Soon after Phase 2 of the COVID-19 vaccination drive began, artiste Vineet Singh Hukmani aka Vineet released his new single titled 'Jab The World'. The track is a fun take on the world getting vaccinated, but it is not just about the COVID-19 vaccine.
The NCR-based artiste's earlier singles have topped the Euro Indie and World Indie top 100 charts.His 2020 release titled 'Mask' was 'submitted in consideration' for a Grammy, and he also crossed 1M Spotify stream mark with his five releases in 2020.
The electronics engineer and Harvard alumnus also formed his family band Avni Vir Vineet with his 14-year-old twins, and delivered two radio hits 'Twenty Twenty' and 'Can’t Wait', in 2020. An interview:
What was the idea behind Jab The World?
Optimism breeds optimism. Once we had vaccines developed for COVID, I began to imagine the invention of a vaccine to cure 'hate', and Jab The World was born. So while the song pays respect to everyone involved in the 'lab to jab' journey, it imagines a world 'dancing to togetherness' where a vaccine has rendered humans biologically immune to hate, discrimination, gender bias, climate change, etc.
The song was created to inject hope and awareness and also to say that we still have a lot to do!
The track seems heavily influenced by the Australian rock band ACDC.
In this song, I am inspired by my vocal idols Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth, both of Van Halen who always created Happy Dance Rock and freely used new-age synths with heritage rock guitar playing. And yes, ACDC comes a close second.
However, the sound design of Jab The World has the soul of classic rock but its paint job is shiny new. While I am the song writer, singer and producer of Jab The World, the guitars were styled by my friend Samuel Hosé from Brazil.
Do you think changing people’s outlook ranks higher than getting vaccinated?
The important thing always is to do things ‘together’ to overcome negativity. We have begun to revel in the trauma of negativity and our biological and emotional immunity is compromised. A vaccine is a biological step to cure the imbalance. The jab for humankind is love, happiness and harmony.
What inspired you to enter the music world?
We had a music room at our home in Kuwait (where I was born), and I watched my father lose himself to Indian and Western classical music, singing after a hard day’s work. The English pop songs that came on the radio caught my attention. I always wondered why can’t an Indian be featured on the mainstream English pop radio?
In engineering college, I joined a rock band, and continued to sing for rock bands even while I 'worked' 9-5 as a project engineer for a living. The real inspiration to create 'globally competitive' songs happened in mid-2019. By 2020, with help from Grammy Jurist Stephen Wrench, and a push from my musician brother Navdeep, my music ended up topping international radio charts.
Future plans
My friends and associates call me the ‘mini music factory’. I am working on multiple genres of music with the objective of doing well on various formats/genres of global radio. We expect live performances to come back very soon. I aim for a global ‘single’ release every 45-50 days and then it is. Learn, grow, repeat. Pretty simple actually!
An excerpt from Jab the World