A potted history of South Asian Music at the Southbank Centre

And where else could we possibly begin such a retrospective of South Asian music performances here on our concrete-lined patch of the South Bank, than with Ravi Shankar?

Arguably the most globally renowned South Asian musician, Shankar made his Royal Festival Hall debut in October 1958, and his reputation was already such that he sold out the auditorium. He returned five years later, and would continue to perform in our buildings for the next five decades.

Among his notable appearances was September 1968’s Festival from India. Shankar headlined this showcase of Indian musicianship, which featured a number of brilliant musicians who he had brought with him to the UK as part of his own tour. Among them were Shivkumar Sharma (santoor), Sabri Khan (sarangi), Sharad Kumar (shehnai), Palghat Raghu (mridangam), and Jitendra Abhisheki and Lakshmi Shankar (vocals).

Ravi Shankar passed away in 2012, but his legacy is continued by daughter Anoushka Shankar who first accompanied him on stage at the age of 13. Like her father, Anoushka has made several appearances at the Southbank Centre during her career, starting in 2001 when she included a concert in our Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of her debut UK tour. In 2007 the two Shankars appeared on stage together in our Royal Festival Hall, performing as part of a landmark seven-hour Indian gala concert that also featured the famous violinist L Subramaniam, and his own musical heir, his son Ambi Subramaniam.

Anoshka Shankar’s other notable appearances include headlining the 2014 edition of Alchemy, our annual festival celebrating South Asian culture, and a number of concerts during her spell as an Associate Artist which sat either side of the Covid-19 pandemic, including her 2021 performance of Love Letters. And in 2022 she joined us to headline a special concert in our Royal Festival Hall, alongside her sister Norah Jones, in one of a number of Southbank Centre events celebrating their father’s centenary.

Alchemy festival, held annually at the Southbank Centre between 2010 and 2018, offered a regular platform for South Asian music, and brought a number of notable performers to our venues. Among some of the stand-out names to grace the festival were sufi artists Kailash Kher and Abida Parveen, Indian vocalist Hans Raj Hans, the Bollywood stars Shreya Ghosal, Sukhwinder Singh and Shankar Ehsan-Loy and percussionist Zair Hussain.

The legendary tabla player, Hussain, has been a frequent visitor to the Southbank Centre since performing as part of Shakti, with John McLoughlin, in 1997’s concert, Remember Shakti. In 2001 he was back in our Royal Festival Hall to perform with the sarangi player Kamal Sabri, and more recently, in 2021, he filled the same auditorium with his Masters of Percussion, part of that year’s EFG London Jazz Festival. His Alchemy performances saw him perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and also lead a mass ‘tabla-thon’ with hundreds of other tabla players in our Clore Ballroom.

During its nine year run Alchemy festival also offered a platform for a new generation of South Asian, and British-South Asian musicians, who were merging the traditions of the music of their heritage with contemporary approaches. Notable among them were singer and composer Susheela Raman, Talvin Singh who appeared at the festival in both 2011, 2013 and 2018, and Asian Dub Foundation.

The latter were similarly no strangers to the Southbank Centre, having performed as part of our Meltdown festival three times, in 2000, 2002 and 2003. Singh also has a Meltdown performance under his belt, having joined Yoko Ono on stage as part of her 2013 edition of the festival (below). Other South Asian musicians to have appeared as part of our flagship annual contemporary music festival include Pakistan’s Sabri Brothers, who appeared as part of Elvis Costello’s Meltdown in 1995, and the British-Asian band Cornershop in 1998.

Playing any of our venues for the first time can be a daunting experience, so imagine the pressure of doing so as your first UK concert, as a teenager, and with two legends of South Asian music – Ravi Shankar and Salamat Ali Khan – sitting, very visibly, in the front row. Well, these were the exact circumstances in which the Indian sitar and surbahar players Nishat Khan and Irshad Khan, then aged 17 and 13 respectively, made their Southbank Centre debuts in 1977, performing with their father Imrat Khan. Almost five decades later, the pair return to the Southbank Centre in March 2024, performing this time in our Royal Festival Hall, as part of South Asian Sounds.

