South African Indian-origin singer Vandana Naran has launched a CD featuring the Hanuman Chalisa in six different musical variations and people are enamored?it! Naran performed some of them live at the annual United Hanuman Chalisa held in Lenasia, South Africa.
Bhajan groups from all over the country were present and there was a 20-minute Hanuman Chalisa session for over 12 hours non-stop.
Hanuman Chalisa is a 40-verse devotional composition by Goswami Tulsidas, better knows as the author of the mythological epic Ramcharitramanas, which is in praise of Lord Hanuman.
※We decided to put together this CD in different versions of the Hanuman Chalisa so that it would find appeal to different age groups,§ Naran told PTI.
※There are traditional versions that will appeal more to the elderly group, and then there are more modernised music versions for the younger group, using electronic music as background. The words of course stay exactly the same, but the renditions are in different tunes,§ the singer added.
Naran has also won a number of local song contests and has performed internationally. She trained in Indian classical music as a child with her sister Jagruthi in the US, while their father Jagdish was working there for four years.
Jagdish assists with technical studio recording and the family also ran musical lessons online for a few years.
On the 150th birth anniversary of Nelson Mandela last year, the trio (sisters and father) produced the world's first South African National Anthem translation into Hindi.