Song of Hope in pandemic times goes viral

Darjeeling: Song of Hope dedicated to people fighting pandemic times released mid-April has gone viral. The song by music composer-sound engineer Praveen Francis is being sent to the Grammy 2022.

Francis is a native of Coimbatore in Tamilnadu who has mustered good will partners from places across the continents including Darjeeling.

The hook of the 4-minute song (Na na na na na…) has no language.

“The main hook of the song has got no language,” says Praveen, who believes “song signifies that we human beings are all united in this time of uncertainty and we will bounce back in full swing.”

The theme of the song as Francis says, “We will fight back because there is still HOPE.”

Grammy Award-winning South African flautist, producer and composer who has won seven South African Music Awards Wouter Kellerman says, “Love it Praveen, the song and the video is full of joy and life.”

Commenting on meticulous execution of the project, RJ Bryan of Radio Salesian who leads Revelation band in Kurseong says, “It’s a wonderful collaboration. A project of this type needs a lot of pre-planning and co-ordination. Things can easily go wrong and the project may lose its track. A lot of hard work, dedication, commitment and teamwork seems to be put in the project by the creators.”

The song set in the Afro-pop genre has three languages namely English, French and Lingala.

Lingala is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo. It is spoken to a lesser degree in Angola, the Central African Republic and southern South Sudan.

The visuals for the music video are from different parts of the world in which people sing, dance and enjoy, signifying their fighting spirit.

The music video was shot by different people with their available resources and at times with their cell phones from locations in India, USA, UK, South America, and Africa.

Francis does not hesitate to place on record the generous contribution of various artists, musicians, visual technicians, editors, dancers and many others towards completion of the project.

While renowned concert pianist, singer and music composer Neecia Majolly from Bangalore has sung in this song, portions of the recordings were done in Cameroon by Yvee. The choir portions were sung by Africans from different nationalities residing in India.

To get the real African flavour, all the instruments were played by only Africans.

The rhythm programming for this song was done by Nelson who is an Indian African called the Sidhis.

Another Sidhi, Miss Rani organised the whole village to dance for the song.

“Kannada film director Manjunandan and crew were fabulous with their time and talent.” says Francis.

The mixing and mastering for the song was done by OJ Shimrah and editing by Nelson and Shaji Thomas.

An earlier song Francis composed dedicated to the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram titled “Bring Back our Girls” had been short listed for nomination at Grammys 2017 for five categories.