How I create... with musician Nabihah Iqbal

It’s fair to say that Nabihah’s Iqbal route into life as a professional musician is somewhat atypical. After studying an M.Phil in History at Cambridge she pursued a career in law and passed the bar, before her love for music pulled her down a different path.

Initially performing and releasing music under the name Throwing Shade – as whom she contributed vocals to a number of tracks by close friend Sophie – Iqbal switched to using her birth name with the release of her 2017 debut album Weighing of the Heart. Beyond her music, you may be familiar with Iqbal as a broadcaster; a frequent host across BBC Radio, she is also one of the longest running residents on London’s iconic NTS.

Ever evolving as an artist, Iqbal’s inter-disciplinary approach has seen her connect to visual art through collaborations with artists including Zhang Ding, Wolfgang Tillmans and a commission to compose music for the Turner Prize, and also saw her appointed guest director of the multi-arts Brighton Festival in 2023.

Having previously appeared here as part of our Purcell Sessions series in 2023, Iqbal renewed her connection with the Southbank Centre in March 2025 with the London premiere of her first classical composition, ‘What Psyche Felt’, by Manchester Collective.

When and where do you find yourself at your most creative?

I get inspiration from everywhere. But over the last few years, even though I love being in a huge city – I’m born and bred in London and I get a lot from that – I actually feel like the best place for me to be creative is the countryside. I made most of my last album, DREAMER, and most of my classical piece, ‘What Psyche Felt’, in the countryside. So maybe the trick is to spend enough time in the city to get what you need, and then head out somewhere really quiet and serene and let it all distill.

How do you know when an idea is worth developing into something more?

There’s no formula for this, it’s more about a feeling. I think most people don’t realise how hard it is to make a track or a piece of music – even just making one song – and how many hours of being in a studio or sitting with your instrument it takes to get to that creative epiphany. Sometimes that can feel frustrating. It’s definitely a labour of love. But it’s all about that feeling when you hit that breakthrough moment when you really feel it, and you know you’re on to something with a lot of potential that can develop into a really exciting new idea.

And from that point you’ve just got to keep going with it and not stop. You can’t stop to eat. You can’t stop to sleep. Nothing. You just have to keep going until it’s all out of your mind and your heart and then hopefully you’ll at least have a skeletal version of something that you can carry one working on.

Which tools are key to your creative process?

A lot of books, poetry books. When I’m trying to get into the zone with making music I love reading a lot of poetry. It’s so inspiring and can really open up doors in your mind to new worlds of creativity, particularly when you’re feeling a bit stuck.

I write everything by hand and I make a lot of notes, so having a notebook and a pencil is important – always a pencil, I only write in pencil and fountain pen. In that initial creative process, when you’re jotting down ideas, pencil is best; especially when I’m writing out lyrics and then it’s easy to change them.

Who are you creating your work for, and how free are you to create the work you want to create?

I feel totally free with the work that I want to create, which is a blessing because you hear of a lot of people who don’t feel that way, or who feel certain pressures to create something specific. But I feel that with creating music, art or anything, the stuff that shines through, that people can relate to the most, or that stands the test of time, is the work that feels the most authentic to its maker. And you can’t be authentic if you’re trying to create work that has to satisfy outside pressures or expectations. Sometimes it’s difficult to move beyond that, but when you do it feels so good.

I think I’ve learned to appreciate this over the last few years, so when I make my music I’m not thinking ‘ok, what is this genre?’ ‘what are people going to think?’ Instead I just make it and I try to put everything into it. Even with this latest piece with the Manchester Collective, there’s so much emotion – my emotion and feeling and things that I’ve been thinking about – in the music, and I really hope people can relate to that.

In terms of who I’m creating my work for, I guess I’m creating work for the consumption of everyone; for anyone and everybody. I never want to compartmentalise my audience. I want my music, whether it’s this classical piece or one of my other creations, to feel accessible to everyone. I just want people to be able to have an emotional response to it, regardless of who that person is.

How do you stay disciplined, and dedicated to your work?

Well, there’s no other option. I think it’s another thing that people perhaps don’t realise, just how much self-discipline you have to have as an artist, particularly an independent artist. Being someone who’s totally self-employed, you have to motivate yourself to do the work.

Every day I feel so grateful for being in this very special position of being able to make music, which is my favorite thing in the world. And to live off it, and to be able to share that music with people all around the world, whether that’s by them just listening to it, buying records, or coming to a show and seeing the way the music makes people feel. But you can’t take anything for granted, so I make sure to always remind myself of how amazing this whole experience has been so far. Even if I never get to do anything else again, even if I die tomorrow, I’d be so happy with everything I’ve done so far.

You just have to make the most of it; the universe, or God, or whatever you believe in has given you this opportunity and if you don’t reflect that back by working as hard as you can and trying to be as sincere as you can, whilst doing the best that you can, what’s the point? So, that’s how I stay disciplined. That and obviously I have to pay the rent.

What do you do when you hit a wall; when you feel unmotivated or uninspired? How do you overcome this?

So, as I mentioned, wherever I’m working, whether it’s in my studio in London, or at a residency, I’ll always have some poetry books on the desk. And if I can’t think of an idea, if I feel stuck – which happens to everyone all the time, it’s part and parcel of trying to make music – then I’ll stop and I’ll start reading something. And hopefully that will give me new ideas or just help to kind of reset my mind, help me to recalibrate.

