Listen: Indian expat in Dubai releases YouTube song to beat coronavirus

Dubai: The COVID-19 pandemic has left many in the UAE counting losses – be it losing a family member, a job, one’s personal freedom, life and more.

But there are others like this 29-year-old Indian expat from Dubai, Viral Morzaria, who has taken a grim situation of the pandemic and turned into something fun, creative, relevant and most importantly positive.

And how did he do that?

Morzaria launched a song on the coronavirus this week and it has already garnered 28,000 views, 1,300 likes and 869 subscribes.

For a first time YouTuber, Morzaria said he is happy and pleasantly surprised with the response. “In a time like this where everything seems to be down, I just wanted to create something positive to take people’s mind off worry and fear, yet keeping relevance to the situation we are in. ‘Beat You Corona’ is the result of it.”

Beat You Corona

Morzaria, who is also a travel and entertainment blogger when he is not working as a full time engineer in Dubai launched ‘Beat You Corona’ this week on his channel – The Viral Vlogs. “The song has connected with a lot of people,” he said.

Lyrics of the song have been penned by Morzaria himself, while the vocals have been rendered by a Milan-based singer Francesco II Mercante.

The song itself is based on the theme of ‘Bella Ciao’, popularly heard on Netflix Spanish drama Money Heist.

Morzaria teamed up with friends and his neighbours in the UAE - who together – produced the entire song - from the direction, editing, costumes, etc.

The video

In the video Morzaria can be seen dressed as the lead character of Money Heist – ‘The Professor’. For the record, Mercante’s previous songs on YouTube have garnered over three million views. All copyrights have been duly taken by the Indian expat to release the song – now on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other social media platforms.

“The video is also like an explainer on how COVID-19 came out of nowhere, how people felt helpless during the lockdown with job losses etc. The footage shows shoots done in UAE and Italy.”

The Indian engineer said it took him two months to put together the video. “I mainly worked on it during weekends – Fridays and Saturdays,” he said.

Why did he do it?

There is a whole positive spin to the pandemic situation as the video depicts a positive future. “This is why I did it – to show the world – that they should think positive.”

“I am not a singer and even if I try I will not be able to pull off a western accent. And since this is an European song, I wanted its flavour to remain. So I reached out to Mercante who did the cover of Bella Ciao. I told him about my idea, sent him my lyrics and in two months we were ready to put it out on YouTube.”