Creating world music

Bulgarian singer and goodwill ambassador of UN’s World Refugee Organisation Dyana Dafova will team up with Indian music legend A.R. Rahman for her next album. Dyana met Rahman during a press conference at Houston in USA last February.
“The meeting was quite accidental. The organisers said that Rahman was in the same hall and invited me to meet him,” Dyana, who is in the city for Ayurveda treatment, said.
Dyana is planning a joint production. “Both of us are composers of world music. Both of us connect across cultures. Rahman is also excited,” Dyana said. The two stalwarts will come together for a creative session this May at Houston.

Dyana said she easily blends “four to five cultures” in a single song of hers. “I employ a whole range of genres from classical and modern to folk, just like Rahman. You can call both of us world musicians,” she said.
Rahman is only her latest link to India. Her American husband Michael Butterfield, who is also her manager, was born in Kolkata. Butterfield, who speaks fluent Hindi, has accompanied her to the city. This is Dyana’s second visit to the State. “We are seriously planning to have a holiday home in Kovalam,” Butterfield said.
What’s more, Dyana is the only European artist ever to be invited by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) for a live performance in the country. The year was 1999, the year her most popular album ‘Charisma’ was released.
‘Charisma’, again, was the only European album to be produced by the Indian company Times Music.
This Bulgarian songwriter/singer is also the only performer in the world who sings in 11 different languages. This includes even Sanskrit. Others are Latin, Celtic, Italian, Japanese, North American Indian, Bulgarian, Arabic and English. “I don’t speak all these languages. But I pick specific words and phrases from these languages and sprinkle them in my lyrics,” she said.
The lyrics of the song ‘Ahadyah’, for instance, is a fusion of Sanskrit, English and Arabic. Incidentally, ‘Ahadyah’ (pronounced ‘aadhya’) was the song selected by NASA, from among thousands of entries, to be played for the astronauts when they reached space in the first flight of the space shuttle Columbia.
“Ahadyah means universe. Sanskrit and Arabic words gave the music a cosmic feel. That could be why NASA selected my song for the astronauts,” Dyana said. “I use language as a connection between cultures. It spreads love, happiness and tolerance,” she said.
Perhaps why Dyana is popularly known as the ‘spiritual voice of Bulgaria’. Her concerts are full of colour and are peppered with dances, just like a Bollywood musical.
It was this contagion of happiness that she spreads which led the United Nations make her the goodwill ambassador of the World Refugee Organisation UNHCR. Dyana is the only European singer to be so recognised. In America too, her popularity is on the rise.
One of her biggest fans is Democratic front runner for the American presidency Hillary Clinton, no less. Dyana keeps correspondence with Hillary ever since she visited Bulgaria as America’s First Lady. Courtesy: Newindpress.com