If I feel really stuck, even after that, I take a break. Sometimes that’s best, because otherwise you just run yourself into the ground feeling unmotivated or uninspired. So I might hang out with friends as well. Sometimes I’ll be in my studio and won’t feel like I’m getting anywhere, so then, well, I could try and keep working all night, or maybe I should just take a break and go and meet some friends, maybe go to the cinema. Taking a break isn’t a bad thing, because hopefully when you then get back to work you’ll be more productive as you’ll feel fresher.

Who do you look to for feedback?

Well, this is a tricky question. It’s not easy to share your music with people when it’s not finished. It’s a very delicate, fragile stage. It can really throw you off if you believe in something, but then you play it to someone when you know it’s not finished and they say something that makes you feel dejected or paranoid – it can ruin the whole thing. So you have to have special people who you know you can trust, people who will listen to it objectively with open ears and give you constructive feedback, but also tell you what they really think and not just try to please you.

I had one friend who was that person for me – someone I could go to for feedback on anything that was a work in progress – but sadly they passed away. And I don’t have another person like that and to be honest the whole process of making music since they died has felt a lot more lonely. So it’s hard, but I also think you feel it in your body when something’s right. Maybe when I’ve got a version that’s close to finished, I’ll play it to people. But it’s tough, I haven’t worked that out since my friend left.

How different is your creative process now to when you first began as an artist?

Everything is different because life is so different. My first record came out in 2013 and so many things have happened to me since then. I guess the biggest difference has come with the experience of playing more and more shows – giving live performances in front of different types of audiences from all around the world. And that’s invaluable, because it’s not just the performance, but afterwards when people come and talk to you about your music they want to tell you stories linked to tracks so you know their experiences. And I appreciate all of that.

Actually, it’s that process that has probably affected my creative process the most, because now I think about all of those things when I’m making music; I think more about ‘how is this going to make somebody feel?’ or I think about how it makes me feel. I think the collective experience of listening to live music, watching a performance together is really special and also can’t be replicated. So I feel like the last ten or 11 years of playing gigs has made a big impact on my creative process, it’s widened my mind.

What does success feel like?

You tell me [laughs]. Success is such a variable term, I think it’s different even just for one individual at different stages of their life. A lot of people will equate success with financial success, and I guess that in the world we live in, you can’t really avoid that definition. I haven’t quite reached the penthouse-living making-money-in-my-sleep stage of life yet, so I can’t really report back on that.

But I can definitely say that I feel like I’ve had a lot of successes so far, and I feel really happy about the work I’ve done. If you make music that affects just one person in a positive way then your work is done because it can be life changing for that person. So there’s different ways of measuring success, but I do feel good about everything I’ve done, however I also feel like there’s a lot more I want to achieve. I don’t feel I’m in a position where my life and career has been so successful that now I can take a backseat and chill out, that still feels very distant to me, I’m still in the hustle phase of my life.

Is there a piece of advice you’ve received that you often find yourself returning to?

Always value yourself. You have to value your own work, and you have to be able to stand your ground in that respect as well. Because if you don’t value yourself, nobody else will. And in the world of music, everyone wants something for nothing. So you have to be very strong in that sense, no matter who you are.

Also, one thing my friend I used to go to for feedback always said to me was that ‘you should always try and do new things with your music’. There was a time where I never made music with my vocals, nor tried to write lyrics; I thought it wouldn’t work because I’m not properly trained. But my friend pushed me to do that, and now I think adding the human voice and words to a piece of music really adds an unfathomably deep layer to a song. So that advice really changed things for me because it made me see music in a whole new way. It really made me challenge myself, both in using my voice but also in the recording process with mixing my voice, which means I’ve been learning new skills too.

What’s the most recent thing you learned about yourself through your work?

When you make art, whatever type of art that is, for as long as you live there is no finite point to your creativity. I think this is something I’ve learned about myself through the experience of trying to compose a classical piece of music. It’s the first time I’ve tried to do anything like this, the first time I’ve tried to write music for instruments that I don’t play, so I’m putting my brain into a completely different gear.

And it’s made me look to other artists and see that creativity, and the drive for being creative never stops. People’s art or music, or whatever they create, simply evolves and changes with age – artists will make work until old age and can then look back at 50 or more years worth of not just work, but of ideas and evolution, and I think that’s important to remember. It’s something I’m learning about myself as I go on, and just being able to look back at ten or 12 years ago and think ‘wow, what’s it going to be like in ten more years?’ How much will I have learned and discovered about myself? How much will I have been able to share with the world and with people who want to listen?

How do you know when you’re done?

This is difficult with music because you can easily get stuck in a sense of it never quite being finished. It’s why you need deadlines, otherwise it can get tricky. So for this latest commission there was a clear deadline and when you put a record out you have deadlines within production and release timelines so you have to get it done by that point. That definitely helps.

But that’s not to say that afterwards, when you listen back to the music you’ve put out in the world, music that is literally pressed on records and CDs, you won’t be thinking ‘oh, I should have done that differently’. But then those thoughts become the mental notes you make for the next time around.

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