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Soumik Datta is an award-winning musician, composer and television presenter. He plays the 19 stringed sarod and connects his Indian classical roots with colourful electronica and musical styles from around the world.
Soumik Datta is an award-winning musician, composer and television presenter. He plays the 19 stringed sarod and connects his Indian classical roots with colourful electronica and musical styles from around the world.
‘One of biggest new music talents in Britain’ (Vogue), Soumik has collaborated with Beyonce, Jay-Z, Bill Bailey, Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Joss Stone, Anoushka Shankar, Akram Khan, Shankar Mahadevan, Farhan Akhtar, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Cityof London Sinfonia to name a few.
Soumik has also presented TV programmes, including the BBC 4 series ‘Rhythms of India’. The travelogue which follows Soumik’s journey off the beaten path exploring folk, classical and pop Indian music, was later repeatedon BBC World News to an audience of millions. Previously in 2016, Soumik collaborated with his brother Souvid Datta, a film-maker, to create ‘Tuning 2 You’ (co-produced by the Bagri Foundation) a six-part music series that broadcast on Channel 4, Discovery, Sky and Sony BBC Earth.
In 2020, BBC Arts and The Space commissioned Soumik to create new work for their Culture in Quarantine programme. Soumik is also the Artistic Director of Soumik Datta Arts (SDA), a UK arts charity, that was granted the Elevate award by Arts Council England for making a significant contribution to the creative case for diversity. SDA has launched its latest digital project ‘Hope Notes’.
His project Songs of the Earth combined his music with an animated story, offering a creative response to climate change.
Quotes:
"I just had to stop thinking of myself as a composer and as an artist reacting to a certain situation. I had to start thinking of myself as part of this global community of people who had to question what home meant to them."
"As you're learning [raags], there's always this sense of, well, you can't really question it. You can't question the logic of why those notes were there. Who made them? Why do they belong to that raag? And why do they need to be played in that way? It just is. And that's the nature of tradition and that's what sort of beautiful as well."
"I'm interested in sort of figuring out why they're [raags] played in that way, what was happening during that time. And of course, when you start looking at all of that stuff, you get down to cost, get down to class issues."
"There's a story of travel. And then there's this story of adapting into a new culture. And I just find it really inspiring that this one instrument, the evolution of the instrument, has this journey wired into the DNA of it."
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