The Music of Pakistan includes diverse elements ranging from music from various parts of South Asia as well as Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and modern-day Western popular music influences. With these multiple influences, a distinctive Pakistani music has emerged.
Tinariwen is a collective of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara region of northern Mali. Considered pioneers of desert blues, the group's guitar-driven style combines traditional Tuareg and African music with Western rock music. They have released nine albums since their formation and have toured internationally.
Talvin Singh OBE is an English musician, producer, and composer. A tabla player, he is known for creating an innovative fusion of Indian classical music and drum and bass. Singh is generally considered involved with an electronica subgenre called Asian Underground, and more recently as Indian and/or Asian electronica.
Karsh Kale is an Indian-American musician born in England. Known primarily for his experimental tabla playing within electronic music contexts, Kale's career has seen him take on roles of an Indian classical tabla player, singer, songwriter, film and TV score composer and DJ. He is considered a pioneer of the Asian Underground genre, bringing elements of Indian music to Electronica and Dance. His career highlights include touring as the supergroup Tabla Beat Science, 6 solo studio records from 1999, the seminal 2005 album "Breathing Under Water" with Anoushka Shankar, scoring and production for the 2019 Bollywood smash hit "Gully Boy", curating 6 acclaimed songs for the Indian Coke Studio in 2012, amongst many others. Kale is also popular for his eclectic collaborations with Sting, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Sultan Khan, U2, Norah Jones, Yoko Ono, and Herbie Hancock to name a few.
Amadou & Mariam are a musical duo from Mali, composed of the Bamako-born couple Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia (vocals).
Anoushka Hemangini Shankar is a British-American sitar player and musician, as well as occasional writer and actor. She performs across multiple genres and styles—classical and contemporary, acoustic and electronic. In addition to releasing seven solo studio albums beginning with Anoushka (1998), she has also worked alongside a wide variety of musicians, including Karsh Kale on the full-length collaboration Breathing Under Water (2007) and her father Ravi Shankar. She has received nine Grammy Awards nominations and was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live and to serve as a presenter at the ceremony. She was the youngest and first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield.
Tabla Beat Science was a musical group founded in 1999 by Zakir Hussain and Bill Laswell. Its style consists of a mixture of Hindustani music, Asian Underground, ambient music, drum and bass and electronica.
Shujaat Husain Khan is one of the most acclaimed North Indian musicians and sitar players of his generation. He belongs to the Imdadkhani gharana school of music. He has recorded over 100 albums and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album for his work with the band Ghazal with Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor. He also sings frequently. His style of sitar playing, known as gayaki ang, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice.
Cassius Khan, is a Canadian Indian classical musician known for playing the Tabla while singing.
TG Collective are an eclectic British-based ensemble, evolving from the successful acoustic guitar trio, Trio Gitano, in 2006. The TG Collective are based in Birmingham, England. Their sound draws on many influences, in particular Flamenco, Gypsy Jazz, Jazz and contemporary Classical music, with interchanging shapes and sizes of ensemble within a performance. The group is centered on two guitarists, set alongside a core of double bass, flute and violin and percussion, whilst also featuring flamenco dance in some performances.
Bamidele Olatunbosun Sosimi known as Dele Sosimi, is a Nigerian-British musician.
Invisible System is the pseudonym for the UK & Africa producer Dan Harper whose music involves a fusion of Ethiopian, dub, reggae, techno, trance, drum and bass, jungle, acid, psychedelic, folk, post-punk, goth and rock.
Kuljit Bhamra MBE Hon DMus is a British composer, record producer and musician whose main instrument is the tabla. He is best known as one of the record producers who pioneered the British Bhangra sound and for his many collaborations with musicians from different genres and continents. His MBE was awarded in the Queen's Birthday Honour's List 2009 with the citation For services to Bhangra and British Asian Music. In July 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Exeter.
In Concert 1972 is a double live album by sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and sarodiya Ali Akbar Khan, released in 1973 on Apple Records. It was recorded at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City, in October 1972, and is a noted example of the two Hindustani classical musicians' celebrated jugalbandi (duet) style of playing. With accompaniment from tabla player Alla Rakha, the performance reflects the two artists' sorrow at the recent death of their revered guru, and Khan's father, Allauddin Khan. The latter was responsible for many innovations in Indian music during the twentieth century, including the call-and-response dialogue that musicians such as Shankar, Khan and Rakha popularised among Western audiences in the 1960s.
Sohini Alam is a British singer of Bangladeshi descent who sings in the bands Khiyo, Lokkhi Terra, and GRRRL. She has performed internationally on stage, radio, and television and worked on music for dance, theatre, and film. Alam is a founding member of the arts company Komola Collective and co-music director of the documentary film Rising Silence. After providing vocals for dancer/choreographer Akram Khan's DESH, she spent three years touring internationally with his show Until the Lions.
World Music Network is a UK-based record label specializing in world music.
The Dhaka World Music Festival also referred to as Dhaka World Music Fest is an international music festival held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, featuring national and international musicians from different genres. The festival covers an extensive scope of performances from local folk and traditional music genres to world fusion and contemporary world music across the globe. The festival is perceived to be a cardinal platform in Bangladesh to witness the true fusion in the form of world music.
Kishon Khan is a Bangladeshi-born British jazz pianist, composer, arranger and music producer.
The Asian Music Circle was an organisation founded in London, England, in 1946, that promoted Indian and other Asian styles of music, dance and culture in the West. The AMC is credited with having facilitated the assimilation of the Indian subcontinent's artistic traditions into mainstream British culture. Founded by Indian writer and former political activist Ayana Angadi and his English wife, Patricia Fell-Clarke, a painter and later a novelist, the organisation was run from their family home in the north London suburb of Finchley.
Justin Thurgur is a British trombonist and composer/arranger.
