Nitin Sawhney has been pursuing his musical passions in a wide variety of fields for decades - with astonishing intensity. Perhaps switching between your own projects and completely different commissioned work gives you energy instead of stealing it. The fifty-four-year-old composer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ and music producer creates the sound of a wide variety of computer games, television productions and films; in 2018 he composed the music for the blockbuster "Mowgli", which was sold by Warner Brothers to Netflix for 100 million dollars, and he plays in trios and quartets classical western, classical Indian and with hip-hop musicians and has a classical Indian music education itself.
Last but not least, he has written music for two of the most famous contemporary choreographers.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan danced their duet "Zero Degrees" to accompany his composition in 2005, for which the British sculptor Antony Gormley had created two life-size, heavy white human puppets.
“Classical crossover” is not a dirty word here
Now Sawhney, who like Khan and Gormley lives in London, has released his eleventh studio album. As a concept work, “Immigrants” brings together musicians from all over the world who describe themselves as immigrants; all want to stand up for immigrants in this way, regardless of their own history. For example, the Canadian hip-hopper Hussain Yoosuf ("Spek"), who is now also living in England, in the fantastic song "Lifeline" or the Stuttgart-born singer Aruba Red in the dark, grief and self-doubt themed song "Replay" in a mixture German and English.
Musically it's called “Classical Crossover”, but it has nothing to do with Vanessa Mae. If you think that you can only play down the use of classical instruments such as piano, tavla, cello or violin or, of course, make the bass, the beat, the blues fake, highly polished, unbearable, then you are wrong. The songs, reserved in the interplay of different traditions, are never overloaded. The first piece “Down the Road”, which strikes cautiously optimistic tones with regard to the utopia of successful coexistence in migrant societies, celebrates the beauty of traditional chants over dry beats and dark clusters of sound. And how it breathes!
In general, this album exudes serene hope and reflective enlightenment, which sees no reason to despair despite obvious problems. Sawhney sits at the piano for “Movement - Variation II” and accompanies the singer and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson: “Is this something we can overcome? / No one else belongs to anyone ". She sings it with an almost sober, factual intonation, which makes the question all the more urgent. Because it is indeed two different sides of immigration that Sawhney and his self-chosen family of musicians are concerned with.
On the one hand, there are prejudices and stereotypes that they have to deal with over and over again, and that one should never tire of tackling. On the other hand, it is the sometimes sad introspection of the immigrants who ask themselves a lot: How can I put down roots here, who belongs to me here, how can I get involved, how well can I differentiate between what I want myself and what others want see in me The real question of the album is rhetorical. It reads: What could be nicer than allowing great traditions to flow into something new?