Nitin is currently working on his fifth album which is set for release Spring 2003.  He has also been working on scores for films and TV as well as producing other artist albums.

Nitin sums up the tremendous diversity in his music with the phrase 'from oppression comes expression'.  He grew up in an area that was a stronghold for the National Front in the seventies and, as a child, received so much racist abuse that he began to think it was normal for Asian people. It was only when he was older that he realised he could use music as a vehicle to change this.

Nitin Sawhney is, without doubt, pleased to be an award winning writer, comedian, actor and scriptwriter; a composer of TV and movie soundtracks as well as commercials; a massively in-demand songwriter, producer and re-mixer - a veritable who's who (from Sinéad O'Connor to Sir Paul McCartney & Jeff Beck) have beaten a path to his south-of-the-river London door.

But it's his own music (currently being name-checked by the likes of Madonna / The Face Magazine, September 2000 issue) of which he is most proud - and, with his magnificent fourth album, BEYOND SKIN (released on September 13th 1999 and a chart album within a week) it's easy to understand why. A record that - up to and long since its' release - has been and is still lauded by critics far and wide, BEYOND SKIN finds Nitin at the edge of a previously unexplored fusion of music and society. As a body of work, it offers a challenge to Britain's sense of multicultural identity, drawing in references that are both political and personal as well as sonic while the whole darned thing is produced, written & arranged by Nitin. Musically, it seeks out the Indian origins of flamenco and rubs them up against the tide of strings provided by 4Hero's string section and blends classical Indian Qawwali singing, bols - the hypnotic spoken form of the tablas - and Urdu verse seamlessly into rolling drum & bass grooves and mellifluous, low-slung jazz breaks. It does all this - and much, much more - because, above all, this is an album underpinned by songs of deep global significance. The whole album, says Nitin, is about a sense of belonging, yet not belonging, to land. It's about how nationality and Governments and power structures take away our sense of identity. And I've used the nuclear programme - the greatest evil - as an ironic symbol. Ironic because this thing that even the West reviles has now been adopted by India as a badge of religious power.

Nitin's formative years were in Rochester, Kent. To escape the daily racism he turned to music - a language where there were no racial boundaries - although even then he had to overcome being banned from the music room by a teacher who later turned out to be a member of National Front. Later he went on to study Law at Liverpool University before coming to London where he met Sanjeev Bhaskar, who became not only a firm friend but also, with Nitin, the co-creator of a comedy double act The Secret Asians, who sought to turn absurdly dated Asian stereotypes on their heads. It led to a contract with BBC radio and what eventually grew into the award winning BBCTV sketch show - Goodness Gracious Me.

Whilst performing The Secret Asians up and down the country Nitin ran into old school friend, acid-jazz keyboards-player James Taylor and subsequently signed up for a 40-date tour in The James Taylor Quartet. It introduced him to the jazz club scene and provoked him into forming his own band, The Jazztones, who would play at concerts DJ'd by the likes of Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge. He moved on to join forces with tabla master Talvin Singh to form the Tihai Trio and, after that collaboration ended, released his debut album, SPIRIT DANCE on his own label in '93.

Shortly afterwards, he signed with Outcaste Records and the widely acclaimed album MIGRATION arrived in 1995, followed a year later by his genre-busting work DISPLACING THE PRIEST. From that point on, Nitin has been in increasing demand as a producer, writer and remixer, pushing back the barriers for Asians in several fields of expression. For example, he was joined by traditional Indian Kathak dancer Sushmita Ghosh in the first ever appearance by an Asian group on BBC TV's Later...With Jools Holland.

He has acted, written and composed for several theatre groups including a stretch as musical director at Stratford East's Theatre Royal and contributed journalism to the likes of Second Generation magazine and The Guardian newspaper. He is also as much in demand for creating music for film and TV, including the major BBC 2 documentary series The Sikhs, a Bombay art film entitled Split Wide Open and a British feature film about the role of Indian soldiers in the First World War - The Dance Of Shiva. In addition, Nitin has written for projects as diverse as for The National Theatre & hosted a series of workshops for young musicians in South London. In December 1999, he received a commission to write a new piece for the 2000 Proms. The resultant Urban Prophesies - conducted by Cameron Sinclair and featuring fellow South Bank Award winner Joanne MacGreggor (piano) & Aref Durvesh (tabla), himself the longest serving member of Nitin's touring band - received its world premiere at The Albert Hall on July 18th. Nitin has also produced and written for the debut album of Warner Bros artiste Amar, as well as another debut, this time for Island signee, Aya. Having already written for the likes of Sinéad O'Connor and Shara Nelson, he has recently completed work on a number of TV advertisments, the most notable being for Nike which was screened throughout the recent Rugby World Cup.

He's also been heavily involved in re-mixing, working on tracks for the likes of V2's Mandalay, Khaled for Virgin France and Momndo Gross for Sony Japan plus The Fireman, a Sir Paul MacCartney project - a fitting acknowledgement from a man whose own musical experiments with Ravi Shankar once shook the world.

In early January 2000, Nitin received apt recognition for BEYOND SKIN by being nominated for the highly prestigious South Bank Show Award for Popular Music alongside Blur and Fatboy Slim. In front of an audience at The Savoy in London which included Sir John Mills, the PM's wife Cherie Blair, Helen Mirren, the cast of the Royle Family, prima ballerina Darcy Bussell, fellow award winners Séamus Heaney, Rory Bremner & John Bird, Nitin was presented with his award by Sir Bob Geldof.

And, as if this wasn't a heavy enough work-schedule, Nitin has been on the road with his band for much of this year. He began a two-week British tour in his own right in Cambridge on March 7th before joining Sting for dates in Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham before five consecutive nights at London's Royal Albert Hall - concerts which were immediately followed by Nitin's own, month-long, headlining European tour which saw him and his band in Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, back through France before closing the Cheltenham Festival at the end of April. Further British & Irish dates followed - including headlining the Newcastle River Festival and a one-off show at London's Shepherds Bush Empire which featured Nitin's regular band joined by members of The English Chamber Orchestra and master percussionst, Trilok Gurtu in a concert that was filmed by the BBC. Immediately following that came more European dates with Sting (taking in Spain & Portugal) before major appearances at The Fleadh (London); Glastonbury (Britain); Werchter (Belgium); The Copenhagen Jazz Festival (Denmark); The Quart Festival (Norway); The Nord Zee Festival (Holland); The Festival da Musica (Spain) as well as other major concerts in Spain, Italy and Britain.

On July 25th, further plaudits were added to BEYOND SKIN when the record was shortlisted for the annual Technics Mercury Music Prize as one of the twelve albums of the year. Since its inception in 1992, The Mercury Music Prize has been acknowledged as the premiere Arts Award in British Music, rivalling the Booker Prize (for Literature) and the Turner (for Art) with previous winners including Primal Scream, Portishead, Suede, Roni Size & Reprazent and Gomez. This year's shortlist was chosen from an initial entry of over 140 albums by an independent panel of judges whose only criterion is musical excellence. The winner of the 2000 Technics Mercury Music Prize will be announced on Tuesday, September 12th.