks.
“George had this idea of a national project for the last 20 years and then, one day in December last, he called me and sang this song over the phone. It sounded catchy, and we began, thinking of six to seven musicians. That kept growing, and the release date was first pushed to New Year's Eve 2012, then to the Republic Day, but the project kept growing, going from city to city, with we setting up studios in hotel rooms, getting stars in the most unbelievable of ways. We met Vikram in a hotel lobby in Chennai, told him about the project and he sang. Vivek Oberoi was here to visit Sabarimala and he also sang,” says Apu.
“Sing, shoot, and out, was our modus operandi, with about eight Indian cities being our studio, apart from following Celebrity Cricket League teams,” chips in George, saying that it was Apu's confidence that day in December, when he said, “Ok, let us do it,” that kept the project alive, the cost of which they decline to divulge, saying it is just ‘priceless.'
There will be no commercial sale of the song, which will be telecast on television, uploaded on YouTube and yes, with a Facebook page (One – The Unity Song) as well. It is already gaining popularity in most social networking circuits, they say.
