Asian Underground music—a fusion of South Asian genres with western breakbeats created for the dance club scene by DJs and musicians of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi descent—went mainstream in the U.K. in the late 1990s. Its success was unprecedented: British bhangra, a blend of Punjabi folk music with hip-hop musical elements, was enormously popular among South Asian communities but had yet to become mainstream. For many, the widespread attention to Asian Underground music signaled the emergence of a supposedly new, tolerant, and multicultural Britain that could finally accept South Asians. Interweaving ethnography and theory, Falu Bakrania examines the social life of British Asian musical culture to reveal a more complex and contradictory story of South Asian belonging in Britain. Analyzing the production of bhangra and Asian Underground music by male artists and its consumption by female club-goers, Bakrania shows that gender, sexuality, and class intersected in ways that profoundly shaped how young people interpreted “British” and “Asian” identity and negotiated, sometimes violently, contests about ethnic authenticity, sexual morality, individual expression, and political empowerment.

South Asia’s diaspora is among the world’s largest and most widespread, and it is growing exponentially. It is estimated that over 25 million persons of Indian descent live abroad; and many more millions have roots in other countries of the subcontinent, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. There are 3 million South Asians in the UK and approximately the same number resides in North America. South Asians are an extremely significant presence in Southeast Asia and Africa, and increasingly visible in the Middle East. This inter-disciplinary handbook on the South Asian diaspora brings together contributions by leading scholars and rising stars on different aspects of its history, anthropology and geography, as well as its contemporary political and socio-cultural implications. The Handbook is split into five main sections, with chapters looking at mobile South Asians in the early modern world before moving on to discuss diaspora in relation to empire, nation, nation state and the neighbourhood, and globalisation and culture. Contributors highlight how South Asian diaspora has influenced politics, business, labour, marriage, family and culture. This much needed and pioneering venture provides an invaluable reference work for students, scholars and policy makers interested in South Asian Studies.

Discos, clubs and raves have been focal points for the development of new and distinctive musical and cultural practices over the past four decades. This volume presents the rich array of scholarship that has sprung up in response. Cutting-edge perspectives from a broad range of academic disciplines reveal the complex questions provoked by this musical tradition. Issues considered include aesthetics; agency; 'the body' in dance, movement, and space; composition; identity (including gender, sexuality, race, and other constructs); musical design; place; pleasure; policing and moral panics; production techniques such as sampling; spirituality and religion; sub-cultural affiliations and distinctions; and technology. The essays are contributed by an international group of scholars and cover a geographically and culturally diverse array of musical scenes.

Focus: Popular Music in Contemporary India examines India’s musical soundscape beyond the classical and folk traditions of old to consider the culturally, socially, and politically rich contemporary music that is defining and energizing an Indian youth culture on the precipice of a major identity shift. From Bollywood film songs and Indo-jazz to bhangra hip-hop and Indian death metal, the book situates Indian popular music within critical and historical frameworks, highlighting the unprecedented changes the region’s music has undergone in recent decades. This critical approach provides readers with a foundation for understanding an Indian musical culture that is as diverse and complex as the region itself. Included are case studies featuring song notations, first-person narratives, and interviews of well-known artists and emerging musicians alike. Illuminated are issues of great import in India today—as reflected through its music—addressing questions of a "national" aesthetic, the effects of Western music, and identity politics as they relate to class, caste, LGBTQ perspectives, and other marginalized voices. Presented through a global lens, Focus: Popular Music in Contemporary India contextualizes the dynamic popular music of India and its vast cultural impact.

Rupa Huq investigates a series of musically-centred global youth cultures and re-examines the link between music and subcultures.

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The exciting diasporic sounds of the London Asian urban music scene are a cross-section of the various genres of urban music that include bhangra "remix," R&B and hip hop styles, as well as dubstep and other "urban" sample-oriented electronic music. This book brings together a unique analysis of urban underground music cultures in exploring just how members of this "scene" take up space in "super-diverse" London. It provides a fresh perspective on the creativity of British South Asian youth culture, and makes a significant sociological intervention into this area by bringing the focus back onto urgent issues of "race" ethnicity alongside class and gender within youth cultural studies.