Multitalented musician and composer Nitin Sawhney discusses culture, collaboration and connection –and 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 – all things he was doing prior to that dramatic incident– and that he very quickly returned to work, something that clearly gives his life purpose.

“It’s difficult to get through all the projects I’m working on having had a heart attack, but it has been an amazing year,” he says. “We played Glastonbury, Cambridge Folk Festival and did a full tour of the UK. I’ve been working on a couple of films and two TV series, and I’ve read 158 books this year for the Booker Prize, which I’m a judge for.

 “I’m also writing music for the HallĂŠ Orchestra at the  moment, which will culminate in a performance in Manchester at the Bridgewater Hall; I’m writing a piece about my heart attack, seeing how I can create the vocabulary to make something that really gets that across. And then there’s my next album…”

Nitin feels that having such a diverse range of projects on the go is necessary to keep him inspired. “I really enjoy collaboration and working with different people in different ways,” he says. “I like variety, which is literally the spice of my life. I need to be able to vary things up – it keeps my mind fresh, it keeps me excited about what I’m doing and it allows me to cross-fertilise projects.

“It definitely helps you to look at a different way of thinking about something else you’re 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.”

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.

“I’m fortunate that I’ve been approached,” he says. “One thing has led to another. I’m 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 2– all of those things have enhanced my creative life immeasurably.

“I didn’t have a great deal of training in quite a lot of those areas, although I’m a very trained classical musician and have a lot of training in different styles of music. But I didn’t know how to be a broadcaster – I just went for it anyway. I’m a big believer in learning on the job if you feel confident in yourself, research it properly and have an open mind.”

Over his career, Nitin has become a celebrated cultural figure thanks to his musical explorations of weighty subjects including identity, politics and human interaction. “Most of the things I write about or tackle are born out of frustration, or a feeling that I need catharsis,” he says. “I’m often in a state of needing to express an idea or find my voice around an idea.”

I ask how central his ethnicity is to his identity. “Like everyone,I’m a mix of my heritage and my context. But my identity is defined by me, and that’s always going to be the case. It’s the rule I live by: never let anyone else project what they think you are on to you. That’s letting other people take control of who you are.“I don’t focus – certainly not any more – 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 it’s not the statement in itself.”

Beyond individual identity, Nitin increasingly looks to wider human connection as a topic of particular interest. “I think we live in times where right wing bigotry, judgmentalism, racism, misogyny and misanthropy are rife – and all of those qualities are being validated by politicians and oligarchs who have a great deal of power. It’s frustrating to watch all of that and to feel quite often disempowered by it.

“There is a lot of control now in the media – there are all kinds of things out there to undermine any views of compassion,thoughtfulness and mindfulness of others. It’s becoming an increasingly toxic world in terms of expressing views and trying to be heard.

“The problem is, we’re all being gaslit into believing that normality is to be horrible and hateful of others. It’s constant. We’re being force-fed this nonsense where children are not being valued because of where they’re from; where it’s OK to accept constant images of death and destruction and hate. It’s a very toxic environment.

“As a creative, I feel an obligation to comment on that, and always be engaging with it. Because for me, if I’m not doing that, then I’m not being authentic or genuine in what I’m creating.” Nitin finds that often, the projects he works on help him hone his perspective on the world. “I’m very proud of albums like Beyond Skin, which was really expressive of what I felt at the time; but I’m equally and even more proud of albums like Identity [2023], which are all about collaboration.

“And I love working on natural wildlife programmes. I did a programme recently called Surviving Earth, which is about extinction events. It’s 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.”

So what’s next?

Nitin is teaming up with Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, providing the music for a take on Charles Dickens’ 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 – a highly charged, emotional production about dementia written by Tanika Gupta and starring Meera Syal.

There’s clearly no stopping Nitin – and the coming year looks to be one of his most productive yet, in the face of such unexpected adversity. “It really feels like life has continued on,” he says.