Morning, May edition is here! It’s been a busy month, I’m going to have to devote a day to newsletter business so it comes out on time every month, but this one came out quicker than last month! Apparently this newsletter is too big for Gmail, so if it gets clipped… check it out on beehiiv!

Raga Music Listings— May 2025

swayoftheverses.com has listings all the way to July at the moment, I think it’s the most complete set of listings of what’s happening in the UK in one place at the moment, and I know I’m finding it super useful to be able pull up the listings and know which events to stick in my diary or recommend to people!

May is packed! So much is happening. Firstly Anoushkar Shankar is Guest Director of the Brighton Festival and has curated a number of events, music, dance, art, poetry, theatre. Out of so many amazing events, Aruna Sairam and Ganavya is the one for me, because Aruna Sairam! zer0classikal are presenting some really nice events with numerous artists doing sessions for morning ragas, afternoon ragas, and evening ragas, which will be a wonderful way to hear ragas at their prescribed times! Make sure you look through all the listings for the festival, there are some really interesting events happening. The closing night looks like it will be massive too!

The South Asian Sounds festival at the Southbank Centre is happening in mid-May, with a mix of classical and contemporary music and dance. I’m biased, go and see my friend Roopa Panesar on the 17th, and my other friend Rushi Ranjan the day after. But also, a dance recommendation, Aditya Prakash’s ROOM-i-Nation on the 17th too.

May is packed to the brim with Qawaali! Qawal Najmuddin Saifuddin & Brothers are starting a 14 date tour of the UK in mid-May ending June. Chahat Mahmood Ali Qawwal are at Kings Place, London and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals are doing a 4 date UK tour. This a superb opportunity to catch amazing live Qawwali and experience that spiritual trancelike state of meditating on a single composition for 20 mins or more!

Make sure you get out there and see some gigs!!!

3 May 2025 / 18:30
An Evening with Ustad Hanif Khan
Hanif Khan - bansuri
Longsight Art Space, Manchester
Book Now: £10

4 May 2025 / 18:30
Legacy – Parampara Series Of Concerts
Shrinivas Joshi – vocal
Viraj Joshi – vocal
Vijay Rajput – vocal
Saleel Tambe – tabla
Siddhiie Kapshikarr – tabla
The Bhavan, London
Book Now: £22-17

9 May 2025 / 19:30
Passages
Anoushka Shankar – sitar
Britten Sinfonia
Robert Ames – conductor
Featuring
Chiranjeeb Chakraborty vocals
Lakshay Mohan sitar
Aayush Mohan Sarod
Sanju Sahai tabla
Prathap Ramachandra mridangam, ghatam, kanjira
Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Brighton
Book Now: £32.50-£15

10 May 2025 / 14:00
Mehfil – e – Rose Hill: Emerging Artists
Amisha Karsan – sitar and Junaid Ali – tabla
Shayan Saqib – sarod and Junaid Ali – tabla
Aparna Raguraman – violin and Abhiram Sahathevan – mridangam
Diksha Murli -v ocalist and Sarang Ravindra – tabla
The Rose Hill, Brighton
Book Now: £25-£15

10 May 2025 / 18:00
Mehfil – e – Rose Hill: Early Evening Ragas
Prabhat Rao – Hindustani vocal and Himmet Bahra – tabla
Jonathan Mayer – sitar and Denis Kucherov – tabla
The Rose Hill, Brighton
Book Now: £25-£15

10 May 2025 / 19:00
Indian Spring Colours
Debasmita Bhattacharya – sarod
Gurdain Rayatt – tabla
Department of Music, Durham University, Durham
Book Now: £11.55-£1.79

11 May 2025 / 09:00
Mehfil – e – Rose Hill: Waking Up with Ragas
Jason Kalidas – bansuri and Denis Kucherov – tabla
Mithila Sarma – veena and Senthuran Premakumar – mridangam
James Pusey – sitar and Marc Clayton – tabla
William Rees Hofmann – sarod and Debasish Mukherjee – tabla
The Rose Hill, Brighton
Book Now: £25-£15

11 May 2025 / 11:00
Indian Spring Colours: Legacy – Parampara
Shrinivas Joshi – vocal
Viraj Joshi – vocal
Vijay Rajput – vocal
Saleel Tambe – tabla
Siddhiie Kapshikarr – tabla
Department of Music, Durham University, Durham
Book Now: £11.55-1.79

