Spinning The Globe

The so called 'Asian Underground' of the nineties saw a range of South Asian acts like Talvin Singh, Joi, Badmarsh & Shri, Asian Dub Foundation and Fun-Da-Mental attract the attention of larger audiences. The Asian Underground may have faded but Nitin Sawhney, who rose to prominence from that 'scene', continues to move his career in fascinating directions.

Catching up with Sawhney, on the phone from his home in London, finds him thrilled to be touring Australia once again. “I am touring with such a fantastic band that I am sure they will be great shows,” says Sawhney with great excitement in his voice. “We will play a cross-section of music from all my albums. The show is very much about the albums. We don't play any of the soundtracks music that I have written or music from other projects in which I have been involved. The aim of the show is to create a totally immersive experience and get audiences to listen to music that they may never have heard before.”

Melbourne audiences can expect an acoustic show, but in Sydney Sawhney expects to add more electronics to the mix. Sawhney is also excited about DJing while he is here, and as it turns out, the talented multi-instrumentalist and composer is also an avid DJ. “I DJ'd in Fabric in London for a very long time,” he explains. “Currently I have my BBC Radio 2 show called Nitin Sawhney Spins The Globe. I play everything from electonica to breakbeats and drum'n'bass. Whatever grooves and keeps people moving, I guess. Global sounds and music that has some kind of emotional resonance is what gets me most excited.” Sawhney, however, finds it difficult to talk about the tunes that are currently on high rotation in his sets. “It is kind of hard to talk about the music that I like. There is the music that I like to listen to around the house and then there is the music that I would play in the club and the music that I would play on the radio. What I would play in each of these situations can be so different and covers a vast amount of music.

“I don't like to talk about what I play in my sets partly because I like to keep things spontaneous. I tend to just arrive and feel the vibe and play tracks that fit with the mood but also reflect how I am feeling. It kind of all has to make sense on the night. That said, I play a lot of music by the Nasha Collective who are an amazing bunch of breakbeat and dubstep heads from London. Lately I have been listening to a lot of traditional African music, but I don't play them as you would hear them on the record because I tend to mash them up with different beats and samples.”

As a British-Indian composer, Sawhney's music has always been an exotic and sumptuous blend of diverse cultural styles. Touring India for the first time this year, Sawhney has discovered his fanbase extends well beyond Western audiences. “We got an incredible response from the people who came to see us. We played at the Blue Frog in Mumbai and Delhi and Sulafest, which is a food, wine and culture festival that is held on a vineyard. I really enjoyed it because we got to work with a lot of local musicians. The standard of musicianship over there is extremely high. We also ended up doing a session for MTV India which was a lot of fun.

“I have spent a lot of time in India over the years but I had not been there for quite a few years prior to going there this year. It was really cool to be able to go back, meet people, perform there and get my head around what has been happening over there. I enjoyed being able to meet local musicians and getting to know them. There is a music scene that is developing very quickly over there. Things can happen fast in India and it is fascinating to see it develop. You could say a real renaissance is happening there right now. A number of people [are] looking at developing a music festival scene across India. There are some truly brilliant players and singers over there, which makes this a very exciting time for music in India. You just cannot find people with that high level of musicianship and such a different take on music in the UK. I had the pleasure of working with Jivraj Singh and Mohini Dey and after showing them the parts they were very quickly able to put their own amazing spin of the material.”

It is hard not to be astonished as Sawhney talks. “Jivraj Singh from Kolkata, who plays for the relentlessly experimental PINKNOISE, is arguably one of the hottest drummers on the planet right now. Mohini Dey, on the other hand, has been playing bass since the age of three. At sixteen and still in year eleven, she has been hailed as a child prodigy who puts more technical skill on the table than most seasoned players.”

Sawhney loves producing albums and tells me that he is gearing up to record his tenth album early next year. Yet as his career blossoms he has also managed a parallel career as a soundtrack composer. “I have been very lucky to be asked to work on some very interesting and high-profile projects in recent years, but I have never lost my focus on making albums,” he insists.

“It takes a lot longer to write an album because you have to face your own demons. When you are writing music for someone else it is easier because you are simply taking direction. It is easier to work out what you should be doing for them. I am currently working on music for Japan In A Day, which is a Ridley Scott production. Being about post-tsunami Japan makes it a very poignant film in my eyes. I have loved working on it because creating this soundtrack has been a very interesting process. It is also a very cool film.” While Sawhney seems capable of pumping out three or four soundtracks each year, it is his recent work for Deepak Mehta and her to-be-released version of Midnight's Children that's currently attracting a lot of attention. “It was a fantastic experience to work on this soundtrack. I think it is amazing that Salman Rushdie was able to work on the film adaptation of one of his finest novels. It recently won the Best Of The Booker award and the Booker Of Bookers award as the best novel to ever win the Booker Prize. Deepak Mehta is quite a character too. I am very pleased with the score, it feels great and has a really good sonic to it,” Sawhney explains.

As Sawhney talks of the many projects he has been involved in this year, it seems that he has complete mastery over almost every genre of music imaginable. Quite a feat when many struggle to master just one. “I grew up training as a classical pianist and like a lot of other kids I was in a youth orchestra but I was also in punk, funk and rock bands. I have dabbled with flamenco guitar. I even learned to play sitar at a temple near home. I grew obsessed with all types of music and that all feeds into what I do now. I think I was just lucky to have this exposure to all these different types of music when I was growing up. It isn't difficult to shift around between all these different styles at this stage of my life. Writing music comes as easily as conversation. It is my language, much more than speaking. I have probably spent more time playing music than I have talking. I do a lot of things with my time, but music is the one thing to which I always return.”