A number of young South Asian women are making inventive, cutting edge music, channeling the spirit of Grace Jones, Patti Smith and punk rather than Raj Kapoor. Are we living in a Golden Age? Bill Gates and other optimists think so. Others, who look at life as a glass-half-empty proposition, say we humans have never behaved so badly. Sometimes, as is the wont of a middle-aged hippie cum malangiya type, I agree with Gates, before slipping back to the dark side and thinking, no, all really is going to hell in a hand basket. There is one corner of the world though, where I am unrelentingly a positive thinker: contemporary South Asian music. There is just so much interesting, cutting-edge stuff being produced, be it dance/club, jazz, funk or pop, that one can hardly keep up. New artists and bands, drawing upon their subcontinental roots to greater or lesser degrees, pop up daily, in Canada, in the UK, in Germany and in the old countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India too. These artists have about as much interest in Bollywood, Raj Kapoor songs, and the ghazal as a fish has in a bicycle.

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