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Swaying with the Verses
#005 June 2025
Pritpal Ajimal
June 05, 2025
Hello! June is here with more gigs and happenings! Thank you to all the new subscribers and all the og subscribers too, I wasn’t sure if there would be a lot of interest for listings and me rambling on about going to gigs and exhibitions, but people are subscribing and enjoying. I am thinking of sending the listings in a separate email, possiblely mid-month, so that you all have longer to check out and choose which gigs you'd like to attend and get tickets for earlier! The website will remain current and updated for any last minute gigs, so you won’t miss out on anything.
Raga Music Listings— June 2025
This month sees more interesting gigs, there is a summer solstice all-nighter in Leeds presented by SAA-uk, something they’ve been doing for a number of years, starting at 8pm and concluding at 6am the next morning, it’s a hardcore session, but worth it for the experience of non-stop music from a number of different musicians!
Complete self-promotion here: I’ll be presenting Aroh —Avroh, a meeting of spiritual jazz x raga music; I wrote some copy for the flyer, which I thought was quite good: ‘Jazz and Raga-based music have been in conversation since the 1950s; with some amazing music from the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Amancio D'Silva, Badal Roy, Ali Akbar Khan, John Mayer being recorded as a result. Aroh —Avroh celebrates this tradition, bringing together some brilliant musicians celebrating the universal language of improvised music! It's all about shrutis and poly-rhythms tonight.’ The band members: Kamaljeet Ahulwalia – santoor, Jas Ahluwalia – tabla, Nick Woodmansey (Emanative) – drums/percussion , Shri – bass/flute, Giuliano Modarelli – guitar; are all amazing players and will bring amazing creativity, musicality and emotion to the night! Me and Emanative will be on the decks all-night and there will be samosas and chai too. So please come and fill the place out!
25 June / 19:30
The Total Refreshment Centre, London
Book Now: £13.39
And then there’s this gig the night after, my sister and brother-in-law will be doing a full raga music performance at the Notting Hill Arts Club, I’m super excited for this too. I’ll be djing till 1am after they finish, so you’ll get a whole night with me!
26 June / 19:30
Notting Hill Arts Club, London
Book Now: £15
7 Jun 2025 / 12:00
Into the Night
Jasdeep Singh Degun - sitar
BBC Concert Orchestra
St George's Hall, Bradford
Book Now: £Free
15 Jun 2025 / 20:00
Father's Day Double Bill Concert: Sarangi and Bansuri
Harsh Narayan - sarangi
Pravin Godkhindi - bansuri
Sanju Sahai - tabla
The Bhavan, London
Book Now: £25-£22
19 Jun 2025 / 19:30
Unbound
Jasdeep Singh Degun - sitar
Harkiret Bahra - tabla
Kaviraj Singh - santoor, vocals
Hannah Trudgeon - conductor
RNCM Students
RNCM Concert Hall, Manchester
Book Now: £18-£12
20 June 2025 / 12:45
Music for the Mind and Soul
Jonathan Mayer - sitar
Kousic Sen - tabla
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Book Now: £Free
21 June 2025 / 20:00
Strings of Solstice
Lakshay Mohan - sitar
Aayush Mohan - sarod
Sanju Sahai - tabla
Duke's Hall, London
Book Now: £20-£10
21 June 2025 / 21:00
Leeds Summer Solstice 2025
Simrandeep Kaur – taus
Sonali Das – vocal
Shubham Tageja – bansuri
Kamaljeet Kaur – santoor
Purbayan Chatterjee – sitar
Jaswinder Singh Ahluwalia & Anuradh Da - tabla
White Rose Park Hub, Leeds
Book Now: £35-17:50
22 June 2025 / 19:30
Absolute Focus
Kamaljeet Ahluwalia - santoor
Jaswinder Ahluwalia - tabla
NCEM, York
Book Now: £22-£7
25 June 2025 / 19:30
Aroh —Avroh: A meeting of jazz and raga music
Kamaljeet Ahulwalia – santoor
Jas Ahluwalia – tabla
Nick Woodmansey (Emanative) – drums/percussion
Shri – bass/flute
Giuliano Modarelli – guitar
The Total Refreshment Centre, London
Book Now: £13.39
26 June 2025 / 19:30
Absolute Focus
Kamaljeet Ahluwalia - santoor
Jaswinder Ahluwalia - tabla
Notting Hill Arts Club, London
Book Now: £15
27 June 2025 / 13:00
Jyotsna Srikanth and Abhiram Sahathevan
Jyotsna Srikanth - violin
Abhiram Sahathevan - mridangam
St Martin in the Fields, London
Book Now: £10
28 June 2025 / 19:00
The music of Nature's timely rhythms and melodies
Reshma Srivastava - sitar
Rajkumar Misra - tabla
The Bhavan, London
Book Now: £20-£15
28 June 2025 / 19:30
Absolute Focus
Kamaljeet Ahluwalia - santoor
Jaswinder Ahluwalia - tabla
Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester
Book Now: £15
*note… I don’t make any money or anything from these listings, I don’t even get guestlist (although I wouldn’t say no to guestlist… gigging is expensive!), I’m just doing it, because people need to know where to see live music.
