'We wanted to honour those who protect us': Dubai students dedicate song to UAE Armed Forces

Dubai: Picture a choir. Now make the youngest voice in it six years old, and the oldest seventeen. Now make every single one of them sing in a language none of them grew up speaking.

That's "Junūd al-Imārāt", Soldiers of the Emirates. A tribute song to the UAE's Armed Forces, sung entirely in Arabic, entirely by Indian students in Dubai.

It's the work of Asha G. Menon, a music teacher at Indian High School, and a group of her own students.

Dikshita, 15, one of the group's more senior members, said, "This entire project, this music video, was to honour our own military and those who have been here to save and protect us."

"Especially considering that all of us were not from the UAE, and as people who live here and are still protected as well as everyone else, we thought this tribute to them would be one of the best things that we can give."

There was no grand plan behind it, just two friends talking. "We were just having a conversation, and then we were thinking, why not a musical tribute to the soldiers through our medium, which is always music?" Asha says. "What can we do through our medium to express our gratitude towards this country?"

It was a feeling she'd carried for a while without knowing what to do with it. "That feeling has always been there with me, but then I couldn't. I didn't know how to execute it properly," she admits. By early May, she had her answer: a WhatsApp group, built one student at a time, until it became something much bigger than either of them had planned.

None of the students grew up speaking Arabic, and Asha doesn't downplay how difficult that made things. "Only the main challenge was to master this language, Arabic. This was our main, the biggest challenge we had," she says. "For the younger ones, like six years, seven years, we had a tough time, but then I think they have managed well to master the pronunciation at least."

Once the song itself came together, the project grew faster than anyone expected. "When the lyrics were ready, when the tune was ready, composing got over, everyone started appreciating the tune. Then we thought, okay, why not go to a studio and record it professionally?" Asha recalls. Videographers started reaching out unprompted.

"I thought to myself, this has to come out big, and we need a proper videography for this."

Asha had already pictured something far from a conventional choir setup. "I had an outdoor image in my mind. I didn't want any of my kids singing indoor in a studio. I had deserts. I had lakes." That vision meant filming in genuinely tough conditions. "Going in the deserts, it was kind of hard to handle the heat, and some kids had a very difficult time, like the smaller ones," one of the students said. "Though when the video got out, we all were very happy that we were part of this big song, a release song."

For Cerene, one of the youngest in the group 11 years old, it was her first project of any kind, heat and all. "I think the most memorable thing for me is the friends I made, the friend circles, and even the kids," she says.

"Everything was so fun. Travelling to get to the places and just everything in general was just so fun with everyone. I'm so grateful," Sharvajith who is 12 years old said: "We put a lot of effort into this, into the making of this video, and we all became closer to Asha ma'am, and we all became best friends, and it made us really happy."

Asha understands the pressure of performing young better than most, because she lived it herself. "I started off my career at the age of 14," she says. "I sang my first movie song, and I was 15 years old when I got the state award for the same song." She went on to sing for more than twenty Malayalam films before settling in Dubai and joining Indian High School as a music teacher in 2017.

That background shaped exactly how she ran this project. "I didn't want them to have the usual way of learning music," she says. "I wanted them to have the real life experiences, like the vocal recording, mixing, mastering, and the visuals. Everything they need to see and understand what is happening with the project."

The reaction since release has told her it worked. "Whoever listens to the song, they are saying we don't sound like non-Arab speakers," she says. "That's the greatest recognition we are getting these days, and from Emiratis also. Some locals have contacted us, saying the same. That's the greatest gift we could ever get."

Asha isn't treating this as a one-off. "We are dreaming of having projects like this in the coming years too," she says. "It should not stop with this one project. They should constantly have this idea of having the social values, having gratitude towards whatever they have in their lives. We are planning for more projects. I hope we get there soon."