For the past week, 14-year-old Faizan has been on cloud nine. News of the success of his first-ever music video has reached far and wide — including his aunt in Lahore, who rang him up at his house in Ambedkar Nagar, Delhi, to congratulate him.
Faizan, along with 21 other children from various Government schools in Delhi, is part of a video mashup of Bollywood song ‘Ilahi Mera’ and Malayalam film song ‘Paranne’. The video features 22 of them popping out from behind the walls of the capital city’s Jamali Kamali mosque, overlooking the Qutub Minar, all singing in pitch- perfect unison. It has garnered nearly 45,000 views so far, and has been shared by the likes of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Two thousand kilometres away, in Chennai, Sriram and his team from NalandaWay are overjoyed. The children in the video belong to Delhi Children’s Choir (DCC), an initiative by the Chennai-based NGO.
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The DCC has been modelled after the Chennai Children’s Choir, a well-known group of musically-inclined children from disadvantaged backgrounds in Chennai. “We started DCC last year, hoping to do the same thing we did with CCC. That is, to help disadvantaged children learn visual and performing arts. We believe that inclusion of the Arts in mainstream education makes it less stressful, and more joyful. Every child, no matter what their background, should have access to some form of art,” says Sriram.
NalandaWay, through its programme Art Labs, is currently working with 170 schools in Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Haryana, and over 43,000 children go through this programme every year. Sriram is pleased by the success of Chennai Children’s Choir in this matter; the group recently performed at Serenade Choral Festival in Washington DC, and has been selected for UNESCO’s #KindnessMatters global social media campaign. And now, he hopes the same for DCC.
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“For DCC, we auditioned 1,200 children from 250 Government schools in the areas of Ambedkar Nagar, Himapur and Girni, near Saket. Finally, these 22 were selected,” he says. The group practises for three hours every Sunday, and other holidays, at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Select Citywalk. “We teach them songs in different languages: from poems of Bharati in Tamil, to Amir Khusrau in Persian. Everytime we teach them a song in a language that’s not their mother tongue, we make sure to explain the lyrics behind them,” he says.
As far as the selection of song goes, the team has only one rule. It should be aspirational, says Sriram, explaining their choice of ‘Ilahi Mera’ and ‘Paranne’ for this video.
New friends
There are two levels of impact: one at the level of politicians and celebrities recognising the DCC, and the second, more important, of increasing the children’s self-esteem, during these six months of practice for the video.
“We were all strangers when we started, but we’ve spent so much time together that we’re all good friends now,” says 16-year-old Nandini Premkumar, adding, “You know that girl who appears right at the beginning of the video? That’s my best friend, Sana.”
She happily recalls how special she felt during the shoot: “There were these huge cameras all around us and everyone gathered was cheering us on.” Along with it, came the much-sought-after approval from parents, teachers, and friends, spurring her on to officially pursue an education and career in music.
It was a similar vote of confidence for Faizan, who says, “DCC opened me to the possibilities of music. Before this, we didn’t even have a music class in my school.” But added to this is the advantage every teenager secretly hopes for. “Ever since the video came out, I have made so many new friends at school! People I didn’t know before have started sitting and eating with me during recess.”
Watch the video at NalandaWay Foundation’s YouTube channel