11 May 2025 / 11:00
Indian Spring Colours: A Journey into the Heart of Carnatic Music
Vignesh Ishwar – vocal
Sayee Rakshith – violin
Sumesh Narayanan – mridangam
Department of Music, Durham University, Durham
Book Now: £11.55-1.79

11 May 2025 / 13:00
Mehfil – e – Rose Hill: Lunchtime with Lost Ragas
Guiliano Modarelli and friends
The Rose Hill, Brighton
Book Now: £25-£15

12 May 2025 / 19:30
Aruna Sairam & Ganavya
Theatre Royal Brighton, Brighton
Book Now: £35-£25

13 May 2025 / 19:30
An Evening of Indian Classical Music
Debasmita Bhattacharya – sarod
Kousic Sen – tabla
Corn Exchange, Newbury
Book Now: £15

14 May 2025 / 19:30
Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals
The Alhambra Theatre, Bradford
Book Now: £50-£15

15 May 2025 / 19:30
Baluji Shrivastav & Re-Orient
Roopa Panesar – sitar, dilruba, gopi
Linda Shanovitch – vocal & percussion
Alex Hill – keyboards, vocal
Rishi Gulati – saxophone
Sukhdeep Dhanjal – tabla
Purcell Room, London
Book Now: £29-£17

16 May 2025 / 11:00
Riverside Ragas: Qawwal Najmuddin Saifuddin & Brothers
The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Gateshead
Book Now: £45-£11.30

16 May 2025 / 19:30
Baluji Shrivastav & Inner Vision Quartet
Baluji Shrivastav – multi-instrumentalist
Yousuf Ali Khan – tabla
Uttara Joshi – vocal
Ghow Ratnarajah – vocals& kanjira
Thuy Mallalieu – flute & keyboards
Purcell Room, London
Book Now: £24-£14.75

17 May 2025 / 13:00
ATMA
Roopa Panesar – sitar
Shahbaz Hussain – tabla
RN Prakash – mridangam, ghatam, morsing (Indian jews harp)
Giuliano Modarelli – guitar
Camilo Tirado – live electronics, textural percussion
Surdarshan Chana – jori
Ben Hazleton – double bass
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Book Now: £47-£17

17 May 2025 / 19:00
Osman Mir & Third Culture Collective
Osman Mir – singer
Aamir Mir – singer
Kavi Pau – conductor
Third Culture Collective Orchestra
Royal Festival Hall, London
Book Now: £24-£14.75

18 May 2025 / 18:30
Rushil Ranjan & National Youth Choir: Khwaa-ish
Abi Sampa – vocal
Aakash Odedra – dancer
Kirpal Panesar – esraj
K V Krishna Prasad – vocal
Malathy Nithyanathan – vocal
National Youth Choir
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Book Now: £57-£42

18 May 2025 / 19:30
Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Book Now: £77-£27

20 May 2025 / 20:00
Shahbaz Hussain & Helen Anahita Wilson
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, Brighton
Book Now: £20-£15

23 May 2025 / 19:30
Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals
Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham
Book Now: £79-£29

24 May 2025 / 13:00
Midday Mantra: An Afternoon of Qawwali
Qawal Najmuddin Saifuddin & Brothers
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Book Now: £5

25 May 2025 / 19:30
Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals
Bristol Beacon, Bristol
Book Now: £61-£28

25 May 2025 / 20:00
Anoushkar Shankar: Chapter III…
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, Brighton
Book Now: £37.50-£15

Special Mention Gig— Absolute Focus

*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 April

I went to, too many gigs in April, so these are the highlights:

Shai Space is a gem hidden away in Peckham, they are a multi-purpose space during the day and in the evenings, rugs are rolled out, cushions are thrown all over the floor, incense is lit, the lights are dimmed, loose leaf tea jars are opened, the big speakers repositioned and seated dj booth made from breezeblocks is errected, and the space is turned into a listening room, 90mins of people sat/lying on the floor not saying a word, not on their phones, just listening; it’s a wonderful experience! I’ve been lucky enough to attend few sessions and at the start of April I went to the listening party for the new Footshooter album - The Oasis. The album was lovely, taking in inspirations from a number of different musical styles - jazz, broken beat, hip-hop - to give you something that fits in with the different moods you have during the day; some amazing collabs give it a nice sense of dynamism.