What did I see/hear in May?
I’ve been listening to the K+D sessions for a very long time… so it was great to see the album being performed live. Kruder and Dorfmeister brought a band and an led cube of lights for visuals, it was nice to hear those songs finally live!
The Arushi Jain show at Corsica Studios was a complete riot, she took a left turn and played a rave set instead of the ambient vibes she is normally associated with, it was full of energy and sounded amazing!
The Richard Hunt Retrospective at the White Cube is a fascinating exhibition. He treats metal like it’s clay and makes pieces of precision, with curves, and a expression of a lightness that feels like some of the pieces are floating, it totally belies the fact that these are forged from found scrap pieces of metal!
There was loads of other stuff, but the editor is tellng me this email is too long already! I definitely need to send two emails a month!
Shop— Pre-Emptive Strike
In my proper job I’m a graphic designer/illustrator and make some pretty nice stuff, I’ve got a shop with some very nice t-shirts to sell, so please have a look and get some t-shirts!
Radio Shows
It was another busy month of radio. The World is Sound Takeover of G-Shock Radio was another great session, Siofra McComb with a wonderful all vinyl mix of music from her archives, it went in so many different selections, your shazam will be be working over time! DTYB brought in a lot music that influenced him, he described the details of so much of what he was playing and which elements he focused on, which in-turn influence him when he’s making his own music!
Lazy H invited me on to his show ‘There will be bleeps’ an exploration into the weird and wonderful of experimental music, I haven’t really had a chance to play that type of music on any of the shows I’ve done, so I really enjoyed going back-to-back with H!
For The World is Sound on Voices Radio, I spoke to the amazing creative Suman Gujral; we explored her life in the arts, and the amazing poetry anthology ‘Third Space’, a book containing 50 poems from female south asian poets, that she compiled and published last year! And then I played some Death Metal from India.
I was on Soho Radio with Zar to takeover the Dancing Family show, we chatted and played a wide variety of music to promo our set at the inaugral Dancing Family Festival in July!
I decided to focus on peaceful ragas for my NTS show, the world seems like it’s in need of an oasis of peace with all the madness going on at the moment, and it gave an excuse to play some 30 min+ tracks!
G-Shock Radio: The World is Sound — 030525
Voice Radio
Soho Radio
NTS
June Radio Dates
Melomaniacs @Downtown Retro— Sister Shaft Breafast Show: 070625 / 10:00
Sister Midnight FM— Dancing Family Records Takeover: 130625 / 13:00
Voices— The World is Sound: 170525 / 11:00
NTS— Nāda Sonics: 210625 / 08:00
Music Recommendations
ONNO Collective did a show on NTS and I had to explore the wonderful sounds coming from Kolkata after listening to that show. Some beautiful electronic music and check out their other releases on their bandcamp page! | Jazz drummer from New Delhi, Tarun Balani explores his grandfathers migration from Sindh, weaving traditional Sindhi folk music with contemporary jazz, to produce a wonderful amalgamation of improvised music. | A beautiful laidback, dreamy UK Jazz single from Jedd Bailey Smith, Sam Tunnicliffe and Blake Cascoe - ABNA. |
Red D & Lefto Early Bird deliver two contrasting singles, but both that sound amazing on the dancefloor!
My Gigs
7 June 2025 / 12:00-22:00: Voices 4th Birthday Party, Two Tribes Campfire, London
25 June 2025 / 19:30-00:00: Aroh —Avroh, The Total Refreshment Centre, London
26 June 2025 / 19:30-01:00: Absolute Focus, Notting Hill Arts Club, London
29 June 2025 / 16:00-20:00: Ambient Sauna, Sauna Social Club, London
Heads up, it’s festival season and I’ll be playing at Dancing Family Festival with the amazing Zar in July. And then I’ll be at We Out Here Festival in August!
Thank for making it to the end! I will be back next month with more of everything. And please get in touch if there are gigs, exhibitions or music I need to go to or add to the listings!