The time is right to revisit innovative, political album
Acclaimed music-maker Nitin Sawhney tells about he’s marking the 20th anniversary of his Mercury Prize-nominated album with a show in the West Midlands
RELEASED in 1999, Nitin Sawhney’s Beyond Skin marked a turning point in the acclaimed musician’s career. Nominated for the Mercury Prize, it may have lost out to Badly Drawn Boy’s The Hour of Bewilderbeast, yet it set Nitin on a course that has seen him pick up not just an Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017, but also a CBE for his services to music.
Twenty years after the release of the innovative album – which combined jazz, soul and late-Nineties club music with Asian sounds to explore issues of war, political tension, and identity – and Nitin is revisiting the collection with a series of special live performances, the first of which was September’s sold out Royal Albert Hall performance.
“In this year where Brexit negotiations and political turmoil have brought issues of identity, nationality, race and religion into focus once more, the themes of Beyond Skin are more relevant than ever,” he says.
And audiences clearly agree. “We had a standing ovation in London, it was an amazing show, it was very emotional. My mum came and I was playing some of the samples of my dad, who passed away in 2013, and lots of things like that,” explains Nitin, who reused vocal snatches from his parents for the original release. “I had warned her about that, but it was still quite powerful for her.”
Though he was confident that the show would be a success, he admits to being surprised how passionate and consistent the reaction has been.
“It felt quite cathartic for quite a lot of people, and I had an amazing response from social media, which went on for ages and is still coming in now. It just kept going, people were really, really emotional about the show, I couldn’t believe the response!”
The full London Beyond Skin Revisited show has since been revised for a smaller group of musicians, and includes all the album alongside other tracks from across Nitin’s career. Its debut in Dublin also received a rapturous response, and it’s this show he’ll be bringing to Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre on November 8 as part of their From The Source festival (alongside Carleen Anderson and Nikki Yeoh’s human rights-inspired A Change Is Gonna Come, and appearances from Judi Jackson, Alice Zawadzki and Pascal Gabriel’s Stubbleman project).
“I programmed up a lot of backing for that [Dublin show], and because I come from a DJ background as well – I’m a club head as well as an orchestral composer – I kind of wanted to bring that side of things to the table. So it felt like a very different kind of show to the Royal Albert Hall, where we had 30-35 people on stage, but it still worked, though in a very different way. That’s the show I’m taking out now.
“That was really cool in Dublin – people got up and started dancing. We got another standing ovation there as well.”
One of the UK’s most acclaimed and accomplished music-makers, Nitin came to prominence in the 1990s as part of a wave of forward thinking and highly creative British Asian artists, which also included Talvin Singh and the members of TV sketch show Goodness Gracious
Me (which Nitin also contributed to).
He’s since worked with artists as varied as Paul McCartney, Ellie Goulding, AR Rahman and Sting, released around 20 albums, and soundtracked numerous TV series and films (including BBC’s Human Planet, Meera Syal’s Anita and Me, and Andy Serkis’ Netflix Jungle Book adaptation, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle).
Although there are more major TV and soundtrack plans currently being negotiated, his primary focus at present – alongside the Beyond The Skin shows in Coventry and Australia – is his first album for major label Sony.
Due next year and titled Immigrant,
the yet-to-be recorded collection will see Nitin addressing the issue of immigration, and how he sees immigrants consistently “demonised” by politicians and the media.
Much like Beyond Skin did 20 years ago, he plans to collaborate with numerous musicians, across generations, disciplines and cultural backgrounds, to communicate a clear and positive message of inclusion.
“We’re excited about it,” says Nitin. “It feels like the idea of this album is catching a zeitgeist, and if the shows at Royal Albert Hall and Dublin were anything to go by, then it feels like it’s perfect timing to create something like this album.” ●●Nitin Sawhney plays From The Source Festival at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Friday, November 8. For tickets and more information see: www. warwickartscentre.co.uk