Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, Leeds-born sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun, embarks on his latest tour this month, including a stop at the Howard Assembly Room in October.
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There is a definite sense that the music of Jasdeep and his peers is now reaching a wider audience, in large part due to the phenomenal success that he has achieved over the past few years.
Jasdeep Singh Degun plays Anomaly © Rowland Thomas
His debut album, 2022’s Anomaly, was recorded with the legendary Nitin Sawhney and released by Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. It took the sitar into new territory, powered by Jasdeep’s remarkable skill and lifelong immersion in the Indian classical tradition. Later that year, as composer and co-music director on Opera North and South Asian Arts-uk’s staging of Monteverdi’s opera Orpheus, his mesmerising tapestry of Indian and European music thrilled audiences and critics alike, and was recognised with a haul of awards from across the worlds of music and stage.
The RPS judges selected Jasdeep as the 2024 Instrumentalist of the Year for ‘showing us all the beauty and boundless possibilities of the sitar’. For Jasdeep, it was less about him personally and more about the music: “We’re finally shifting the paradigm. 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.”
So what can newcomers to Jasdeep’s music expect? “It has all of the discipline and technical demands of western classical music”, he says, “but you won’t hear much harmony: our musical system is based on the rules of raag and taal, which are melody and rhythm. So you have to shift your focus to the complex development and embellishment of that. And it’s all unfolding in the moment, often at speed – that’s definitely something that’s exciting to experience, and maybe akin to jazz.”
Shahbaz Hussain on tabla, RN Prakash on ghatam, Mark Wagstaff on percussion, Sergio Bucheli on theorbo, Jasdeep Singh Degun on sitar and Andrew Long on violin © Tristram Kenton
Jasdeep continues: “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.”
Jasdeep Singh Degun plays the Howard Assembly Room on Thursday 10 October with tickets available for £14 (plus £1 booking fee)
