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Meet Talvin Singh, the man responsible for bringing the cultural hybrid known as Asian underground into the mainstream.
In the 1990s, Talvin Singh used to be the poster child for hyphenated identities. Growing up in England, the son of immigrant Indian parents who had fled Idi Amin's ethnic cleansing in Uganda, he straddled many cultures and as many oeuvres.
For this percussionist-DJ-composer-artist, music has transcended culture and language.
His 1998 album OK won him the UK's prestigious Mercury Prize, and signalled the emergence of Asian underground in mainstream music.
Since then, he has collaborated with Indian and Western artistes, even composed music for Bollywood, and with his latest commission - the music for Star TV's Mahabharat - is now doggedly paddling in the mainstream.
Talvin went to India at 15, to train in classical tabla. On his return, he collaborated with various Western bands such as Bjork and The Future Sound of London.
He founded Anokha ('unique'), a London nightclub where Asian DJs and bands played with Singh's percussion. Talvin's eclectic mix of Asian and Western music acquired a cult following.
His long experimentations with percussion and electronica yields a sound, which while rooted in the rhythms of Indian classical music also reflects the latest in sound technology.
In Dubai for the spring fever concert, Talvin Singh rounded off a memorable month of concerts in Istanbul, a successful art show in Mumbai of his video and sound installations, a birthday spent with his mentor Ustad Zakir Hussain, and a highly successful publicity exercise for his latest assignment - music for the epic serial Mahabaharat, to be telecast soon on Star TV.
One does a double take at the artist avatar. But Singh says he has always been deeply involved with art.
"I had a five-week art show running in Mumbai, featuring my photography and sound installations. I have always been involved in art. In the late 90s when we were running Anokha as a club, a lot of our crowd was art students. They were the people who made me happen."
It's easy to pick him out in a crowded lobby, thanks to his remarkable punk bouffant.
Friendly and down-to-earth, the Mercury Prize-winner spoke about the perils of being a pioneer, making music with the likes of Madonna, and turning unapologetically mainstream.
He hopes to return to Dubai for a vacation when he can enjoy all that the city has to offer.
How was your experience of performing at the Dubai Show?
It was good to jam with Atif Aslam. The musicians in my band were amazing, like Niladri Kumar and Smadj.
I said to Niladri, "You do realise you can never have a concert like this"... you can't imagine having an acoustic sitar and Persian oudh at a rock concert.
We were playing traditional music, but really loud like at a rock show, with all the effects and distortions.
We didn't change the music, the repertoire was still the same - the sound and energy was different.
Did the show go down well with Dubai's multicultural audience?
The audience was new to our kind of sound. A lot of them had come for Atif Aslam - who is really big, and young Asians love him.
More than his music, he has this positive energy that people love. You can feel his positive energy even before you have actually met him. But he doesn't have an audience apart from the desi (subcontinental) crowd.
With me, it's the other way round. You'd expect with the kind of music I play, I'd have a desi following. But I don't.
Atif says he taught himself how to play the guitar. How important do you think formal training is to the making of a musician?
I think to sustain a musical career, it is very important. You need a balance of everything: you could have ideas, inspiration, what we call aameed (divine blessings), which just happen.
And at times it doesn't happen. And in those moments, what sustains you is what you have been taught. When you train formally, you are taught how to maintain your musicality, how to keep it in qabu (control).
That is very difficult to achieve for an untrained musician. With musicians who are untrained - usually pop, because it has to be pop - it's either there or absent. With a trained musician, sometimes the (inspiration) is there, but even when its not, the (music) still happens. Do you know what I mean?
The rest of it is luck. There are so many talented musicians, who are trained, but haven't had their share of their limelight. It's about so many different things, you can't really pin it down.
Sometimes Indian music can be so contrived.
It's good when people like Atif break on to the scene; they also make music more accessible. In the sense of his young listeners feeling they can do it too, they can be musicians too - because he's such a normal guy.
So, do you think it's important to be as accessible in your music - like Atif is?
In a sense, yes. Indian music has gone through many turbulent periods. It was rare for someone from regular family to take it up as a profession. Given the social and cultural structures, music is not really accepted by normal professional families.
They are usually quite discouraging when it comes to taking up music as a profession, because of the negative connotations it carries. People like Atif actually help making music a part of our life.
Have you always been interested in Sufiana?
I had a Muslim guru, and was brought up in a Sikh family, so I grew up having that kind of mirror for my music and my culture. The essence of Sikhism is that - though it's been changed to mean other things.
My parents discouraged me from taking up music because they wanted me to be true to my profession. They did not want me to take up something and do it without any integrity.
What difference did winning the Mercury Prize make to your life?
The record company wanted me to start making pop music, when I had actually won the award for a different reason. I left the company. The contract in a creative partnership doesn't mean anything if the relationship is gone.
Do you think technology is really going to change the business, is it the death of record companies?
There are two sides to the business today, a strong divide. There's music for ring tones, digital tracks that can be free or paid.
Everyone has an iPod, with 3000 tracks - a box of chocolates, and not a full meal. There are three artistes I know who are only famous because of their MySpace profiles. It's just virtual fame.
And then there's live music, which actually has more value than recorded music today. Everyone wants to do live events. That's good for artists who are more of performers and can play live.
And which are your next big projects?
When Bobby Bedi, the producer of the Mahabharat, met me three years back, he wanted to get a great team together for this project and I hopped on.
I am doing the music for Mahabharat, which is going to be a feature film, TV serial and gaming. I will compose and direct all the music.
I am thinking of starting a virtual band - just four characters. But right now it's pretty difficult to fit anything in my schedule. I have to be very selective about the projects I take up.
My interest is not in the TV serial, which of course I am involved with, but rather the entire Mahabharata franchise. I will be doing the movie as and when it happens, as well as the game.
Percussion is my forte and interestingly, they used a lot of percussion in those days. But you don't get such instruments now. So I'm trying to develop and re-develop new instruments just for the Mahabharata project.
The best way to describe what I am trying to achieve is sound animation. I am a tabla player and so katha (story) to me is the ultimate way to express and that's how the Mahabharata was told.
For music such as this, it's very important to be aware of the visual aesthetic. That period was the renaissance of music. It was beyond language - and that's why I didn't feel the need to make my music contemporary. It is contemporary on its own.
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