ONE of the most influential musical artists to have emerged in recent times, Nitin Sawhney’s impact was amply reflected when he was presented the Creative Industries Award at the Eastern Eye Arts Culture and Theatre Awards (ACTA) in February this year.
Receiving the award, Sawhney said: “My last album was called Immigrants for good reason. We live in a country, which is guilty of endemic racism, you may not admit that all the time. But that’s everywhere; we’ve all grown up with it. And it exists out there.”
“The constant challenge is to make music that is relevant, and that speaks from the heart and is true, and goes with what you believe. And you never let yourself down or what you want to create,” he told the cheering crowd. Sawhney is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including the prestigious Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
Sawhney was born in 1964 in Dulwich, London, a year after his parents moved to Rochester, Kent, from New Delhi. He spent his childhood in Rochester, along with his two elder brothers. His father, Anandeshwar, worked as a research biochemist and his mother, Saroj, was a trained Indian classical dancer who taught English and dance.
Young Sawhney grew up listening to traditional Indian music at home and was also exposed to different musical instruments like pianos and guitars, which he learned to play. He started learning piano lessons at the age of five and went on to study classical and flamenco guitars.
Since childhood, he was influenced by a diverse range of music – from Indian classical to jazz, hip-hop and electronic. “I grew up playing around with jazz and Bach. I liked playing Bach for control, Debussy for the emotion, Mozart for melodic ideas, and Chopin for the pyrotechnics,” he said in an interview.
Sawhney left his studies in Law at Liverpool University and decided to pursue a career in music. Instead, he completed a degree in accountancy, and formed the stand-up comedy duo, The Bhaji Boys, later known as The Secret Asians, with fellow student Sanjeev Bhaskar. Their success led to three BBC radio series of Goodness Gracious Me, alongside the other four members of the infamous group – Meera Syal, Kulvinder Ghir, Nina Wadia, and Bhasker. Sawhney participated in some of the very early episodes of the TV show.
He had been playing in clubs since the age of 15 and had joined the acid-jazz band James Taylor Quartet before forming The Jazztones. Sawhney's fourth album, Beyond Skin, released in 1999 on London's Outcaste Records, proved to be a breakthrough for him, earning a Gold certification and a prestigious Mercury Music Prize nomination. The album also won Sawhney the South Bank Show Award.
In 2008, Sawhney's eighth album, London Undersound, was released on Cooking Vinyl. It featured artwork by Antony Gormley and performances from Paul McCartney, Anoushka Shankar, Imogen Heap and Natty, among others.
Sawhney's Dystopian Dream album was adapted into a full-stage production in collaboration with Sadler's Wells, co-devised by Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez.
Sawhney also composed music for several theatre and dance productions, including the score for theatre company Complicite's Olivier Award–winning A Disappearing Number and Akram Khan's Zero Degrees, which also won an Olivier Award. For his work on Zero Degrees, Sawhney received a New York Performance and Dance Award for Best Score.
Sawhney attributes his openness to various musical styles to his childhood experiences. He said: “We were one of the few Asian families in the Medway towns in Kent. We led an anomalous existence in relation to the cultural life around us. My mother would read prayers in Sanskrit and that was juxtaposed for me with morning assembly at a grammar school with a heavy Christian emphasis. I was compartmentalising my life, but in music everything came together – classical, flamenco, jazz, even Cuban. I was always travelling in my head to get away from what was going on around me.”
Sawhney had collaborated with and written for many notable artists, including Paul McCartney, Sting, The London Symphony Orchestra, A.R. Rahman, Brian Eno, Sinead O’Connor, Jacob Golden, Anoushka Shankar, Jeff Beck, Shakira, Will Young, Joss Stone, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, Horace Andy, Cirque Du Soleil, Akram Khan, Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, Nelson Mandela, Ojos de Brujo, Hélène Grimaud and John Hurt.
As a touring musician, Sawhney has performed extensively as an artist in his own right at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Royal Albert Hall, for which he has been an Ambassador and regular performer, Hollywood Bowl and Sydney Opera House. He has also composed music for over 60 films and several TV scores.
Sawhney had turned down an OBE earlier but accepted CBE when he was awarded in 2018 for services to music.
“I turned down an OBE years ago and my dad passed away regretting that I didn’t take it. This time the offer letter came on my dad’s birthday so I took it for dad”, he tweeted.
Sawhney is currently the Chair of Trustees for PRS Foundation, the UK’s leading charitable funder of new music and talent development.
