Multitalented musician and composer Nitin Sawhney discusses culture, collaboration and connection âand why he enjoys having a plethora of projects on the go.
Words: Reyhaan Day
Nitin Sawhney has never been busier than he is now.While the Mercury prize-nominated, Ivor Novello-winning musician and composer has long been feverishly working on projects that touch on many diverse aspects of culture, the scale of his drive and ambition is even more significant given his harrowing health scare earlier this year, when he suffered a heart attack seemingly out of nowhere.
Nitin says he is back to training, including kickboxing, running and yoga â all things he was doing prior to that dramatic incidentâ and that he very quickly returned to work, something that clearly gives his life purpose.
âItâs difficult to get through all the projects Iâm working on having had a heart attack, but it has been an amazing year,â he says. âWe played Glastonbury, Cambridge Folk Festival and did a full tour of the UK. Iâve been working on a couple of films and two TV series, and Iâve read 158 books this year for the Booker Prize, which Iâm a judge for.
 âIâm also writing music for the HallĂŠ Orchestra at the  moment, which will culminate in a performance in Manchester at the Bridgewater Hall; Iâm writing a piece about my heart attack, seeing how I can create the vocabulary to make something that really gets that across. And then thereâs my next album…â
Nitin feels that having such a diverse range of projects on the go is necessary to keep him inspired. âI really enjoy collaboration and working with different people in different ways,â he says. âI like variety, which is literally the spice of my life. I need to be able to vary things up â it keeps my mind fresh, it keeps me excited about what Iâm doing and it allows me to cross-fertilise projects.
âIt definitely helps you to look at a different way of thinking about something else youâre doing. Working across the board over the years has really helped in allowing me to be more creative and find new ways of approaching ideas.â
Having an open mind and a desire to learn new skills and approaches has meant that Nitin is not seen as simply a musician, but a creative who can bring his unique perspective to whatever project he touches.

âIâm fortunate that Iâve been approached,â he says. âOne thing has led to another. Iâm always open and willing to learn and try new things. From doing standup comedy years ago [his routines with old friend Sanjeev Bhaskar formed the basis of the BBC comedy show Goodness Gracious Me] to conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, DJing at Fabric or having my own show on BBC Radio 2â all of those things have enhanced my creative life immeasurably.
âI didnât have a great deal of training in quite a lot of those areas, although Iâm a very trained classical musician and have a lot of training in different styles of music. But I didnât know how to be a broadcaster â I just went for it anyway. Iâm a big believer in learning on the job if you feel confident in yourself, research it properly and have an open mind.â
Over his career, Nitin has become a celebrated cultural figure thanks to his musical explorations of weighty subjects including identity, politics and human interaction. âMost of the things I write about or tackle are born out of frustration, or a feeling that I need catharsis,â he says. âIâm often in a state of needing to express an idea or find my voice around an idea.â
I ask how central his ethnicity is to his identity. âLike everyone,Iâm a mix of my heritage and my context. But my identity is defined by me, and thatâs always going to be the case. Itâs the rule I live by: never let anyone else project what they think you are on to you. Thatâs letting other people take control of who you are.âI donât focus â certainly not any more â on issues of my cultural heritage; but that is part of my vocabulary because of my life experiences. I draw on that to create, but itâs not the statement in itself.â
Beyond individual identity, Nitin increasingly looks to wider human connection as a topic of particular interest. âI think we live in times where right wing bigotry, judgmentalism, racism, misogyny and misanthropy are rife â and all of those qualities are being validated by politicians and oligarchs who have a great deal of power. Itâs frustrating to watch all of that and to feel quite often disempowered by it.
âThere is a lot of control now in the media â there are all kinds of things out there to undermine any views of compassion,thoughtfulness and mindfulness of others. Itâs becoming an increasingly toxic world in terms of expressing views and trying to be heard.
âThe problem is, weâre all being gaslit into believing that normality is to be horrible and hateful of others. Itâs constant. Weâre being force-fed this nonsense where children are not being valued because of where theyâre from; where itâs OK to accept constant images of death and destruction and hate. Itâs a very toxic environment.
âAs a creative, I feel an obligation to comment on that, and always be engaging with it. Because for me, if Iâm not doing that, then Iâm not being authentic or genuine in what Iâm creating.â Nitin finds that often, the projects he works on help him hone his perspective on the world. âIâm very proud of albums like Beyond Skin, which was really expressive of what I felt at the time; but Iâm equally and even more proud of albums like Identity [2023], which are all about collaboration.
âAnd I love working on natural wildlife programmes. I did a programme recently called Surviving Earth, which is about extinction events. Itâs humbling to see how insignificant we are in relation to the history of the world. I also did Human Planet, which was really informative about the nature of human resilience in different parts of the world and the importance of collaboration.â
So whatâs next?
Nitin is teaming up with Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, providing the music for a take on Charles Dickensâ A Christmas Carol, with a protagonist who is from the Ugandan diaspora and is affected by the trauma experienced from racism and being an exile from his home country. He is also scoring A Tupperware of Ashesat the National Theatre â a highly charged, emotional production about dementia written by Tanika Gupta and starring Meera Syal.
Thereâs clearly no stopping Nitin â and the coming year looks to be one of his most productive yet, in the face of such unexpected adversity. âIt really feels like life has continued on,â he says.