The NY Times has done an article on Indian music in NY
which gives the current status and how it got there

The original articles are:-
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/arts/music/25INDI.html

and this one tells you where to go in NY:-
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/arts/25BINDI.html



India Resounding in New York
By JON PARELES

Published: June 25, 2004

WHEN "Bombay Dreams," the musical about making it in the Indian film
capital known as Bollywood, was imported from London to Broadway this
spring, it introduced some listeners to the madcap eclecticism of filmi,
the song-and-dance numbers that punctuate Bollywood's sprawling
musicals.

But Broadway was the last to know about the rendezvous of Indian and
Western music. The profound improvisations of South Asian classical
music — from revered figures like Ravi Shankar as well as younger
masters like the tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain — have long been welcome
in the city's concert halls, although the classical circuit is largely
quiescent in summer.

Jazz musicians have been absorbing ideas and collaborating with Indian
musicians at least since the 1960's. Hip-hop has latched on to Indian
rhythms, most notably last year when Jay-Z added a rap to Panjabi MC's
"Mundian To Bach Ke" to remake it as "Beware of the Boys." In New York's
clubs, the sounds of Bollywood and other South Asian fusions have been
drawing crowds for years: some to dance, some to listen, some to mingle
and network.

As often happens, the music follows demographics. In the 1960's, a
change in immigration law brought a wave of white-collar Indians and
Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to the United States. Now their sons and
daughters are establishing their place in the arts as well as in the
wider American economy, and they are making sense of a musical
upbringing that is likely to include Bollywood tunes alongside hip-hop,
Western classical music, Indian classical music, rock and jazz.
"Everybody's got a different diaspora," says the producer, vocalist and
disc jockey DK Khambata.

Aladdin, a Bangladeshi comic who grew up in Spanish Harlem, is
developing a one-man show for the Public Theater about growing up
surrounded by hip-hop and salsa, tentatively titled "Indio," and a play
called "The Halal Brothers," about a Muslim restaurant in Harlem. "Our
generation lived with the complexities of growing up in America," he
said.

For South Asian and Asian-American musicians, producers and disc jockeys
who have been building their own scene in New York, the latest East-West
hybrids are not just occasion for musical connections and experiments.
They are also affirmations of an identity that grows ever more complex
and cosmopolitan. "If you come from India," Ms. Khambata said, "you
can't help integrating the social aspect. There are so many things that
just get intertwined in the music."

Vijay Iyer, a pianist who brings his Indian background to jazz, said:
"Making music is very much aligned with activism and sociopolitical
cultural work, and that actually is something that does unite this
community. It's not just making music to be cool or look hip or be sexy,
but actually to make a difference in the world. Especially in New York,
that's a mobilizing force for the South Asian community."

Beginnings in England

The New York wave of South Asian music was preceded by influential South
Asian hybrids from England. "Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music," a
documentary by Vivek Bald now making the rounds of film festivals,
details the way established Indian and Pakistani communities in London
confronted racism with music. (The documentary was partly financed by
six years of monthly dance parties in New York, also called Mutiny, at
which Mr. Bald and friends were disc jockeys mixing South Asian music
with hip-hop and club beats.)

In the 1970's and 80's, bands in London merged Indian elements — notably
a 4/4 Punjabi beat called bhangra — with other music that connoted
resistance, like punk, reggae and hip-hop. And in the 1990's, studio
wizards came up with styles that became known as Asian Underground,
which swirled together South Asian music with the beats and textures of
electronica.

The music traveled to New York, not just at Mutiny but also at another
party that continues to take place monthly at S.O.B.'s: DJ Rekha's
Basement Bhangra, which has been renamed Bhangra Against Bush during
election season. "It's very urban, very New York, and that's what makes
it exciting," Rekha said. "We play big-room hip-hop and a little bit of
dancehall as well as bhangra, and the music has gotten a lot more
intense. The drums are more pronounced; the production is much better.
The music has come of age."

