Alaa Wardi bought some empty cartons from a departmental store and arranged them around his room. This ensured that the sound from within the room didn’t percolate. This Riyadh-based Iranian sound engineer then worked every night on singing, recording and mixing songs, to avoid any sudden traffic noise interferences.

Within three days of posting his a capella tribute to Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’s Pehla Nasha, Alaa was trending on social networking sites in India with over 1.2 lakh “likes”. YouTube fame is not new to Alaa but Pehla Nasha made Indians take note of him. And the reaction to his one-man-show has taken him by surprise. “I discovered YouTube by chance. I posted a video for my friends to watch and suddenly people started sharing it. So I discovered a new type of audience around the world that listened to my music sitting in front of their computer screen. That was when I decided to make an Arabic a cappella video since there was none on YouTube. It went viral in the Arab world so I started taking it more seriously and doing it for a living,” says the 27-year-old.
Having watched a lot of English a cappellas on YouTube, Alaa knew that he had to make one in Arabic. Once his first video started trending in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, he was determined to make this his career. Alaa makes his own music with his voice and all possible and imaginable sounds with his body. He imitates the sounds of the guitar, the bass, percussion, trumpet, flute and even ambient sounds. He even scratches his beard and resorts to beatboxing to come up with the closest rendition of the original song. “I arrange the music to the a cappella first in my head (the brain storming stage). Then I start recording all the parts — this is the longest stage. I then edit, tune, and mix the tracks and work on the song till it reaches its best quality. After that I shoot parts of the video in sync with the track that I’ve already made. I shoot, record, mix... basically do everything at home. The boxes are for a bit of sound treatment, the cheapest way of course,” he says, with a smile.
For all the unconventional methods he’s adopted for his videos. Alaa didn’t stumble upon music by chance. He studied music for four years and sound engineering for two in Jordan before he returned to Riyadh. He’s been doing videos on YouTube for two years now but Pehla Nasha has brought him considerable recognition in the sub-continent. In his brief description for the video, Alaa professes his love for Aamir Khan, this particular song and Jatin-Lalit’s music. He’s watched a lot of Bollywood films, is in tune with the music of the region and speaks Hindi haltingly.
“I’ve watched a lot of Aamir’s films like Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan, as well as movies like Jodha Akbar. Aishwarya Rai is my favourite actress. I love A.R. Rahman, Sonu Nigam, Raahat Fateh Ali Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar and so many more. Apart from Farsi, Arabic and English, I also speak broken Hindi,” he laughs.
His connection to India is not just through Bollywood though. Alaa’s grandfather started the hugely popular Golden Star Thali restaurant in Mumbai. Today his uncle runs the restaurant and its suburban branch. A family member who didn’t wish to be named spoke with great pride about Alaa, the family’s “young boy who needs to shave”. “Alaa is so talented. He’s getting offers from around the world. But he insists he needs to learn more. We knew he was brilliant and gifted, but we had no idea he would become so famous suddenly.”
Alaa’s been to India several times, the last time being six years ago. “My mother’s family lives in Mumbai. My grandma, my uncle and his family are all Iranians who have been living in India for 50 years. My visit is overdue.”