Talvin Singh

Mercury Prize-winning Talvin Singh is an accomplished tabla player, electronic musician, producer and DJ with a unique sound that fuses classical Indian music with drum and bass. Don’t miss the rare opportunity to watch him improvising live on the tabla to a screening of the epic ambient documentary Forest of Bliss in the Round Room, while Geoff Dyer reads from his latest novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

British born and raised, Talvin began playing tabla as a child before going to India at 15 to study under Pandit Lashman Singh, master tabla maestro of the Punjab school. Although classically trained he was not accepted by British promoters of classical Indian music, so he began playing with a fusion of sounds, combining Western influences with drum and bass and the classic Indian tabla.

By the early 1990s, Talvin was playing and singing with a variety of artists including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Madonna, Bjork, Massive Attack and the Future Sound of London. In 1995 he founded the Anokha club night at East London’s Blue Note, where drum and bass DJs and South Asian punk bands went head to head with the amped-up sounds of his tabla and percussion. Anokha soon became a Monday-night hotspot and Talvin signed to Island records for an Anokha compilation including several of his own productions. His solo debut album, OK (1999) achieved critical and commercial success and won him the Mercury Music Prize and The South Bank Prize in 1999.

www.talvinsingh.com
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