Performance is really important to me in terms of what I get out of myself and what I want to give. Immediately after the concert you gave at Foyles Bookstore, I literally ran across the river to catch Archie Shepp in concert at the Southbank Centre. During that show’s intermission I was talking about your concert earlier that evening with two audience members who told me that you are active in community work and education. Tell me about your work with children and adolescents here in London. I do lots and lots of different things. Currently I am doing work with a big band at a school in East London—we are developing music and we are doing my music. That’s kind of interesting. I do a lot with young people who have never played music. I am also introducing the young people to Indian music and making beats and so on. When I am working with young people it is very “hands on” and we just play music really. I have a way of getting through to young people because a lot of my music is quite easy in some ways—it
is built on simple melodies or simple rhythms or looping base lines or looped drum patterns. So it works very well to have that headspace to work with young people because I am quite open-minded. I think the great thing about produced and electronic music is that you can make it very easily. Young people kind of have a great mastery of technology instinctively even if they have never used it before. And they are also kind of experimental in terms of what they are prepared to play. So they’ll listen to a crazy loop they’ve made, at times by accident, and they will really dig it. What do you think about the place of music education today with the arts programs being cut and children having increasing difficulty in accessing music or any of the arts. Well, I think that music as we all know is an amazing thing to grow up with. The more people who can be exposed to making it the better because it is such a great thing to be dedicated to but also because it changes the way you think about the music you hear and life in general. I think people should be exposed to how music is created and what it