United Asian

Nitin Sawhney’s latest album Prophesy on V2 Records, released this month, is an album without a category, and no box could contain it. Prophesy was recorded around the globe, featuring over two hundred musicians and managing to sweep through almost every style of modern music. Nitin’s albums have always been groundbreaking; a strong force to be reckoned with, his music is as political as it is danceable. Anglo-Asian Nitin deals with religion, racial identity, politics and humanity without ever losing musical integrity.

Nitin’s background is based in law, then theatre and finally music. He first began to receive attention during the late ’80s, a time when the acid jazz scene was well and truly swinging. He was a member of the Jazztones, then along with Talvin Singh formed the Tihai Trio, before eventually starting his solo career and signing with Anglo-Asian label, Outcaste.

Nitin Sawhney is an observer, constantly watching humanity and working his sound to create a symphony of life. I caught up with him in London’s V2 offices and asked him how he managed to constain this symphony on one record.

“Yeah” he laughed, “There is a lot going on but it feels like there is a focus around one issue which is the concept of development and the developed world. The album was inspired by questioning what real development means and not accepting the bullshit brainwashing that the idea of the developed world is do with power, wealth and economics. It’s more about finding spiritual people like the Aborigines in Australia or the Native Americans. In a sense people who I believe are developed in real sense of the term.”

There is a multiplicity of sounds and musicians on Prophesy with guests like Terry Callier, Nina Rocha Miranda of Smoke City fame, Cheb Mami, Natacha Atlas, The London Community Gospel Choir, strings from The English Chamber Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, a specially convened orchestra made up of ninety musicians in Madras, and to cap it all off some flamenco from Jose Miguel Carmona. Sound wise, the musical genres are hopping, from Indian classical, rap, drum’n’bass to samba and flamenco, knocking down all cultural barriers as they go, from east to west, from clubs to classical.

So if all the people Nitin encountered while engaged in this world-sweeping operation, who made the biggest impression on him?

“Nelson Mandela,” he immediately replies. “To meet him was amazing. He is so humble and unassuming yet he has achieved so much, an incredibly inspiring person. What he is about and what he represents as a human being. I was impressed and touched by people’s humanity in general. Take the children I met in Soweto, they didn’t have that sense of inhibition you so often get in children of the western world. Education means so much to them, they are so up for it. That zeal and energy is something you don’t get here. Mandela made it all possible, his leadership and example has inspired people so deeply.”

At present, Nitin is in the middle of a European tour with plans to take it to the US, Canada and Japan in the future. Nitin is confident that his live line up is just as incredible as that on the album with string quartets and singers like the under-estimated Jhelisa joining in.

“I think of it like looking at the difference between theatre and film,” he reflects, “you have special effects, massive casts and big budgets with film whereas with theatre it’s more about spontaneous energy that’s generated by performance. In that way I don’t reproduce an album on stage, it is about there and then. I try to interpret the ideas, same songs but different takes and gaining energy with different musicians and singers.

“I started in the studio with the bones of the album,” he concludes, “then went round the world to find its soul.”

Prophesy is available now on V2 records