Talvin Singh OBE (born 1970) 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. After collaborating with Siouxsie and the Banshees and Björk in the early 1990s, Singh released his debut album Ok which received the Mercury Music Prize in 1999. Singh has since collaborated with a variety of acts including Madonna and Massive Attack. Early life and career Singh grew up in Leytonstone and began playing the tablas as a child. At the age of 16, Singh went to India for two years where he studied tabla under Sangeet Acharya Ustad Lachman Singh Seen of Punjab Gharana. He then returned to the UK after just one year. In spite of this classical training, Singh's tabla playing was not accepted by British promoters of classical Indian music, as he incorporated too strongly his western influences. By the late 1980s, Singh had decided to turn towards the fusion of sounds. In 1991, he came to prominence by both playing tabla and singing on the "Kiss Them for Me" single by Siouxsie and the Banshees : the single peaked in the Billboard Hot 100 at number 23. Singh then became the sixth member of the Banshees and took part with them as second headliners of the inaugural Lollapalooza tour. Two years later in 1993, he was recruited by Björk to be her percussionist and director on her 1993 album, Debut. In late 1995, Singh founded the Anokha club night with promoter Sweety Kapoor at East London's Blue Note, where drum'n'bass DJs and South Asian punk bands went head to head with the amped-up sounds of his tabla and percussion. Producer and DJ State of Bengal (Sam Zaman) soon became the core of Anokha alongside Singh & Kapoor, and his sets alongside Singhs help to inspire a whole generation. Singh and Zaman would make fresh tracks, cutting them on Vinyl press hours before the Monday Anokha sessions where they would be showcased. Guest spots by LTJ Bukem and others made Anokha a Monday-night hotspot in London, and Singh signed to Island for an Anokha compilation including several of his own productions. He worked as a remixer, for Blondie on their "Maria" single". In 1998, Singh released