Asian Crazy: A.S. Kang and "Terian Gulabi Buliyan"

When I first started getting into world music outside of Irish music, I relied a lot on the Putumayo collections of music. This actually came about because of a chance meeting. When we lived in New Orleans, Megan was doing some stories for inclusion in a collection called something like Music Lived Here. She would go to the places where famous New Orleans musicians lived and try to learn about the houses and talk to the people who owned them, were responsible for preserving them, and the like. One day we were walking in the Bywater and since we were near one of the houses, she wanted to go take a look. We were walking around the house, just taking a look at it when a young woman inside noticed us. Megan explained what she was doing and she invited us in and showed us the renovations taking place inside. It turned out that she was the wife of Dan Storper, the founder of Putumayo World Music. He wasn't there so we didn't get to meet him, but she handed us three or four Putumayo CDs on our way out. One of the CDs was Asian Groove, which was my favorite of that little windfall. It was also the backbone of some the music we played when we first started DJing the Global Music Show. We now own about 35 Putumayo CDs, and they are excellent musical surveys of world music.

All this comes to mind because I first heard today's chill Asian song from that selfsame Putumayo Asian Groove CD. Terian Gulabi Buliyan is by renowned bhangra and UK-based Punjabi singer A.S. Kang. Born to a Sikh family in the Indian Punjab, he moved to the United Kingdom while a teenager. He is responsible for some of the biggest Punjabi hits over the past four decades. Kang got his start in the 1970s, and his first ever recording was a major hit in the United Kingdom. In 1978 he recorded the biggest ever Punjabi hit, Giddian di Rani, and in the process became the first UK-based Punjabi singer to break through in the Indian music market. He was the main inspiration behind the UK bhangra revival of the 1990s. He continues to put out hit songs to this day. Terian Gulabi Buliyan can be found on his 2000 CD release Gani, and, as previously mentioned, on the Putumayo Presents: Asian Groove CD (2002).