Racism helped shape my music, composer says

Nitin Sawhney’s album release on 20 October coincides with his performance at the Royal Albert Hall

An award-winning composer said the racist abuse he suffered growing up in Kent helped shape his music.

Nitin Sawhney was raised in Rochester by first-generation British Indian parents.

The musician said his new studio album, Identity, featured a range of voices, including Asian women asylum seekers and Gary Lineker.

The album release on 20 October coincides with Sawhney’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall.

Sawhney, who has worked with the likes of Paul McCartney and Sting, said his childhood was blighted with racism growing up in Kent.

“I remember in Chatham seeing National Front marches. They used to leaflet outside our school gates,” he said.

“I saw music as a sanctuary, and as a way of expressing feelings and frustrations with what was going on at the time.”

The album features a track challenging the language sometimes used to describe those seeking asylum, as well as a surprise appearance from Lineker on a track titled Illegal, which features the voices of asylum seekers and concludes with Lineker saying: "No-one is illegal".

“Gary came on board in the wake of his little spat with Suella Braverman, where he was talking about asylum seekers, immigrants and refugees. So I put him on a track with some women from an Asian women’s refuge,” Sawhney said.

“Our identity is whatever we want it to be, as long as it’s not harming anyone else.”