Asian Massiveness: Karsh Kale and "One Step Beyond"

Our random tune for today is by Karsh Kale, an Indian-American musician considered one of the early developers of the Asian Underground genre of music. Karsh Kale mixes music such as Indian classical with electronica, rock, pop and ambient music. He was born Uttkarsha Kale in West Bromwich, England and moved to Brooklyn when he was three. He took an early interest in tabla and music in general, spurred by his father who introduced him to traditional Indian classical music, rock and early hip hop. Kale taught himself the tabla, developing his "electric tabla" style. In 2000, he was invited by Bill Laswell to join Tabla Beat Science along with Zakir Hussain, Talvin Singh, Trilok Gurtu and Sultan Khan, and their album Tala Matrix is considered one of the most influential Asian fusion albums to date. About this time, Kale became the first Indian-American to be signed to a solo recording contract in the US, and released his first solo album Realize, with it's "Asian Massive" sound in 2001. He has written music for Bollywood and crossover films, television series such as HBO's True Blood, and with artists such as Sting and Norah Jones. This song, One Step Beyond, appears on Kale's 2001 debut album Realize.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karsh_Kale; http://karshkale.com/