Regular visitors include groups of young South Asians who participate in
intercollegiate bhangra dance competitions around the country. "I can
look down from the D.J. booth and see the kids on the team, doing these
highly choreographed, acrobatic moves," she said. "They're
second-generation kids trying to focus toward cultural preservation,
reinscribing a tradition which may or may not have existed back in
India."

Two years ago, Rekha started another dance party: Bollywood Disco, which
takes place monthly at Blur in SoHo.

AR Rahman, who wrote the songs for "Bombay Dreams," is one of the top
modern filmi composers, but also one of the most Western-flavored, and
while the Broadway show hints at styles from across the subcontinent,
many numbers end up sounding like mildly exoticized Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Through the decades, filmi have tossed together everything from electro
to salsa to surf music to funk with vocals that hint at ancient Indian
traditions; there's a daring shamelessness to the way they steal from
and one-up their sources.

"They've been sampling the West longer than the West has been sampling
them," said Mr. Iyer, the pianist who has been melding Indian structures
with jazz.

The sounds of older and nuttier filmi, and some of the American music
they drew on, have been drawing crowds to Bollywood Disco. "We play some
of the really kitschy stuff, the ripoff of the ripoff," Rekha said. "I
had grown up on 1970's and 1980's Bollywood, and I'm really into the
retro stuff, but I had never gotten much of an opportunity to play it.
Now, we get a lot of people who are just Bollywood freaks. They request
songs; they sing along with them. And there's really no other place
that's embracing it this way."

A Spiritual Undercurrent

A few weeks ago, the sound of a man singing a ghazal, a love poem from
an ancient Persian tradition that made its way to India, hovered above
the room at Kush, a lounge on the Lower East Side done up in
quasi-Moroccan style. So did the haze of a drug that's now illegal in
most other New York City clubs: tobacco, wafting from hookahs on the
bar.

There was a buzz of conversation from a crowd of people in their 20's,
about half of whom looked Indian or Pakistani. Soon, an electronic bass
line slipped in below the ghazal, and then the muffled thump of a
downtempo drumbeat. It was suave international lounge music; it was also
unmistakably Indian. Karsh Kale was at the turntables, wearing one
earphone to cue the next song and keeping an eye on the crowd; he smiled
as a few people started to sway. It was a night of Kollective, a weekly
gathering for fans of Asian Massive, a New York blend of South Asian and
Western music.

"It's not really to define a particular South Asian identity, but to
explore many different forms of how South Asian identity has also become
a Western identity," Mr. Kale said. "In South Asian art, what I feel
most attracted to is that there's a sense of struggle and tragedy in the
music that is always kept intact. It's eloquent at the level of
Shakespeare in being able to express emotion. I'm not trying to share
some sort of spiritual or political sentiment as much as I'm trying to
share pure sentiment."

Kollective returns to Kush in September, but Mr. Kale, a tabla drummer
and producer as well as a disc jockey, will be busy this summer. Tonight
he will be among the disc jockeys at Turntables on the Hudson, along
with a kindred spirit from India: Guarav, who is one-half of the Midival
Punditz, a pair of disc jockeys and producers from New Delhi. Mr. Kale
also leads a band, Realize, that mixes electronica and rock with Indian
vocals and complex tabla rhythms.

"The greatest thing about the culture that I come from, and that I'm
able to share within a club setting or on an album," Mr. Kale said, "is
that even though we live in a modern society and work at a modern pace,
there's this timelessness in the music of South Asia that reminds us
about being reflective at the same time as we're living in the moment."

'A Second Language'

Mr. Iyer has collaborated with disc jockeys and Indian classical
musicians as well as jazz improvisers. His own compositions and
arrangements reach deep into both the labyrinthine harmonies of modern
jazz and the rhythmic cycles of Indian music. Mr. Iyer said he was
inspired to look into Indian music after hearing the way the pianist
Randy Weston drew on African music. Just as Mr. Weston's piano can sound
like a set of tuned African drums, Mr. Iyer's piano can suggest the
skittering patterns of tabla drumming.

