Read an exclusive excerpt from Missions, Mantras, Migrants and Microchips!
Perhaps even more important for the generation now in their twenties and thirties is the spread of rap music, spanning America, Canada, the UK and India. South Asian rappers may come from Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi backgrounds, they may or may not feel an intimate link to the subcontinent, they may rap in English, Hindi, Bengali, Hinglish or Banglish, but they exude a diversity and energy that has attracted millions of fans and views to their music. Bhangra, popular music from the Punjab, has become popular in the UK—fused with other musical genres—as well as America. Sandhya Shukla has described the ascent of Apache Indian in the UK. Riz Ahmed and the Swet Shop Boys as well as Nish rose in UK, Raja Kumari in Canada, Anik Khan and Habib in the US, but via the Internet they have crossed seas and continents as part of a global culture, blending their own with the musical genres they draw upon from Africa, the Caribbean and Black America.
Red Baraat is a popular music fusion effort, based in Brooklyn, New York, but touring the nation and world year after year. The Punjabi ‘exuberance of life’, fused with other musical forms, has made its way through Brooklyn into the wider world and is a mark of the new times of India in America. Red Baraat is both one of the creators of world music and a part of this global cultural movement. At a concert performed in Symphony Space, New York City, on 10 March 2020, an exuberant crowd was encouraged to stand, wave and dance in the aisles, while a few joined the band on stage. Red Baraat played the final number prancing through the theatre aisles, mingling with the audience, blending players and listeners into one.
The unique potpourri of Indian and Western music created by Falu poses a contrast to Norah Jones’s blend of popular Western musical forms. Born Falguni Shah in Mumbai… called by some the ‘Devi Diva’, Falu was rigorously trained in Indian classical music… She emigrated to the United States in 2000, and became the vocalist for the Indo-American band Karyshma. Then she began performing with her own band. Her musicians in one concert might be South Asians or Americans, using guitars, piano, drums and harmonium, or they might be more emphatically Indian, playing violin in the Indian manner, and Indian drums.
She moves back and forth between English and Hindi. Once her son was born, and she thought of him as South Asian American, she taught him about his dual heritage through music. This culminated in ‘Falu’s Bazaar’ (2018), which was nominated for a Grammy as best children’s album. As the only South Asian at the 2019 Grammy’s, she said she felt accepted as an American, and was as at home here as she had earlier been in India.
Bursting upon the comedy scene of late in the 2020s is Zarna Garg, born in India, trained as a lawyer, but a stay-at-home mom for sixteen years. Searching for a career path in her forties as her children grew older, her daughter Zoya encouraged her to try stand-up comedy. Almost effortlessly, she began to make an enormous hit in comedy clubs and attracted an immense number of viewers on TikTok.
Unafraid to criticize her family, her culture, herself, Garg now has a comedy special, One in a Billion, on Prime Video, a feature film, and a prospective series. Calling herself ‘a funny brown mom’, Garg is unique and always hilarious.
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