Anna Warkins Anawalt is a singer, songwriter, performer and teacher based in Utah, United States of America who creates and performs music within a variety of genres; primarily folk, bluegrass, inspirational and children’s music.
Her songs are all about life, love, freedom, the seasons and beauty of natural world. She has been involved in various bands playing folk, bluegrass, Celtic, and country western genres. Anna Warkins also founded and lead a local bluegrass/folk/Celtic organization in Cache Valley.
Anna Warkins Nominated for ‘World Artists’ Category at Josie Music Awards
Last year, Daastan’s founder– Ommer– wrote a peace song that Anna sung at the Josie Music Awards in pigeon forge, TN. The collaborative production of ‘Allah Hoo Peace song’ was nominated for the ‘World Artist’ category award. Allah-Hoo (Peace song) was a co-write with three other musicians/producers from Pakistan and was released on Christmas Day as the final episode of season one of their “Varga Core” music/video series. The lyrics of the song were written by Ommer, whereas Muhammad Aqib Jamil found Anna through a musicians’ platform and provided the melody and chords. Anna co-created the vocal and instrumental music and recorded violin, piano and vocal tracks – in English and Urdu – at Thirteen/Eight Productions.
Anna talks about how the collaboration allowed her to learn wonderful things about Pakistan and about our culture, music and language. The song had some Urdu words that Anna loved learning and singing. We, at Daastan, are delighted to be able to promote our local culture through artists across the globe. The nomination for a global award was a proud moment, not only for us, but for Pakistan as a nation.
Representation of Pakistani Culture in the United States of America
Anna Warkins also talked about how a Pakistani woman who lived in Anna’s town helped her out with pronunciations of Urdu words, and it truly warms our heart. In collaboration with Muhammad Aqib, Syed Ommer, Karam Hyat and Anna’s production friend John Carter, the Allah Hoo peace song was released. (Click here to check it out!) The song was included in a season of a project called ‘Chai Pani.’ Chai Pani is a platform similar to Coke Studio and Nescafe basement.
We hope to continue doing such projects which will allow us to represent the Pakistani culture all over the world. We would also like to thank Anna Watkins for doing such a great job on the collaboration! To check out more of Anna’s work, take a look at her website!
So unexpected, BRAVO!