Mr. Iyer grew up in Rochester, surrounded by American culture as much as
by the Indian music his parents had brought with them. "I went to
hundreds of Indian music concerts," he said. "Without trying to pretend
that I'm an expert on it, because that's something you have to devote
your whole life to, it's a second language that something in my heart
was really drawing me toward. It was really about trying to make sense
of who I am. I'm not trying to recapitulate Indian music or pretend that
I'm playing Indian music."

In a solo set on Wednesday night at Merkin Hall, he will be playing
American songs arranged so that they are, as he puts it, "camouflaged"
by Indian rhythmic cycles. His other local performances include a set
with the jazz quartet that includes his longtime collaborator, the
saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, and an appearance at the Lincoln Center
Festival in a program organized by DJ Spooky called "Transmetropolitan,"
on a bill that also includes DJ Rekha and an Anglo-Indian producer,
Nitin Sawhney.

"It's very trendy right now to be associated with all things South
Asian," Mr. Iyer said. "I don't know how long that's going to last. But
I can't escape it; this is what I am. And I'm going to be with this
forever."




To Take Part

Published: June 25, 2004

A sampling of Indian and other South Asian pop and jazz performances in
New York City this summer.

Tonight

TURNTABLES ON THE HUDSON , the Frying Pan, Pier 63, Hudson River at 23rd
Street, (212) 560-5593). With Kollective: Karsh Kale and Derek Beres,
Guarav of the Midival Punditz, Nicodemus, Mariano and Fred BNX. 10 p.m.;
admission is $10.

BOLLYWOOD DISCO , Blur, 286 Spring Street, near Hudson Street, South
Village, (212) 252-2397. With Eddie Stats and Dub Club. Doors open
tonight at 9; admission is $5 before 10 p.m., $10 after.

Monday

KARSH KALE , Cielo, 18 Little West 12th Street, near Washington Street,
West Village, (212) 645-5700. Trading sets with DJ François K. 9:30 p.m.
to 3:30 a.m.; admission is $5 before 10, $10 after.

Wednesday

VIJAY IYER , Merkin Concert Hall, 129 West 67th Street, Manhattan, (212)
501-3330. Solo piano; part of "Pianos Are Forever," a benefit concert to
finance a school for piano technicians. Other performers include the
pianist Major Scurlock and the singers Lenora Zenzalai Helm and Colleen
Becton. 8 p.m.; tickets are $18 and $24.

July 15

BHANGRA AGAINST BUSH , S.O.B.'s (Sounds of Brazil), 204 Varick Street,
at Houston Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940. With DJ Rekha and
others. Admission is $13. Free mojitos from 7 to 8 p.m. Free bhangra
dance lessons at 9 p.m.

July 21

TRANSMETROPOLITAN , Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500.
With Vijay Iyer, DJ Rekha, Nitin Sawhney, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daniel
Bernard Roumain, Colson Whitehead, Beth Coleman, Ibrahim Quraishi, Tanya
Selvaratnam, Colson Whitehead and Eclectic Method. DJ Spooky is curator.
8 p.m.; tickets are $25.

July 30

BOLLYWOOD DISCO , Blur, 286 Spring Street, near Hudson Street, South
Village, (212) 252-2397. With DJ Rekha and others. Doors open at 9 p.m.;
admisison is $5 before 10, $10 after.

Aug. 25

VIJAY IYER , Makor, 35 West 67th Street, Manhattan, (212) 601-1000. With
the trio Fieldwork, on a double bill with Mephista (Sylvie Courvoisier,
Susie Ibarra and Ikue Mori). 8 p.m.; tickets are $15.

On Broadway

"BOMBAY DREAMS," Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street, (212)
239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays
at 2 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $42.25 to $101.25.

JON PARELES