American Bhangra: American Bhangra

The title is an overstatement and the cover design is ordinary but underneath the clumsy packaging thumps the heart of a very good debut bhangra album. Most of it doesn’t sound as American as you’d expect from the name. There’s an English-language Californian rapper named Kolosol on three of the tracks (he sings hopeful sleaze about beautiful sexy ladies with legs that don’t stop), and a hip-hop bounce buried in some of the others. A piquancy in “Ek Tara” might have been inspired by Eminem, or house music. Otherwise, American Bhangra owes more to the British-Punjabi origins of modern bhangra itself than any American fusion. Mandeep Taunk has described the meticulous creation of the music as “excruciating,” but his album is the opposite: it sounds like the work of a confident man, cocky and cheerful, out to have fun with those beautiful sexy ladies, the ones with unstoppable legs.