Nitin Sawhney

Nitin Sawhney is a multi-talented British Asian artist whose contemporary style uniquely melds the barriers between cultures and music. Apart from his award-winning recordings, his remarkable career includes scripting Goodness Gracious Me, producing Cirque du Soleil and Cheb Mami, mixing for Sting, writing film scores and lecturing for The Open University.

His music is the result of a lifetime listening to and assimilating British music outside and Indian music at home. His musical vocabulary draws on traditional and contemporary Asian sounds, flamenco guitar and Latin rhythms, drum n bass, tabla juxtaposed with techno bass and a rich array of varied and original voices. In his music, Nitin continually deconstructs barriers between club style, tranquil ambient groove and world music.

Nitin released his first album, Spirit Dance (Spirit Dance/World Circuit), in 1993. It successfully married the rhythmically complex music of Northern India and the harmonically complex music of the West. The trio featuring Pritam Singh on tabla and Keith Waithe on flute toured extensively and built up a loyal following from gigs that included Glastonbury and WOMAD as well as dates in Europe and Canada.

In 1995, Nitin joined the Outcaste label and released his second CD, Migration, on August 21, 1995 to coincide with Independence Day for India and Pakistan (August 14/15). This CD addressed the themes of journey, transition and adjustment. From the title track, with its ingenious and seamless integration of Indian music and rare groove, to "Hope", with stunning vocals by Natacha Atlas and "Heer Ranjha", a modern rendition of the tragic forbidden love story that inspired Waris Shaha's epic poem (a firm favourite on Giles Peterson's Kiss 100 show;), Migration was a triumph of East/West fusion and received rave reviews.

1996 saw the release of Nitin's second album for Outcaste, Displacing the Priest. "This was an ambitious, complex project—a personal reflection upon spirituality and organised religion and the gulf that can sometimes exist between the two. At its heart, a series of compositions illustrated and illuminated the British Asian search for self, the reaching out for identity common to all generations born of an immigrant race, and the religious road map which so often shapes that journey. Displacing the Priest was about discarding this map and relying on instincts: turning away from the ready made answers of organised religion and its self - proclaimed rule - makers and finding a personal spirituality elsewhere."