You can hardly find any Rabindranath Tagore song in Arabic translation and the literary icon is not much known in the Arab countries. However, this might change in the near future as three popular Rabindra Sangeets were released in Arabic version in Dubai recently.
Suchetha Satish, a girl from Kerala now staying in Dubai, has recorded these Tagore songs in Arabic which are part of an album titled ‘Tagore Beyond Horizon’. The album was launched at the Indian consulate auditorium in Dubai ahead of Tagore’s 161st birth anniversary on Monday.
‘Nai nai bhoy hobe hobe jai’, ‘Ekla cholo re’ and ‘Aloker ei jharnadharay’ are the three iconic Rabindra Sangeets that have been recorded in Arabic in an effort to make a cultural bridge between Bengal and UAE and the Arab World.
It was Dev Chakraborty, a music director and singer based in Dubai, who first came up with the idea and in order to make the translation a soulful one, they contacted Emirati poet laureate Shihab Ghanem, the 2013 recipient of the Tagore Peace Prize from Asiatic Society.
In this tribute album, Deb has lent his voice to the Bengali originals while Suchetha has sung the Arabic versions. For the unversed, Suchetha is now the Guinness World Record holder for singing in the most number of languages in a concert after she sang in 120 languages in 7 hours and 20 minutes last year. The gifted singer is planning to release more Tagore songs in Arabic in the near future and is also awaiting the release of her first original Bhutanese song this month.