April has been an interesting month, quite a few gigs, some exhibitions and lots of music!

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May is loaded with gigs, so no excuses to not go out see anything…

The Warsi Brothers continue the tour they started in April, they have been producing some brilliant performances, don’t miss it if they’re appearing near you soon! There are some interesting gigs happening all over the country. 7 May - Bridging Worlds looks like it could be quite interesting, Abi and Rushil who played at the Royal Albert Hall are collaborating with music students from 4 colleges to produce some new music. Sukwinder Singh is performing a Jori solo in Coventry, always worth experiencing! Dr Vijay Raput is curating an evening of appreciation for the late Pandit Bhimsen Joshi up in Gateshead with a collection of some great musicians. Make sure you check through all the listings, I think I’ve managed to gather most of the gigs in the UK this month!

1 May 2026 / 19:00
Qawwal Warsi Brothers – A concert of traditional Sufi Qawwali
Turner Sims Southampton, Southampton
Book Now: £12-£15

2 May 2026 / 19:00
Qawwal Warsi Brothers – A concert of traditional Sufi Qawwali
Stoller Hall, Manchester
Book Now: £18.50-£21

3 May 2026 / 20:00
Qawwal Warsi Brothers – A concert of traditional Sufi Qawwali
Bristol Beacon, Bristol
Book Now: £20.16-£22.40

4 May 2026 / 19:00
Qawwal Warsi Brothers – A concert of traditional Sufi Qawwali
Cambridge Junction, Cambridge
Book Now: £18.50-£24

7 May 2026 / 19:30
Bridging Worlds
Rushil Ranjan and Abi Sampa, with students from the Royal College of Music, Trinity Laban, the Royal Northern College of Music and the Sunshine Orchestra (Chennai, India)
Royal College of Music, London
Book Now: £12

8 May 2026 / 19:30
Qawwal Warsi Brothers – A concert of traditional Sufi Qawwali
Bradford Arts Centre, Bradford
Book Now: £1-£10

9 May 2026 / 11:00
Desi Day: Bristol Baithaks: Morning Ragas
Pete Yelding – sitar
Dhanraj Persaud Pandey – tabla
Arnolfini, Bristol
Book Now: £3 – £15

9 May 2026 / 13:00
Vinodh Jayakrishnan @ Music on the Mezzanine
Edinburgh Central Library, Edinburgh
Book Now: Sold Out

9 May 2026 / 19:00
Shaam-e-mausiqi
Shayaan Saqib – sarod
Junaid Ali – tabla
Zeeshan Ali – vocal
Shahbaz Hussain – tabla
Sadakat Aman Khan – harmonium
The Boat house studio, Barking
Book Now: £21

10 May 2026 / 19:00
Qawwal Warsi Brothers – A concert of traditional Sufi Qawwali
Kings Place, London
Book Now: £10-£35

13 May 2026 / 13:00
Lunchtime Harmonium Concert
Sadakat Aman Khan – harmonium
Westminster Music Library, London
Book Now: £Free.99 – Pay what you can

13 May 2026 / 19:00
Nāda Sonics—IRL: Listening Session
Sway of the Verses
Lake Space, London
Book Now: £10.40-£35

16 May 2026 / 17:00
Sawani Shende Live In Concert 2026
Sawani Shende – vocal
Mukul Acharya – harmonium
Ketan Bidwe – tabla
Maharashtra Bhavan, London
Book Now: £14-£17

16 May 2026 / 18:00
Swaralaya
Sabir Khan – vocal
Sanju Sahai – tabla
The Music Room, London
Book Now: £30

16 May 2026 / 19:00
Blue Feather presents Maestros – Guitar Prasanna Live
Guitar Prasanna – guitar
The Bhavan, London
Book Now: £33-£64

17 May 2026 / 19:00
Sukhvinder Singh Pinky
Sukhvinder Singh Pinky – Jori
Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
Book Now: £11.50

22 May 2026 / 19:30
Jumma Jaam: Qawwali Night
Faizan Ali Khan – vocal
Karmel, London
Book Now: £20 (includes a vegal meal)