80 custom-built loudspeakers have been hidden within the chambers and vents around the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium, that turns the hall into an ‘epic three-dimensional instrument’ — this was the synopsis for Concrete Voids. All I can say is that Lex Amor and her band smashed it. The lighting was immense, there were backlights, sidelights, this big diagonal lighting rig over the performers, the band were immense, there was a choir standing on the path above the stalls embedded in the crowd and Lex Amor on stage, commanding the room with her performance. It was epic and three-dimensional!

Orphy Robinson assembled a brilliant band for this Roy Ayers Tribute at the Church of Sound, it was such a delightful experience; Orphy punctuated each song with a story relating to Roy to give the gig a wonderful narration throughout! And Roy Ayers… of course it was going to be good!

You know when you hear about those secret gigs that happen in some secret place and everyone has tremendous fomo. I went to one of those! Kamasi Washington and a UK jazz super band - Nala Sinephro, Joe Armon Jones, Shirley Tettah, Alabaster De Plume, Mutal Chashi, Morgan Simpson; the band played non-stop for 3 hours pretty much. Sometimes you can stumble into cool things!

Brick Lane Jazz Festival had a south asian stage for the first time; curated by Rohan Rakhit, he paid homage to the musical Bangladeshi heritage of this road with a bill featuring the legends Farook and Osmani Sounds amongst others. The intergenerational crowd, with ravers from back-in-the-day 20 odd years ago, and the younger generations raving to some of the big sounds that came from producers, djs and musicians from this epicentre of musical creativity was a joy watch and hear! Also, 93 Feet East has a really spacious, almost luxorious dj booth!

The Daniel Brandt gig at the Barbican opened with Ensemble 0 playing Open Symmetry by Tristan Perich; a piece performed on three vibraphones, a minimal piece with repetition, like analogue looping, that built over 45 mins, with an electronic bed, it was a meditation session!

Daniel Brandt played his new album, except it wasn’t just a play-through, there was an accompanying film, that was soundtracked by the musicians on stage, it was an immersive experience with lots of haze machine and big red lights action! Defo go see it if you get chance!

I didn’t get a photo (because you weren’t allowed to take photos), but Terry Riley’s In C was performed by the London Sinfonietta in the Queen Elizabeth Hall with Sasha Waltz and her dancers performing a choerographic interpretation of the piece in dance. In C is considered one of the first minimalist music pieces, conceived in 1964, there have been countless interpretations since then. It’s almost an hour long, with no breaks, the musicians never stopped, the dancers never stopped either, it was an amazing amalgamation of dance and music.

I’m going to leave it there… otherwise this newsletter will take 20 mins to read.

Radio Shows

The World is Sound on Voices Radio: I ran through lots of new releases, with singer/songwriters, bengali hip-hop, dnb leaning tunes and so much more, as well a chat with singer Shivani Sen about her projects combining indian classical vocals with english in her new projects

Nāda Sonics on NTS: This was fun, charting the history of the broadcasts from the BBC Pebble MIll Studios in Birmingham during the 80s/90s which saw some incredible raga-based artists perform live on national tv in the UK. Looking back it’s surprising how many well-renowned artists were featured! For a show that normally features 20+ min performances, the tracklist is quite long due to the 5 min performances! The people that first recorded these shows onto vhs tapes and then digitized them and uploaded them to youtube need a special commendation for their love! Check out Tangible Emotions for the original videos and more!

Voices Radio

NTS

Mixes

I’ve been djing for sometime now, and most of those sets haven’t been recorded; the ones that have, you can find on my mixcloud channel; but last month saw me do a mix for Radio 1001, Cafe 1001’s youtube mix series; and the set I did for Zar’s EP launch party is also live now. Radio 1001 is mix of genres, styles and bpms, pretty much a 3 hour set condensed into an hour, and the Zar session is an hour of sitting at 130bpm!

Radio 1001

Zar: A Light Stain at Dawn launch party

Next on:

Voices— There Will Be Bleeps /guest appearance: Sunday 11 May 2025 / 21:00
Voices— The World is Sound: Tuesday 20 May 2025 / 11:00
NTS— Nāda Sonics: Saturday 25 May 2025 / 08:00

Music Recommendations

Obsessed with this at the moment…!

My Gigs

Find me playing some music at these places:

9 May / 11:30 / Daytimers takeover at Cafe 1001, London

17 May / 12:00 / The Swan Sessions, Clewer Village, Windsor

There are few other bits that are being confirmed, Ambient Sauna will be in June I think, but follow me on instagram to find all the latest dates/info!