And now for something completely different....   (I think I'm smarting a bit from Razib's comment that Foreign Policy blogging is so done but I've got a partial rescue  ;-)

On a biz trip earlier this month, I was in my hotel room in the outskirts of Stockholm, horribly jetlagged, and watching MTV Sweden @ 5am....   when the video for Punjabi MC's 'Mundian To Bach Ke' came on.  I've heard the song many times -- it's a.k.a. "Knight Bhangra" in the Indo-American 20-something club subculture because it mixes in the familiar "Knight Rider" riff that we all grew up with in the 80s.   However, this was the first time I'd ever seen the video.

It was played in the middle of MTV Sweden's Bjork-day (seriously).  Given how few Indian people I imagine are floating around in Sweden, I have to accept that the crazy, mainstream Swedes actually like the tune/video.  (unlike the case in the UK where this kind of music receives some of the marketing spin & segmentation of Rap in the US).  Pretty cool stuff.  I was a little taken aback and sent a little spam to my "brown friends"

I subsequently found out that the song is actually in the very popular-in-Europe Buddha Bar CD compilation series and that's likely where it got it's first 'break' into the mainstream.  (a history of the track/album on the European charts is here).   From there, it did very well in Germany cracking the Pop/Dance top 10.

My friend & fellow ex-MSFTie, Manish Vij, wrote me back with this review & series of vidcaps:

...Panjabi MC's 'Mundian To Bach Ke' is a huge hit on MTV Europe. I know y'all have been wondering how to make a hardcore rural bhangra song into a Europop hit, and apparently one way to do it is beautiful brown people, monkeys, Hindu gods, breakdancing, mortification of the skin, funny-looking brown people, psychedelic Hindu letters, and a chopsockey mob hit parody. It's actually a pretty fun video, it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Fun stuff!  I like the video because it so skillfully creates a modern cultural statement that nevertheless clearly draws in indigenous influences while being innovative in it's motif.   The "prince and princess" dancing in the park is so done in Indian pop music.   These guys brought in a Pulp-Fiction-esque urban grit to the mix.  Tyler Cowen would be quite pleased with this display of emergent, globalized culture  ;-)

The full video can be found here:  http://www.vivatv.de/4251.php  (for how long?)   Look for "Klickbar", Webvideos, and then 'Mundian To Bach Ke'... (direct link to the high bandwidth Windows media version).