In collaboration with a number of local and international musicians, partners as well as volunteers, the ‘One Nation’ official song will be released in the coming few days and will hold the title of ‘Al Yaqeen’ in its Arabic edition.
Essa al-Kubaisi
Commenting on this initiative, Dana Alfardan said: “I believe that there are a lot of fallacies being circulated towards Qatar that don’t represent the reality of life here. I am a product of the education that my State has given me; I was actually able to engage in music thanks to Qatar Foundation’s efforts to bring the best international musicians in the world to Qatar. The State has invested a lot in culture, education and in the human capital to give nationals the opportunity and resources to expand their cultural understanding and stand out at a global level.
Fahad al-Kubaisi
“As an artiste, my job is to show this to the world. My aim was first to send a message of unity and strength to the people of this country with ‘One Nation’, and to showcase our love for each other and our community based values that we strongly hold in our hearts.”
In addition to Dana composing the song and writing the vocals in English, some of the biggest names in the Qatari music scene have also contributed to the vocals, including Fahad al-Kubaisi and Essa al-Kubaisi while Fahad al-Mursel has written the Arabic lyrics.
In collaboration with Qatar Concert Choir, and under the direction of Giovanni Pasini, a number of international musicians have also contributed to the song - such as Christoph Schmitz on cello and as music superviser, Ferdninand Shaffer on percussion, Dimitri Torchinski on violins, and Juan Pestana on keyboards and bass guitar. Mohamed al-Sulaiti contributed on oud, as well as Hassan Moataz on rababa and Yassine Ayari on the nay.
Further elaborating on the creation of ‘One Nation’, Dana said: “Through this significant event, ‘One Nation’ has gained a distinctive character. It is a truly collaborative effort and that’s what I set out to achieve. I only wrote the song, and then the end result is a product of everybody’s contribution.”
Performed by Dana exclusively for this occasion, as she has retired from singing, ‘One Nation’ has given a special attention to the rababa instrument as Dana believes it can bring a lot of added value to western music and give it an authentic Middle Eastern touch as it combines many elements from different parts of the world, which also represents the underlying foundations of the heritage and rich culture of Qatar.
