ASIAN BEATS: Aref Durvesh is the tabla player/ drummer for the sensational Susheela Raman (below)

It was the moment of reckoning for Asian fusion music when Susheela Raman and Nitin Sawhney walked away with coveted trophies at the BBC World Music Award 2002—the first of its kind—in London recently. While Raman was judged the best newcomer, composer and musician Sawhney won an award for “boundary crossing” for successfully fusing different music and cultures.

The two musicians are a testament of the times. In a blurred landscape of fusion music today, Carnatic ragas and Tamil lyrics blend sinuously with African beats and European instruments. It may be an incongruous mix, alright, but it has its takers. In fact, the fastest growing sector in Asian music is fusion aka Asian Underground, say industry insiders.
“Bollywood and bhangra are still at the top in terms of sales but fusion ‘world’ music is the fastest growing sector,” confirms Manan Bansali of CD Guru, a leading record sales company. And as the genre comes of age, Indian musicians find themselves thrust alongside western music icons like Madonna and Paul McCartney.

It’s hip to cross boundaries, enthuses Polly Eldridge of Narada Records. She says that British Asian music is providing a kind of refreshing sound that is exciting and “not just Asian but also European.”

“Bhangra attracted a big audience but now people have become more educated and aware about new and different types of music. Left-wing, Asian Underground and Asian Soul have made fans listen to new music and side-step bhangra,” says Jhonny Khalsi of the Asian Dhol Foundation.

Mark Strippel of Indiasound says that while bhangra now sells less copies than in the heady days of the late 1980s, it is in a healthier state. “There are now far more releases—approximately 300 a year—and the NRI consumer is comfortable paying £10 for a bhangra cd,” he adds.

Tracing the emergence of Indian world music, Viren Jasani of the Asian Music Circuit (amc) expounds that bhangra, popular for its strong beats and dhol, evolved to music created by the likes of Aalap, that started playing keyboard and guitar with it. This laid the foundation for hugely successful groups like Fundamental and ADF.

With Asian music shops not registered to file sales returns, it is hard to quantify sales. “If Asian sales were included then bhangra and Bollywood albums would surely be hitting Top 20 in the UK Album Charts,” Strippel points out.

There are other signs of growth. For the first time UK bhangra has achieved success in India with Stereo Nation leading the charge. Following closely are The Sahotas, Partners In Rhyme and Jazzy B. There are also signs of mainstream recognition with Selfridges department store launching its own bhangra compilation with record label Indiasound, and non-Asian faces like DJ Markie Mark also achieving success and No. 1 status.

Southbank Centre, that holds music events around the year, has seen a rise in massive crossover audience from jazz to world music. “The number of events have jumped four times, from 24 per year to over 100 per year now, thanks to the rise in interest in fusion music,” says amc’s Jasani.

Britain is so taken up with the new wave that Radio 3’s controller Roger Wright announced he would extend the station’s world music coverage further, with a new scheme to discover the music of modern Britain, ranging from Punjabi wedding songs to Jewish lullabies, not to speak of the Asian Undergound. And as remix man Bally Sagoo says, Indians will soon be in a position to take over.