Nishat, Irshad and Imrat aren’t the only members of their family to have performed at the Southbank Centre. Vilayat Khan, brother of Imrat, and widely considered to be the greatest sitarist of his age, also made a number of appearances on our Royal Festival Hall stage. In November 1993 he presented a duet in Ragas Shahana and Bageshiri, performing with his son Shujaat Khan on the surbahar, and the tabla player Sabir Khan, not-related. And in 2002 Vilayat returned to give what would be his penultimate concert performance before his death, performing one long raga that he subsequently released as A Night to Remember – live at the Royal Festival Hall.

Four years later, Vilayat’s brother, Imrat, was honoured at the Southbank Centre in a 70th birthday celebration, at which Imrat’s sons (Vilayat’s nephews) Nishat and Irshad both performed. Ravi Shankar and Imrat Khan aren’t the only South Asian musicians to receive special tribute concerts in our venues. In October 2009 we hosted a tribute to the Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, led by his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat, who passed away in 1997, gave a much-acclaimed performance in our Royal Festival Hall in 1988 as part of that year’s WOMAD festival. His powerful performance received a standing ovation from the audience and helped catapult him to much wider UK acclaim.

Like his namesake, the sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan has also enjoyed a standing ovation from a packed Royal Festival Hall. In 2005, joined by his sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, he presented a Rag Durga followed by a Jhinjhoti in a scintillating two and a half hour extravaganza that brought the auditorium to its feet. The trio have made several returns to our stages since, most recently in 2019, but that much-acclaimed 2005 performance was far from Amjad Ali Khan’s first appearance with us. In 1995, accompanied by Anindo Chatterjee and Ustad Shafaat Ahmed Khan, he recorded a Live at the Royal Festival Hall album, and two years later he returned for Rasyatra, a 50th anniversary celebration of India’s independence. The concert, which went on to tour a number of UK venues, also featured a historic duet of Shivkumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia, as well as dance from notable exponents Madhavi Mudgal and Kelucharan Mohapatra

Flautist and bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia was a regular visitor to the Southbank Centre in the 1990s, with Rasyatra representing his third appearance here in three years.In 1995 he performed Raga Bageshri alongside ghatam player Vikku Vinayahram and Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari on the tabla, in a concert that was released as At the Royal Festival Hall. And the following year he gave a seductive performance of ragas Durgawati and Mishra Shivaranjani in a concert recorded as Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Chaurasia was also involved in two memorable Southbank centre concerts in the 2000s; Creation Mondiale in the Royal Festival Hall in 2001, a remarkable crossover concert which saw seven pieces from the Indian classical raga repertoire performed by Chaurasia and L’Orchestre Transes Europennes, led by Pablo Queco; and in 2007 he joined Zakir Hussain in a tribute to tabla player Ustad All Rakha.

Like Shankar, Khan and Ali Khan, Chaurasia’s legacy has been picked up by the next generation, in his case his nephew, Rakesh Chaurasia, who himself performed in our Royal Festival Hall in 2016. Rakesh, along with the British Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, accompanied the celebrated carnatic vocalist Bombay Jayashri in a concert that brought together South Asian and ‘Western classical’ music. Speaking of the concert Jayashri said ‘While Indian classical music focuses on melody, one raga at a time, and improvisations, Western classical music gives importance to harmony and layering. Integrating them was a challenge’.

Among the many other notable names of South Asian music to have appeared in our venues are Bismillah Khan, the Hindustani musician credited with popularising the shehna, who gave a performance of Raga Puriya in our Queen Elizabeth Hall in November 1993 (above). And the British-Hindustani sitarist Roopa Panesar has also starred on our stages several times, beginning with her April 2002 debut in our Royal Festival Hall when she accompanied Vilayat Khan, along with Kishen Maharaj Ji and Hidayat Husain Khan, an experience she’s since described as feeling as if ‘time stood still’.

But our connection to South Asian music has always extended to much more than offering a London stage on which the greats can perform, we’ve also looked to champion emerging talent. In October 2019, the guitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun showcased his debut album Anomaly in a special Purcell Room concert, whilst last year saw Carnatic singer Supriya Nagarajan bring her latest work MELTWATER to the same space. And among the emerging artists championed through our recent Purcell Sessions series are Sri Lankan producer Gnarly, percussionist Sarathy Korwar, and the British-Bengali producer Bishi.

This platform for new South Asian musical talent continues in South Asian Sounds, which brings together contemporary and classical music, with performances from artists including Malkit Singh, Pratibha Singh Bahgel, Noor Bakhsh, Kaushiki Chakraborty, Khiyo, Jason Singh and collective Dialled In.