One of the most memorable ads that ran during the Super Bowl last night was Coke’s spot that featured a multilingual, multicultural version of the classic song “America the Beautiful.” According to MarketWatch, the song was performed in seven languages (English, Spanish, Keres, Tagalog, Hindi, Senegalese-French, and Hebrew), and a 90-second version of the ad will debut during the 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony. English professor Katherine Lee Bates wrote the patriotic song’s lyrics in 1895.
The Hindi portion of the ad was performed by Sushmitha Suresh. For more on all the singers, check out the fun, behind-the-scenes videos posted on Coca Cola’s YouTube page. On Twitter, Sushmitha wrote “To clarify I was the America America and the line that should be and crown thy good with brotherhood.”
Watch her sing “America the Beautiful” in Hindi and talk about the ad and what it means to her: “The message that we’re sending through this video, it’s so beautiful that we are all the same. We just have different backgrounds, and that’s ok. We’re all Americans, and we can come together to make change.” But it wasn’t ok with some outspoken viewers who had ugly reactions to the Super Bowl ad and took to Twitter to share racist and xenophobic comments, as covered on Time, Salon, and Huffington Post.
Listen to more of Sushmitha’s singing on Youtube and Soundcloud, including “Indian American Mashups” performed with her sister Shwetha in English, Hindi and Tamil.
Update: NCTV17 reported on Suresh’s story. Watch “Naperville Teen Sings for Superbowl Coke Ad.”
Pavani Yalamanchili is a co-founder and editor of The Aerogram. Email her at editors@theaerogram.com. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram or on Facebook.
