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Nitin Sawhney: Interview
by Jon Lusk (January 2002)
Q: What will you be performing at the awards ceremony at Ocean and how will you present it?
A: We'll just do the track Prophesy, just me and Aref [Durvesh], the tabla player... an acoustic version of it, straight, just guitar and tabla ... very kind of intensely, just a spotlight and us, probably cross legged.
Q: What is your opinion about the category of 'world music' and how do you feel about being categorised as such?
A: For me it's just simply about marginalisation based on your heritage and the colour of your skin and I'm not really into it. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The whole category of 'world music' is about apartheid in record shops. Terminology which marginalises people on the basis of their cultural heritage, I find deeply racist and condescending. But I don鹿t blame people who give awards ... it's much appreciated that they're trying to do that.
Q: How important is it that your audience takes away some understanding of, not only Asian cultures, but, with your more recent work, other cultures you present in your music?
A: Um... it's not important at all. What's important is that they take away a feeling of having experienced music without a sense of prejudice and without a sense of boundaries. For me, nationality is very much a trick used by politicians to make people go to war for them and do what they want.
Q: Do you think cross-cultural collaborations increase understanding of other cultures?
A: I think it's more a case of breaking down barriers and kind of not recognising boundaries that are erected around us by people who try to make us feel that we should all think of each other as very separate and very distant.
Q: Do you think there's a danger that fusion of might be killing 'world music', or rather, traditional music cultures?
A: No musical culture is intrinsically static anyway, so I don鹿t think there's any such thing as purity in music or in artistic expression. I think basically any tradition that is exciting is dynamic intrinsically and is gonna take in contemporary sound, contemporary events and situations that are going on in the world around the given tradition. I mean, there's no point trying to preserve a tradition as being nothing to do with the world we live in because music is about expression of ideas, feelings, emotions and imagination and if it鹿s just stuck in some kind of glass box or on a pedestal somewhere it doesn't really serve that function to me.
Q: Has Britain become a less tolerant or inclusive place since September 11th?
A: I think politicians are very good at playing on insecurities as they always do, particularly idiots like David Blunkett or Tony Blair, constantly attempting to capitalise on peoples' insecurity in the wake of September 11th. The basic thing about power is divide and rule and the more people are devalued the more useful it is for governments.
Q: In the song Developed on your latest album, Mandaway Yunupingu [of the Australian Aboriginal group Yothu Yindi] says that music is a universal language. Do you think that music has the power to change the world?
A: I think that music can be like an indicator of world psychology, but it's a symbiotic relationship with world events. I mean sometimes it can be something that can be used as a tool for change and sometimes it's an indication of where people鹿s mentality is, because ultimately music is a commercial medium in terms of the real world ... that鹿s why I get very excited when I see music that's made not so much on the basis of commercialism but much more on the basis of expression. That music I think is the music that will change the world, yeah.
Read our Nitin Sawhney profile.
听听//听听Radio 3 Awards for World Music
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