Sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun announces UK tour
Leeds-born sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun, recently named ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ at the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, is set to embark on a 14-date tour across England and Wales this September and October.
The tour comes at a time when Jasdeep’s music, deeply rooted in the Indian classical tradition, is reaching a broader audience, driven by his remarkable achievements over recent years.
Jasdeep’s success was solidified with his 2022 debut album Anomaly, recorded with the legendary Nitin Sawhney and released by Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. The album showcased his extraordinary skill and deep immersion in Indian classical music, taking the sitar into new and innovative territories. Later that year, Jasdeep’s work as composer and co-music director on Opera North and South Asian Arts-uk’s production of Monteverdi’s Orpheus blended Indian and European music in a way that captivated both audiences and critics, earning numerous accolades.
With this year’s RPS laurels – for ‘showing us all the beauty and boundless possibilities of the sitar’ – it looks as though Jasdeep has achieved escape velocity from the confines of genre, or the ‘World Music’ catch-all. “We’re finally shifting the paradigm”, he says, anticipating forthcoming dates including Hartlepool Folk Festival and Oxford Festival of Song – more appropriate than it might seem, as his particular school of sitar virtuosity aspires to imitate the human voice with all its nuance and emotion. “It feels like British Asian musicians are being taken more seriously in the room: at last our music is being programmed alongside western classical repertoire, rather than hived off as something niche or novel.”
“Maybe I need another 10 years to prepare for it”, he laughs. “But really I think it’s a perfect time, following on from what I’ve been doing over the last few years, to return to the source and consolidate myself in the Indian classical tradition.”
“Indian classical musicians don’t write sets, so preparing for this tour is a question of mapping out what I want to say musically and then just practice, practice, practice. It’ll all just happen on the day; you can’t fix everything – and you shouldn’t, because it won’t be a good concert if it’s not spontaneous. You practice as much as you can on as many different themes as possible, but on the day all you can do is make sure that your hands are moving! You have to be in the frame of mind where you can go off on a tangent, maybe latch on to something you hear in the tabla, and not try to impose something rigid or prefabricated: you have to be completely open to whatever happens.
“You need to be thinking, all your cognitive powers are working, but it’s also very physical. It’s a beautiful system because there’s this discipline and precision, but in the end there’s your heart. The raag and taal give you that framework to open up and do whatever you want, so you’re creating and you’re pouring yourself into the music. That’s where the beauty of the music lies, and it just transcends.”
