Nitin Sawhney

'I started in the studio with the bones of the album, then went round the world to find its soul.' So Nitin Sawhney describes the creation of Prophesy, the fifth and most remarkable album of his career. Like its predecessors, Prophesy is no ordinary record. Like them it entwines profound social and spiritual themes with a daring mixture of musical genres, tumbling with ease through Indian classical, flamenco, rap, drum'n'bass and samba. And like them, it affirms Nitin as one of Britain's most original and gifted musicians, one able to meld the cultural barriers between east and west, between classicism and popularity, between clubland and music from around the world. Over the last decade Nitin has carved out a singular niche in British culture. There have been his four albums, of course, each richer, more resonant and widely acclaimed than its predecessor. Since 1993's Spirit Dance announced Nitin's intentions to forge a new Indo-western fusion, Migration (1995), Displacing The Priest (1996) and Beyond Skin (1999) have explored religion, politics, racial identity and the complexities of the Anglo-Asian experience. Recognition has come accordingly, with rave reviews in the press and sold-out concert tours, and Beyond Skin winning both the prestigious South Bank Show Award in 2000 as well as a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize. Yet the records are only one strand of Nitin's head-spinning CV as cultural activist, mover and shaker. He's written for Sinead O'Connor, remixed for Sir Paul McCartney as well as Sting, and produced for the Algerian Rai maestro Cheb Mami and Indian songstress Amar. He's created scores for movies (the Dance of Shiva) with more in the pipeline, TV documentaries (BBC2's The Sikhs, C4's Triumph of the Nerds), and plays (at The National Theatre and Stratford East). He's been commissioned to write for The Proms (2000's Urban Prophecies). He's an actor as well as a musician, and is surely the only musician to help create a TV comedy series as influential as Goodness Gracious Me, a show which grew out of the comedy double act Nitin cooked up with his friend, the actor Sanjeev Bhaskar. Somehow, though he's too modest to make a big deal of it, Nitin has also found time to run workshops, to teach in schools, and to lecture on the Open University - to put back something into a society which, when he was growing up in the 1970s, didn't have much time for him. As the only Indian kid in his Rochester secondary school, Nitin endured daily racist abuse, from which music offered one respite. Even then he found himself barred from the music room by a teacher who belonged to the National Front. But then, as one of Nitin's favourite phrases has it, - 'From oppression comes expression'. Expression for Nitin came in several forms. After studying law at Liverpool University, it was the theatre which seemed to offer a way forward. He and his flatmate Sanjeev Bhaskar created the comedy double act Secret Asians, whose deft subversion of Asian stereotypes led to a BBC radio contract and, eventually to Goodness Gracious Me, to which Nitin contributed and for which, naturally, he wrote the theme music. It was while touring with Secret Asians that Nitin ran into old school friend, acid-jazz keyboardist James Taylor, who promptly talked him into joining his group. Nitin found himself plunged into the ultra-hip underground of the jazz-dance scene, playing at concerts DJ'd by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge. His own band, The Jazztones, soon followed, along with the Tihai Trio, a collaboration with tabla player Talvin Singh, and, inevitably, a solo career which proved an immediate success. With Prophesy, Nitin confirms his place at the heart of modern British music. In part, it's a matter of musical ambition, adding fresh flavours and new collaborations to what has gone before. There are contributions from Algerian rai star Cheb Mami and Anglo-Yemeni singer Natacha Atlas; from master percussionists Trilok Gurtu and Steve Shehan; from flamenco wizard Jose Miguel Carmona son of the legendary Pepe Habichuela; from the haunting choral textures of the Rishile Primary School Choir recorded at their school classroom in Soweto to the London Community Gospel Choir; from string players as far afield as The English Chamber Orchestra to Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira to a an especially convened string orchestra of over ninety players in Madras conducted by Chandru Shekar; from Terry Callier's impassioned story-telling vocal to the out and out rap of Pinky Tuscadero to the voice of Jeff Jacobs, a Chicago cabbie expounding his views on being a lo-tech man in a hi-tech world. These come in addition to Nitin's established partnerships with Brazilian songstress Nina Rocha Miranda (of Smoke City), vocalist and tabla exponent extraordinaire Jayanta Bose, and singers Eska Mtungwazi and Tina Grace, bass player Eric Appapoulay, drummer Euston Liburd & tabla player Aref Durvesh, many of whom are regular members of Nitin's current touring band. More than music underpins and informs Prophesy, however. Behind it lies a personal odyssey that took Nitin to six continents and a series of inspirational encounters with musicians, politicians, tribal leaders, teachers and shamen - from interviewing Nelson Mandela to visiting the shunned street children of Rio de Janeiro. For Nitin, ever the questing spirit, this was a voyage of both outward and inward exploration. 'Rather than write how I feel about the world from a studio in South London, I wanted to engage with reality,' he says. 'To truly empathise with the people you're writing about you need talk to them directly. You can't appropriate an entire culture in a few days, but I tried to catch the spirit of the places I visited, a feeling to put into a cold computer.' The range of experiences was huge. There were jam sessions in the shantytowns of Soweto and the samba schools of Rio, a rendezvous with a 93 year old native American medicine woman, and a magical voyage into the landscape of Aboriginal dreamtime, guided by Mandawuy Yunupingu, spokesman and founder of the Aborigine group Yothu Yindi. And, of course, that encounter with Nelson Mandela. 'A highpoint,' affirms Nitin. 'His humility was astonishing. I asked him, 'Do you feel free? And he replied, 'We are free to be free' - an answer which implies we must all take responsibility.' In each and every place that Nitin found himself, he affirmed his personal quest by playing the title track to Prophesy acoustically at dawn and at dusk, whether that meant waking at 4.30 a.m. to a blizzard in the Rocky Mountains, or squatting on the red earth of the Australian bush or in the high veld of South Africa as the first stars of the Southern sky appeared. All of these experiences feed into Prophesy, an album illuminated by a spiritual as well as musical vision. 'The title is not about my personal prophecy,' says Nitin. 'It came from the chaos and madness around the millennium, when people were getting insecure about the future. The album is about redressing that paranoia, about opening up to different ways of looking at the world.' The view of the future from what is patronisingly termed 'The Developing World', especially its younger generation, was central to the project. 'Development is not just about material progress,' he insists, 'but about spiritual and personal development. People like the Native Americans and Aborigines have a feeling for the land. They know that things are out of tune and want to re-tune them. What is stunning is that when you meet them there is no sense of bitterness, despite their exclusion.' Conversing with Nitin about Prophesy is an animated affair, littered with anecdotes about everything from Bombay pollution to Brazil's economy, and peppered with the names of the musicians he's worked with, from Trinidadian jango groups to Sting, whom he describes as 'environmentally sussed - not the stereotypical pop star'. Nitin's knowledge of global musics is particularly awesome - try following your way through flamenco tunings or the mathematics of Indian rhythms - but he'll also explain, with plain simplicity, that 'emotion is the glue between different forms of music.' Although it roams across cultures, Prophesy is no contrived worldbeat fusion. It is the expression of an unusual and, dare one say it, unique sensibility, one which offers eloquent expression to our planet's material and spiritual concerns. Yet despite such resonance, it retains an engaging, melodious lightness of touch. Like Nitin's other works, Prophesy aims high. 'I want to put across a different idea of balance with this record,' says Nitin. 'I'm hoping that people might see the future differently afterwards.' Prophesy - written, arranged and produced by Nitin Sawhney will be released by V2 in June 2001. The DVD, which charts Nitin's journey to the soul of the album, was filmed and edited by Nick Hillel and Marc Silver of Yeast Films and will be issued in November. Neil Spencer