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Jan Goodey chats to Nitin Sawhney,
acclaimed Asian musician and iconoclast
 Nitin Sawhney is a perfectionist.
He may not say as much but then he doesn't have to, it's
implicit in everything he does, musically at least. Here's
someone who at eight was researching 'rock's guitar greats' then
two years later was out scouring record shops for Miles Davis
albums. So it comes as no surprise that Sawhney has become one
of the leading musicians of his generation with a Mercury Prize
nomination for last album Beyond Skin (1999), numerous awards,
and a recommendations list as long as your arm. It's not just
his redoubtable instrumental talents on guitar, piano, tablas,
bass, he also programmes a lot on computer and is in big demand
for his producing. In his time he's re-mixed Paul McCartney.
When it comes to actually playing
music (a worldly mix of Indian Raga, Banghra with breaks, soul
and haunting vocals thrown in) Sawhney has tunnel vision,
"I want a very high level of musicianship in everything I
do. The musicians I work with are the best around
basically." I mention in passing that Madonna, another
perfectionist, has all his albums. He's distinctly underwhelmed:
"Yeah I've read that, and yeah all of that is good. It's
nice to get recognition from people who do sell a lot of
records. But I need to make sure what I do stays intact for what
it is and it's not going to get influenced by any of that kind
of stuff." It's unusual to find someone so genuinely
scornful of the music-biz machine. "I got the South Bank
Award earlier this year for best popular album which was funny
because the other two in the category were Fat Boy Slim and Blur
and I've probably sold half an album to their every two
thousand. It may get pushed on the PR front but I'm about
focusing on what I'm doing now, that's what's important."
For him the music is an
expression of identity. It's about emotion, and excitement on
stage. He's played Glastonbury quite a few times and craves
"the buzz that comes off people". It goes back to the
whole concept of music without barriers, as he goes on to
explain, "the only barriers are the ones that are created
by society around us and they're imposed on us by other people.
The whole idea is to challenge that and try and dissipate
stereotypes." Has he been influenced by the likes of
iconoclast Jerry Dammers who broke musical convention in the
Two-Tone era, writing biting social commentary for The Specials?
"I know what you're saying, but it's a different type of
thing. I don't actually have that many musicians that I look to
from that point of view. It's quite often films, people like
Ennio Morricone I used to love. But issues as well, for instance
on Beyond Skin it was very important for me to get my feelings
out there about India, about nuclear bombs, challenge the
stereotypical perception in the West of what they call the
developing world."
This issue-based approach,
crucial for more and more bands today for example Asian Dub
Foundation, comes in part from an early exposure to racism. He
was often followed home from school by a van with lunatics
spewing racist abuse at him through a loud-hailer. The National
Front used to leaflet outside his Rochester school gates. Nitin
and his family of two brothers, a mother, who was a classical
Indian dancer, and father, who would play his son Flamenco, were
the token Asian family in a white middle-class area. He played
his music to get away from it all. But even that proved
problematic when his music teacher turned out to be a fully
paid-up NF member. "It was a bit heavy duty," he
recalls. "I got a hell of a lot of bother, unreal amounts
actually. It was a very violent school. I got shit from
skinheads and kids who you'd think were quite ordinary, but then
just turned into racist thugs. I took it very personally, I
wasn't into causes or politics. I never have been
political." He says this, but at the same time rails
against the undercurrents of racism he still encounters in the
media.
According to Nitin, he and fellow
British Asian acts like DJ Ritu and Sisters of India get their
15 minutes of fame and that's it; papers will include their
perceived quota of the Asian music scene but no more. It's no
coincidence that the record label he worked for in the past, the
one which put out Beyond Skin, is Outcaste. "I'm into
fairness, that's about it," he reiterates. "For me,
it's more fundamental than just going out there and saying what
you've got to say as part of somebody else's agenda. That's the
way religion starts, or cults, and what I believe in is that if
you express what you feel with integrity and if everyone did
that, then we'd all be fine, if we respect each other. If you
take something very emotionally your natural tendency isn't to
get involved in a collective of people. Sometimes it can be
quite a solitary thing."
These days though it's a more
inclusive vibe and for his latest album, the fourth, he's joined
forces with unsung jazz hero Terry Callier and Rai music's Cheb
Mami, "great people who I admire and respect a lot".
With the pre-production title Prophecy, it's a project that
would make lesser mortals quiver. Not only is he travelling
across six countries - Brazil, India, South Africa, Spain,
Australia and America - to glean differing spiritual aspects on
the world, he's also setting up an interview with Nelson Mandela
to be incorporated into the music at a later date. "I'm
looking at what's going on with indigenous people, like
Aborigines and their way of looking at the future with dreamtime
etc, also native Americans, and South Africans. It's a journey
for me trying to find an alternative way of looking at the world
that's been kind of glossed over by people whose interest is to
gloss over. They talk of the 'developing world' but it's already
developed, the spiritual world is there, it's just that we
ignore it and choose to focus on materialism. Everyone's been
into this kind of Wellsian paranoia and really it's about
looking at optimistic and negative ways of seeing the world and
trying to see how they co-exist." The album's due out in
June.
The attraction of this
multi-faceted nature behind his work has led to close
collaboration with artists Sting, Sinead O'Connor and as
mentioned earlier, Paul McCartney. He went on tour with Sting
who he describes as "a nice friendly bloke". What
Sawhney admires here is attitude as well as musicianship,
"Sting's really not a bullshitter, he's just who he is
whether people think that's right or not, it doesn't bother him.
He's a very good lyricist, and he believes in things. I've read
about him being hyprocritical because he's got a big house… I
can see why they say that but at the same time that's not really
what it's about. The people who call him a hypocrite, I bet none
of them do fucking anything to help the environment. The guy
goes round planting thousands of trees. He spends his money on
something he believes in, good luck to him. People try to knock
people who do well, but he at least cares."
Sinead he sums up as: "not
at all flaky, a really friendly down-to-earth sort of person
you'd go for a drink with. Very talented, very focused on what
she does." And as for Sir Paul, for whom Sawhney re-mixed
the track Fluid: "I don't know how he got hold of my
number, it was really odd. He never told me in the end. He came
round to my house and played Yesterday on my guitar, it was
mental. I liked the guy, he was very friendly. It's strange
though, you never quite take in who these people are. And then
afterwards you think, hang on, Legend! He was in my room talking
about John Lennon, all this stuff - it was mad!"
As Sawhney's musical star rises I
get the impression he's not so keen to discuss his one-time
comedy career. He was one of the leading lights of Goodness
Gracious Me, the Asian sketch show which moved from a three-year
stint on Radio 4 to the hallowed status of BBC2 regular. If
you're a fan of the series, you may remember him from the 'Let's
go for an English' skit, although I think he'd much rather
forget it. "I haven't got time for it really," he says
in reply to my ingenuous question about any possible return to
the show.
More in his line at present are
film scores. He recently worked on the score for Dance with
Shiva, a gem of a film about Indian soldiers during the Second
World War. Following on from this, he's been commissioned to
compose the soundtrack for a new Raymond 'The Snowman' Briggs
animation, which is great for Sawhney because he loved When the
Wind Blows and its anti-nuclear message.
For a musician writing today, who
can enmesh his own messages so effortlessly into the silky
textures of the music, who can stay true to his roots and free
from the fripperies of the media flotilla, Sawhney's a fine
example. If you've got Steps at one end of the spectrum, he's at
the other.
Nitin Sawhney plays the Corn
Exchange Theatre, Church Street, Brighton, Dec 8, 8.30pm,
tickets £14/£12 on 01273 709709.
copyright New Insight 2000
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