22 May 2026 / 13:00
Fridays at One: Jasdeep Singh Degun
Jasdeep Singh Degun – sitar
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow
Book Now: £5-£12

22 May 2026 / 19:00
Riverside Ragas: An Evening of Ghazals with Tauseef Akhtar
Tauseef Akhtar – vocal
Shahbaz Hussain – tabla
Siher Nikzad – harmonium
Robin Christian – flute
Hinal Pattani – keyboard
The Glasshouse, Gateshead
Book Now: £14.10 – £28.10

23 May 2026 / 13:00
Midday Mantra: Sarathy Korwar
The Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Book Now: £Free – £10

24 May 2026 / 19:45
zerOclassikal: This Is Not Random…
Jonathan Mayer – sitar
William Rees Hofman – sarod
Robin Christian – bansuri
Chandra Chakraborty – vocals
Debasish Mukerjee – tabla
Camilo Tirado – electronics
Purcell Room, London
Book Now: £12 – £25

26 May 2026 / 18:30
Ghazal – Surmayi Saanjh
Mohammed Vakil And Group
The Nehru Centre, London
Book Now: £Free.99

29 May 2026 / 19:00
Sounds of India: Prabhat Rao – Sacred Song from the Subcontinent
Prabhat Rao – khayal vocal
St Martin in the Fields, London
Book Now: £10

29 May 2026 / 19:00
Bharat Ratna Pt Bhimsen Joshi Music Festival
Dr Vijay Rajput – vocal
Sanju Sahai – tabla
Satwinder Pal Singh – sarangi
David Clark – harmonium
Jay Rajput – vocal support
Jayamini Sahai – kathak dance
Gosforth Civic Theatre, Newcaslte
Book Now: £10-£15

30 May 2026 / 12:30
Samarpana 2026
Various
Dudley Evolve Theatre, Dudley
Book Now: £15-£68

30 May 2026 / 18:00
Subtle Strings
Kirpal Singh Panesar – dilruba & esraj
Sukhvinder Singh – tabla
The Music Room, London
Book Now: £30

30 May 2026 / 19:00
Roopa Panesar Trio
Roopa Panesar – sitar
Harkiret Singh Bahra – tabla
R.N. Prakash – ghatam
Turner Sims, Southampton
Book Now: £10 – £24

*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.

I hadn’t intended to do a lot last month, but then that idea fell apart quite quickly.

En Root, a South London institution have been serving food to people at their Brixton and Peckham branches, as well as music festivals all over the country for 10 years. They make vegan food that isn’t bland, leaning on south asian flavours and adding a contemporary twist, with an emphasis on healthy eating. Nish and Harsh decided to celebrate this milestone with party, music all day and all night from their favourite djs. Isaac and me were entrusted to open up the days proceedings with an ambient yoga session, I played strictly vinyl (because the controller didn’t recognise my usb) and all raga music, it was a beautiful start to the day and really nice to be able to give back to a great place!

The 3rd session at Lake Space for Nāda Sonics:IRL was quite close to capacity, it’s such a nice event to gather with friends and people I’ve never met; with the intention to collectively listen without any distractions to Raga Music for an hour and a half. We explored Raga Yaman, with recordings from Shivkumar Sharma, Rais Khan & Sultan Khan and Pannalal Ghosh. I went slightly over time, but the audience still thought I’d finished early, every person was meditating on the music and time didn’t see to be moving as quickly as normal! At the end, everyone left happy, calm and mentally rested. Make sure you attend the next session on 13 May!

Also… Lake Space have an open call for artists running right now - Two cycles of exhibitions, residencies, and live performances. Sound as a spatial and embodied medium. Work that needs the space to exist — not work that happens to be placed in it. Read the information and apply now it’s great opportunity!

The Awaaz Collective had a last minute opportunity to takeover Club Makossa for a night and had a great time, the collective all played fantastic sets, the vibes were vibing and the crowd had a great time. We’re hoping to be much more active this year, so hopefully more gigs will be happening!

