Culture: A Cultural Grand Salaam

The brash young man seizes the stage of Manhattan's Broadway Theater, sings and dances to a vigorous bhangra and, feeling his rock-star-in-the-making oats, shouts, "Are ya with me, Bombay? ... Are ya with me, New York?" This scene from the new musical Bombay Dreams poses the cultural question of the moment. South Asian pop--Bollywood movies, Indian music and dance, the whole vibrant masala of subcontinental culture--not only enthralls a billion Indians at home but also spans half the world, from Africa and the Middle East to Eastern Europe and the Indian diaspora in Britain and the U.S. Now Indi-pop is close to a critical mass in the U.S. The 2 million American Desis (mainly people of Indian and Pakistani heritage) have made it a burgeoning niche industry. But can it finally catch on in the mall theaters and dance clubs and living rooms of America? Will ya be with it, New York? New Orleans? Nebraska?

The cultural stew is simmering and ready to boil over. Just as Indian food graduated from big-city exotica to mainstream international cuisine, Indi-pop culture could become a new part of American pop culture. It certainly has the energy and glamour to curry favor with more than those who favor curry. It might even gain the hipness it has in Britain--where, as Meera Syal, the original librettist of Bombay Dreams, boldly said, "Brown is the new black."

This process, notes writer Hanif Kureishi, "is inevitable, because culture moves forward by taking new and original voices from the margin and moving them into the center. You saw it with Elvis. You saw it with Toni Morrison." If Bombay Dreams is a hit, you may see it with Indian composer A.R. Rahman. You can already see it in the critical and commercial success of novelists like Kureishi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy. Their success has led the way for a slew of South Asians, including Michelle de Kretser (from Sri Lanka), Monica Ali (from Bangladesh) and Mohsin Hamid (from Pakistan).

One of the most fertile areas for East-West cross-pollinations is music. At S.O.B.'s in New York City, Rekha Malhotra, a.k.a. DJ Rekha, plays bhangra, a cool fusion of electronic dance and hip-hop beats with traditional Indian folk sounds. So popular is Rekha, 33, that her parties have become tourist attractions. "I can go anywhere in the country," she says, "and someone will go, 'Oh, I've been to Basement Bhangra.'" At Sonotheque in Chicago, Brian Keigher, 31, spins a popular fusion style known as "Asian underground"--fast, irresistibly danceable music studded with sitars and thumping tablas. Wade your way through the crush on the dance floor, and you will find Indian students, Pakistani locals from Devon Avenue, white clubgoers from the North Side and West Side blacks, always hungry for a new sound. At music clubs and universities, crowds can listen to Funkadesi, a band that mixes Indian music with reggae and funk.