Rebecca Franks meets Instrumentalist winner Jasdeep Singh Degun, who is shining a light on Indian Classical music
Instrumentalist Jasdeep Singh Degun
It’s the first time that a sitarist has been named Instrumentalist of the Year at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards in the category’s 34-year history – and Jasdeep Singh Degun is delighted. And shocked. ‘It was truly surprising,’ the British player tells me. ‘It doesn’t happen to Indian Classical musicians, especially someone like little old me from Leeds. I feel like they’re not just spotlighting me but the entire Indian Classical community.’
Degun might be ‘very humbled’ by the award, but it’s fair to say he’s had a memorable year. It kicked off in September 2022 (when the RPS judging period opens) with Orpheus, produced by Opera North, where he was artist in residence, and South Asian Arts UK. This reimagining of Monteverdi’s Orfeo brought together Indian Classical and European Baroque traditions, setting the opera during a multi-cultural wedding in a Leeds back garden. It was, in the words of The Stage, an ‘outstanding cross-cultural success’ – and it was also shortlisted for the RPS’s Large-Scale Composition award this year. The rest of the season saw Degun tour his debut album Anomaly, release a single from Orpheus, be nominated for an Ivor Novello Award and, most importantly, ‘I got engaged as well!’
The RPS panel particularly commended Degun for ‘showing us all the beauty and boundless possibilities of the sitar’. Yet it wasn’t where Degun’s musical life began. In fact, he only took the sitar up at the relatively late age of 15, when he began studying with a ‘very inspirational’ teacher and mentor, Ustad Dharambir Singh. He’d learned to sing at primary school and that vocal training didn’t go to waste when he fell in love with his new instrument. ‘I’m a man of melody,’ he says, explaining that he trained in a school of sitar playing that prizes a singing style.
For Degun, the sitar has ‘boundless capabilities and possibilities for doing all the embellishments of Indian Classical music. You have to be like a vocalist to be a sitar player. The life of the instrument comes from the pulling of the string.’ He’s carved out a career as a solo concert soloist, bringing the sitar to audiences around the UK and Europe – but it’s not the only hat he wears. Being a sitar player means being a master of improvisation