Multitudes festival at the Southbank Centre, combines orchestras other genres of music to produce some interesting collaborations! I went to see the Philharmonia Orchestra’s show ‘Forged in Sound: Heavy Metal Orchestrated’. The repertoire included pieces by Wagner, Shoshtakovich, Vivaldi, alongside Metallica, Motörhead and Led Zeppelin. Guest appearances from Suzi Quatro, Alison Mosshart and Mr Lordi added some star power to the whole affair. When it worked, it was brilliant, when it didn’t, it sounded a little bit drab, but then experimentation shouldn’t all brilliant and amazing, sometimes it doesn’t work and having the space to explore different approaches should be embraced!

Nina Rajarani’s Srishti dance school celebrated their 35th anniversary, a major achievement. The school teaches Bharatanatayam, Kathak and Karnatic music, this marathon of a show (almost a 4 hour runtime!) showcased students of all ages, from beginner to advanced and the first-half culminated in a performance of the epic the Ramayana, starring all the students. There was live musical accompaniment with Y Yadavan singing through, Nina Rajarani narrating and singing, and violin, mridangam and tabla, this elevated the entire experience. It was lovely performance to see, there were some dodgy props, which added to the show, alongside some wonderful performances. The second-half was devoted to Srishti Dance Creations, the touring company with a performance of ‘Play Ball’, a triple bill comprised of the pieces ‘Kadala’, ‘Bend It’ and ‘Quick’. Nina took to the stage for “Kadala’ and demonstrated why she has been such a highly-regarded dancer over the last 35 years. We were then treated to ‘Bend It’, a piece centred around football, the premise being two teams competing - a female team vs a male team - in a football match (although, the dancers and musicians, 3 of them were dressed in red, 3 in green and 2 in blue kits, which doesn’t make any sense, there are only two teams in football and there weren’t any referees either, so that needs to be addressed), the performance was full of energy and complexity (there were no long throws or set piece goals, so maybe an update is needed! 🙂). The final piece was the award-winning ‘Quick’, which won the Place Prize in 2006, a piece that is based in the fast-paced and cut-throat corporate world. This version was reworked to ‘address the shift in gender expectation and increased dependency on digital technology.’ Again, full of energy, emotion and complexity. Throughout all three pieces, live musicians are weaved into the choreography, rather than being a monolith on the side or in a pit, they perform and interact with the dancers, which produces a wonderful collaboration between the music and the dance. Nina Rajarani choreographed all the pieces and the company is touring the UK throughout the year, so check their website and book tickets, it’s well worth it!

I’ve known Preetha (one half of Balladeste) ever since I moved to London, she’s been involved in many different projects and Balladeste her project with Tara Franks is almost 10 years old, they’ve produced 6 releases, all which you should listen to! A violin and cello duo that weave amazing melodies and movements, straddling classical, folk, raga and many more influences, that sound incredibly cinematic. Their latest release is a collaboration with Ana Silvera, a singer that uses shruti boxes, guitar, keys and electronics in performances. Ana essentially collaborated with Preetha and Tara to remix and rework tracks from their back catalogue, adding lyrics, vocals and her instrumentation to produce something new, with the result being ‘Difficult Lives’. The first-half had Balladeste perform two of their own tracks, then Ana performed two of her tracks and then they came together in the second-half to perform ‘Difficult Lives’ in it’s entirety! The trek to the Old Church in Stoke Newington was worth it, it was a beautiful gig, it sounded wonderful and the collaboration really worked!

The majority of radio that I did last month featured Asha Bhosle, the legendary playback singer from India.

I somehow managed to play a track twice, it sounded alright though, you do lose track of the music you’ve already played, otherwise it was a really nice summary of the music I was listening to last month and it’s been nice to experiment on this show, try some tempo changing and punctuative tracks to split up the 2 hours, more experimentation this month!

