My name's Nabihah Iqbal and I'm a musician, producer, DJ and broadcaster from London and
I'll be performing at the V&A Friday Late playing some of my music that I've just released recently.
Music's always been the most favourite thing for me for my whole life and I never actually planned
to be doing music full time. I actually did law before, and I was planning to be a barrister so
I did the bar and after that I worked in human rights law for a little while in South Africa,
but then the music side of things just started gathering their own momentum so I decided if
not now then when, so I just was like I'm gonna go for it and see where it leads me.
[Background singing: love is here and love is now /
love is shy and love is proud / love won't wait to save the day]
People often ask me about what influences my music and sometimes I find it hard to pinpoint specifics
with regard to particular music that I make just because I feel like
when you're creative everything that you put out is a product of everything that goes in,
but then a lot of the influences they might come out in quite a sort of subconscious way. The music
that I'm performing at Friday Late is a collection of what I've labeled as lost songs really because
earlier this year at the beginning of the first lockdown my music studio was burgled and I lost
all the work that I'd been doing for the last two years and all my music that was meant to
be sort of prepped for my next album, and at the time it was a real shock to the system because
now I've got to start everything again from scratch. But in the meantime I
sort of salvaged a few bits and pieces from private SoundCloud links and USB
sticks but I felt like there were ideas that I still really wanted to share.
[Singing: if death is freedom then kill me now she said as she took his hand /
standing side by side before the gates of horn and ivory
before unforgiving destiny, before fate that grants no mercy]
I released all of this music as an interim album and I've called it Blue Magic Gentle Magic, and
a lot of it's influenced by things like the English countryside because some of that music
I made whilst I was working in a residential studio in Devon called Devon Analogue Studio which
is really remote, and I was there all by myself and you just are surrounded by a beautiful English
countryside and a lot of sheep and I was going for runs every morning and just taking in all the
nature and then going back to the studio to work. And also things like I think Thomas Hardy as well
because I started reading his books seriously last year and I read Tess of the d'Urbervilles which I
think is the best books I've ever read in my life, and now i'm going through all of them one by one.
And his writing and especially the way that he's descriptive about nature
and the countryside and the feelings and emotions that just come from being part of that.
That all really influenced this the types of sounds that you hear on this record.
When it comes to creative process I feel like for this music a lot of the process was ignited
by reading a lot of poetry by Keats. In my studio I always keep a few poetry books because
I think that if I'm stuck for something then just reading a few pages of anything can
be a really nice way to just get your ideas flowing again and it might be for writing
lyrics or it might just be for like a feeling or emotion you know that you want to try and capture.
So when the V&A got in touch about the possibility of me doing this performance I really wanted to
take the opportunity to kind of expand a bit with the creative collaborations so I asked
one of my favourite visual artists Tom Flynn who's designed some album art work for me before if he
would like to provide the projections for the live performance. Obviously just looking at this space
it's so huge with high ceilings and all these old statues and stonework inside, I feel like once
the projections hit all these different shapes and materials it's going to look so special. Sometimes
I feel like people don't pay enough attention to the setting and the environment of live music and
in a city like London there are so many amazing and interesting spaces that are waiting there just
to be kind of appropriated for different creative purposes. And it's one of the reasons why with
my own events and gigs I'm always interested in putting on parties in places which aren't
traditional venues – my first record launch was in an old library behind Leicester Square and so
this feels like – you know – going up a few steps from that and being able to have the chance to
perform in one of the most iconic institutions of the UK is just – feels really special and humbling
and also in my own minute way kind of adding something to the whole legacy of the V&A as well.
[Singing: You say]
For me music is definitely the most spiritual art form
and there's something about it which is impossible to quantify or to explain really
but it's the reason why people make music and I suppose every musician in their own way
is on a continuous quest to try and get to the essence of that you know – what's special about
music, why why does it bring people together. With music now, whether I'm listening to it or
preparing for a radio show or thinking about my own music in the studio or how I present it live
and I feel like you just have to be so open-minded about everything. I'm always up for learning about
new things discovering new music sharing the things that I find that I love, and
trying to make music that has evoked some sort of emotional response in the listener as well.