Sheema Mukherjee is a fearless and highly-acclaimed sitar player, celebrated for her classical roots and her innovation on the world stage (Transglobal Underground, The Imagined Village). In this episode, we explore Sheema’s family legacy (her uncle was the great Nikhil Banerjee), and how her upbringing immersed her in both rigorous tradition and a freewheeling, improvisational musical spirit.
Sheema shares her approach to making the sitar sing and how each note in the Indian classical scale has emotional weight and purpose – a philosophy which resonated with Paul Weller’s own attention to meaning and feeling in songwriting. We hear how her connection to Paul first came via The Imagined Village, when he joined the project to revisit ‘John Barleycorn,’ and how he later sought her out for True Meanings, asking her to bring sitar and a prayer to the song ‘Books.’
Sheema also performed the song at the Royal Festival Hall as part of Paul Weller’s orchestral concerts = captured for the Other Aspects album and film.
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