I played an hour of new music from the south asian diaspora, and then segued into an hour of vinyl only selections of tracks by Asha Bhosle. I got to do the ol’ show the vinyl sleeve to camera on the live stream, it was also very nice to be able to talk about the the numerous songs and attach an anecdote or story to each song, it was also somewhat of a trial run for the NTS In Focus show!

This show, followed in the footsteps of the Mehdi Hussain ‘In Focus‘ and the Qawwali ‘A Guide to', in that it was a very difficult assignment, legendary artists and artforms that required a lot of consideration with the track selection to produce an informative narrative that also entertains! Over the course of 80 years, Asha Bhosle recorded over 12,000 tracks, in 20 different languages. I’d never have the time nor the access to go through 12,000 tracks, so I decided to choose tracks from each decade she was active, choose some tracks that were obvious, and others that weren’t so much, filmi tracks, classical tracks, collabrations with western musicians for my long list, this was then whitled down to fit into 2 hours. I also found a few interviews from Asha herself and her husband RD Burman, I dropped these in-between or over songs to add more depth to the 2 hours, the final quote from Asha being a very emotional statement.

Nāda Sonics, was a mix of cds and digital tracks, the wonderful singer Malikarjun Mansoor, violin duo Ganesh and Kumaresh and three raga music leaning Asha Bhosle tracks, followed by a 19 minute percussion focussed track, finishing with a raga music track that tranisitions into dnb half-way through.

Tune in, get in the chatrooms, let me know you’re there and I can do shoutouts and stuff!

06°04°2026/14:00 — Sister Midnight FM: Lāykari
19°05°2026/11:00 — Voices Radio: The World is Sound
25°04°2026/08:00 — NTS: Nāda Sonics

‘The Nāda Sonics—IRL: Listening Session is a chance to experience this spiritual, moving music in a collective situation, an uninterrupted listening session of 90 mins, sat on the floor on cushions, sipping tea and melting away to the vibes. In an overwhelming, discordant world of chaos, this is an oasis of calm.’

I managed to play 3 tracks in last months session, each was around 25 minutes or over, there were some short stories and contextualisation, plus I think I’ve almost got my ratio of water, teabags and masala correct for the chai. Feedback has been great, having 90 minutes that filters out any distractions and allows you to deeply listen to music has been quite the revelation for a lot of attendees, the positivity and relaxed vibes experienced after have reinforced how important is to have these spaces.

At the end of the month, Dialled in will be celebrating their 5th birthday, I’m extremely honoured to be part of a wonderful line-up of musicians, djs and other artists; the event takes over 8 venues in Dalston, which is an incredible feat in it self. Make sure that you come and experience it!

Set in the serene Serta Valley of central Portugal, this retreat is a unique collaboration between Isaac B and Pritpal, bringing together embodied movement, conscious breath, and immersive sound.

Pre-Register your interest now and we’ll be making a full announcement of plans and pricing in a few days!

Some of music I’ve been listening to recently!

I got this on promo, it’s not out on release till the 15th, but when it’s out, go get it! It’s been on repeat with most of the other recommedations in this list. I hear trip-hoppy, jazzy vibes, which is I absolutely love and this record is gorgeous and moody, it’s great to put on and sit back and do nothing to!

Bleeps, bloops, squelches lovely drum patterns, dark and light, I’ve really enjoyed listening to this album. So much variety, it’s a great listen from start to finish.

There are no owls on this album, but plenty of ambient adventures. Another lovely album from Kayla Painter! I think I’ve been listening to a lot of music, that doesn’t have a lot of lyrical content, because it’s easier to concentrate when working, but it’s also music that demands attention and works in a club setting. And all these albums fit that description.

This one definitely doesn’t fit that description, I played the second track (there are only two tracks) on my last NTS show, carnatic percussion on an ensemble of various instruments, the first track is based on a 9 ½ beats time cycle; taken from a live concert celebrating Vikku Vinayakram’s 60th birthday in 2001 at the Royal Festival Hall, it’s a great demonstration carnatic percussion.

I went to the Balladeste x Ana Silvera gig and this is the album they performed live!

Well done for getting to the end and thank you for reading! :)

Sway of the Verses