Palbasha Siddique is an American singer. She is best known for her performance on Praan

Stream of Life

Stream Of Life is a Bengali poem from Gitanjali written by Rabindranath Tagore.Named as Praan and sung by Palbasha Siddique it has been used as the background score for Matt Harding Dancing 2008 video...

, a song from Gitanjali

Gitanjali

Gitanjali is a collection of 103 English poems, largely translations, of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.This volume became very famous in the West, and was widely translated....

 by Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...

 with music composed by Garry Schyman

Garry Schyman

Garry Schyman is an American film, television, and video game music composer. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in music composition in 1978, and began work in the television industry, writing music for such television series as Magnum, P.I. and The A-Team. By...

 for Matt Harding

Matt Harding

Matthew "Matt" Harding , is an American traveler, video game designer, and Internet celebrity known as Dancing Matt for his viral videos that show him dancing in front of landmarks and street scenes in various international locations...

's "Dancing 2008" video.

Born in Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

, Siddique moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

, with her family at age 10. She received a scholarship to MacPhail Center for Music

MacPhail Center for Music

The MacPhail Center for Music is a nonprofit music school in a recently opened building in the Mills District of Downtown East, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school has over 7,750 students, providing instruction at 48 locations outside of its downtown Minneapolis facility on more than 35 instruments...

 and sang in her schools' choirs and theater programs. At age 11, she sang "God Bless America

God Bless America

"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song ....

" during the seventh-inning stretch at a Minnesota Twins

Minnesota Twins

The Minnesota Twins are a professional baseball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They play in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. The team is named after the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. They played in Metropolitan Stadium from 1961 to 1981 and the...

 game. She attended DeLaSalle High School on Nicollet Island near Downtown Minneapolis for two years and was very active in the school's choir, singing in both the schools Concert and A Capella Choirs.

While a 17-year-old student at the city's Southwest High School, Siddique participated in KFAI

KFAI

KFAI is a community radio station in Minnesota. The station broadcasts a wide variety of music, and also airs programming catering to many of the diverse ethnic groups of the region...

 radio's 1st International Women's Day program in March 2007. A video clip of her singing for the Minneapolis radio station was posted to YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

. Harding's co-producer Melissa Nixon found the videos as Schyman was looking for a vocalist to perform "Praan," whose lyrics are written in Bengali

Bengali language

Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...

 and based on poetry by Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...

. Schyman flew Siddique and her mother to Los Angeles for a day of recording in mid-June 2008. "Palbasha was the consummate professional, perfectly in-pitch and absolutely belying her age," Schyman told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The "Dancing 2008" video was posted soon afterward, and Praan

Stream of Life

Stream Of Life is a Bengali poem from Gitanjali written by Rabindranath Tagore.Named as Praan and sung by Palbasha Siddique it has been used as the background score for Matt Harding Dancing 2008 video...

 climbed into the top-10 list of soundtrack downloads at Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

.

On November 2008, Matt and the vocalist Palbasha were interviewed by KFAI radio in Minnesota. The interview focused on how the "Dance 2008" project came to include Palbasha.

External links

• Dancing 2008 video featuring Praan
  Stream of Life
  Stream Of Life is a Bengali poem from Gitanjali written by Rabindranath Tagore.Named as Praan and sung by Palbasha Siddique it has been used as the background score for Matt Harding Dancing 2008 video...