Nabihah Iqbal is a musician, producer, DJ and broadcaster from London.

Her debut album, ‘Weighing of the Heart’, was released via Ninja Tune in December 2017 and has since garnered huge critical acclaim from the likes of The Guardian, Pitchfork, Dazed, The Observer, Q Magazine, BBC Radio 1 and 6Music. She is currently an artist-in-residence at London’s iconic cultural institution, Somerset House, where she is writing and recording her second album.

Aside from working on her own music, Nabihah has hosted a bi-weekly show on NTS Radio for over 6 years now, exploring musical traditions and cultures without boundaries. The success of this show, and the following that Nabihah has built up as a DJ and tastemaker, caught the attention of the BBC and she has been one of their radio residents since June 2018, presenting shows on BBC Asian Network and BBC Radio 1.

She has toured extensively around the world, both as a live act and as a DJ. Live highlights include performing at both the Tate Modern and Tate Britain, as well as the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Barbican, K11 Art Institute in Shanghai, Synthposium in Moscow, Inner Varnika festival in Australia and SXSW in Austin, TX. Key DJ dates include Glastonbury, Warehouse Project, Citadel Festival, Boiler Room, Worldwide Festival and Bestival.

Between 2013 and 2017, Nabihah released a string of EPs on labels such as Ominira and No Pain in Pop, as well as Ninja Tune. She has received several commissions from other corners of the arts, where she has collaborated with Chinese artist Zhang Ding, been commissioned by Tate to compose music for the Turner Prize, collaborated with Wolfgang Tillmans as part of his Tate Modern exhibition and was recently involved in a group performance at the Barbican as part of its major Basquiat retrospective.

Last year, Nabihah launched her ‘Glory To Sound’ project at Somerset House in London. She has been curating a series of events (talks, live music, club nights) which explore the reasons why we love music. Guests include Wolfgang Tillmans, David Olusoga, Gilles Peterson, SOPHIE and Kassem Mosse. You can find out more here.

Nabihah studied a joint honours BA in History and Ethnomusicology at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and it was during her time as an undergraduate that her musical horizons widened further. She took classes in various music styles including Gamelan and the Turkish classical tradition. Her main performance instrument was the Sitar. After SOAS she moved to Cambridge to study a postgraduate MPhil focused on South African history. She then moved back to London, where she did a law conversion degree, passed the Bar and simultaneously started getting more involved in throwing parties and making music.

Top Song