Oscar-winning music composer AR Rahman has created a Punjabi track called “Nimma Nimma” for London Olympic’s opening ceremony according to The Wall Street Journal. Guess this should not come as a surprise considering that Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle is directing the opening ceremony for the London Olympics.

AR Rahman and Boyle have worked together in “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours,” and this will be their third successful collaboration.

The Punjabi track for the London Olympics will be  ”a hybrid desi sound with some brass elements and lots of voices … celebrate the Indian influence in the U.K.,”  write WSJ. And AR is no stranger to hybrid desi sounds. He has been in the forefront of creating hybrid desi sounds for Indian films, and has worked with  Asian musicians from the UK since the 1990s.

Indian musical influence in the UK  mostly refers to Punjabi music that is also sometimes referred to as Asian music. The Punjabi musical influence is not limited to the UK alone. Over 21 years ago this musical genre crossed the English border and arrived on the shores of Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai film industry. I would like to submit that Apache Indian aka Steven Kapoor was the harbinger, whose music influenced Indian filmmakers way back in the 1990s.

It was over 20 years ago that Apache Indian cut his first single “Movie Over India“, but it was the 1992 track “Chok De India” that proved to be a big hit in India. Here was a musician, who successfully combined bhangra and reggae sounds and sang a song about India and arranged marriages. Now add to this musical template a liberal dose of Punjabi phrases and that made for a sure winner.  Apache Indian’s music got lots of airtime in India thanks largely to the newly introduced MTV music channel in India.

Apache Indian’s hybrid music was an instant hit in India. So, is it any surprise then that AR Rahman worked with Apache Indian? In 1996 the two worked together for the Tamil film “Love Birds,” and created this fusion song “No Problem.”

Besides Apache Indian, the other major singer from UK to make it big in India during this time was Bally Sagoo.  In the last few years the number of Asian musicians has grown quite substantially. Leading this new brigade out of the UK to the US and the rest of the world are musicians like Jay Sean and Panjabi MC. These musicians synthesize all kinds of influence from around the world starting from R&B, popular, Bollywood to dubstep.

Here is Panjabi MC with American singer Jay Z, who worked together almost 10 years ago on this hybrid number called “Beware.”

Jay Sean is the new, emerging face of Asian music coming out of the UK. Sean has successfully worked both in India and the US. Here is Sean’s latest video with Florida-based singer Pitbull.