IANS

There is more to the South Asian music scene than Bollywood, says Indian American filmmaker Nikhil Kamkolkar, releasing the soundtrack album for his new film "Indian Cowboy", a romantic comedy with a Desi flavour.

"The amount of talent out there cross-pollinating new genres, bringing together a rich musical heritage mixed in with their own experiences is very exciting. This album gives you a taste of where we are headed."

Written and directed by Nikhil Kamkolkar, an immigrant from India now living in New York, "Indian Cowboy" itself will soon be released in selected theatres in North America.

Inevitably perhaps, this soundtrack is very diverse in its sensibilities. It offers an exotic blend of music that may be summed up as "Rock on! Fall in Love-Love", he says.

The 60-minute-plus soundtrack CD, delivers Bollywood-inspired 'Indie rock', Bhangra from Britain, desi diva Falu's sultry vocals, Karsh Kale's blend of soaring Indian classical vocals with electronic tabla and electronica.

The velvety "Indian Cowboy" title track by Uday Benegal goes with Jayesh Gandhi's talented band Alms For Shanti, and several cutting edge Indie bands and artists from Seattle to New York and beyond.

A trip-hop style rendition of "L'Amour" from Georges Bizet's Carmen - a 'trip-hop'era in French - is a good example of this album's musical diversity.

Asked to describe the soundtrack album, Kamkolkar says, "It's a perfect date album. Play it in your car while riding with your significant other."

Kamkolkar is pursuing innovative marketing techniques, including social networking on myspace.com, for this album and his film's upcoming release.

"We are giving away a free MP3 download of the title track featuring Alms For Shanti on www.myspace.com/kamkolkar. This is where our audience hangs out, and we love to hang out with our audience", he adds.

Artists featured include Karsh Kale, Alms For Shanti, Gabrielle+G.A.R, Spyglass, Leslie Nuss, Val Emmich, Falu with Karyshma, and Kam Dhillon, and the album is now available at several retail outlets including amazon.com.

Kamkolkar graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and worked both in technology at Microsoft, and in special effects at Softimage in Los Angeles. His focus remains telling unique stories cinematically.