Today I went and saw Vega, a String Quartet, perfrom Beethoven at the Carlos Museum as a part of Friday noon time concerts. Opus No 135 was a brain fuck.

To qoute Vikram Seth from Equal Music, "the heart can't bear too much of this music, except from time to time". That's all I have to say about that.

This album flows more than anything I've done - yet it's the most diverse," says Nitin Sawhney. "It's also the most personal." Human is the sixth album by cultural pioneer and cutting edge musician Nitin Sawhney. Drawing on influences ranging from urban R&B to Indian classical music and the Velvet Underground, this record is his most autobiographical.

Daring and emotionally direct, each track encapsulates a certain space in time - from the joy and pain of birth in 'Eastern Eyes', to being the only Asian kid in a school dominated by the National Front ('Say Hello'), to the headlong teenage rush of the single, 'Falling', to the sense of integrating two cultures on the ecstatic song 'Fragile Wind'.

"I was thinking about William Blake's 'Songs of Innocence And Experience', and how as you grow up you become disillusioned with things you trusted when you were young - like parents, school, the media, politicians - but in so doing, you gain a sense of who you are," says Sawhney.

Human is charting new, more intimate territory. On previous albums such as Spirit Dance (1993), Migration (1995), and Displacing The Priest (1996), Sawhney has explored outward questions of religion, politics and racial identity. 1999's Beyond Skin looked beyond cultural boundaries, while his last album, the millenial epic Prophesy, involved a trip around the world and spanned the range of human experience - from aborigines in Australia, to a choir of Soweto schoolchildren, to a New York taxi driver alienated by technology.

Ms. Andrews, across the pond, today informed me of the release of "Human". I have listened to it and to put it simply it is brilliant. Go check it out right away at!

nitinsawhney.com

The heart is deeper than the rivers and seas Who has fathomed the heart! Everything is there in it Ships and storms, oars and boatmen. There, in the heart, is the whole wide wold Vast like a tent outstretched He who learns the secrets of the heart come to know God

• Sultan Bahu, a 16th century mystical poet of Punjab.

I was talking to a friend earlier about Sufi Music and was making seemingly outrageous comments like there have been no sufi music concerts from which I have not walked away, without love bursting from my heart.

Anyway I want to put down my experiences of my brush with Sufi music. The first crack at Sufi Music came when Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan hit it big via some remix stuff on the Indian music charts. His voice was too powerful for the remix spin nonsense they tried to put on top of the real thing.

Then at a SPICMACAY festival I saw a full qawaali ensemble perform. It was sheer magic, in a hall where people were suppose to sit in a typical Indian style; cross legged without shoes on, as they listened to music. With no offense to the musicans in question, there were a few musicians who put large sections of the audience asleep previously. And this was an audience who was at a level dedicated to such music.

But at this performance, there was sheer rapture. The music went on all evening, hypnotic clapping mixed with, what to the very casual listener sounds as wailing, it's wailing but for the divine. And when I walked out into the night, I still remember how full I felt, as if some hunger had been satisfied.

The next encounter with Sufi music came while watching the movie, Dead Man Walking. I think what made that movie that extra powerful is the soundtrack, with Nusrath again doing the honors. Face of Love and the Long Road Home are simply two great songs. I have heard these two many times since and I have given them away on CDs I have made etc etc. The fundamental principle in Sufi Music is this mystical longing for Love. And then doing this using a very personal concept of the divine; usually apporaching it through the heart than the mind.

(to be contd)