Indian Entertainers Reach for the West (Wall St Journal)

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On Friday at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, A.R. Rahman will kick off “Jai Ho: The Journey Home,” a tour that promises to rival that of any pop superstar. Re-creating his studio arrangements live, the Academy Award-winning film composer of “Slumdog Millionaire” will be flanked by costumed dancers, acrobats from Cirque de Soleil and a Mongolian contortionist. State-of-the-art 3-D light-mapping technology will conjure virtual movie sets, offering a spectacle inspired by the music’s cinematic sources.

The question is: Who will come to see it?

“Normally, I get a very mixed South Asian audience—Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati people from India; Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis,” Mr. Rahman, 44, said recently. A native of Chennai (formerly Madras), he has performed several times in the U.S. since 2000. “Because of the success of ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ we’re hoping at least a percentage of the audience will be new,” he added, implying white audiences.

Even before “Slumdog,” Mr. Rahman was one of the world’s top-selling recording artists. Now, his aspiration to reach beyond his native fan base reflects a broader trend in Indian entertainment—especially cinema.

“There’s an obsession now with reaching mainstream Americans, with winning Oscars,” said Aseem Chhabra, a New York-based film critic for the Mumbai Mirror. “If ‘Slumdog’ can get them, and it was made by a white man who told an Indian story, then why can’t we Indians do it?”

Still, Mr. Chhabra said, the inroads to mainstream America start with homegrown audiences. “Ninety percent of the audience still has to be people living in India and Indians living outside of India. That’s the bread and butter of these Bollywood films.”

“Kites,” a new Bollywood romance shot in New Mexico, has been released in two versions, one produced expressly for American consumers. The same is true for “My Name is Khan,” whose central character is a Pakistani Muslim struggling with prejudice in post-9/11 America.

One need only travel as far as Jackson Heights, Queens, to be reminded that Bollywood has a firm toe-hold on American shores. Close to the 7-train stop at 74th Street, the numerous Indian video stores tucked among sari shops offer as much variety as local buffets. They also sell CDs—in keeping with Bollywood’s predilection for musical numbers—and tickets for live events, including the “Jai Ho” tour. A 12-foot-tall banner of Mr. Rahman in a dazzling white shalwar kameez is duct-taped to the side of a clothier.

As Mr. Chhabra, a resident of Sunnyside, Queens, noted, “Indians love Bollywood and Bollywood has followed them.”

As early as 1970, Manoj Kumar’s “Purab Aur Pachhim” (“East and West”) placed its protagonist in a morally bankrupt Britain of ruffians and provocatively dressed women. But the breakthrough film that allowed Indian audiences to identify with Indians living abroad was Aditya Chopra’s “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (known as “DDLJ,” or “The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride”) from 1995.

“‘DDLJ’ was my son Aditya’s brainchild,” said Yash Chopra, founder of Yash Raj Films, which produced the movie. “The basic germ is very simple—that of a young couple who have been brought up in the West but still cherish their Indian values.”

“DDLJ,” which followed its protagonists on a post-graduation trip across Europe, built on a growing trend to use locations that Indians would perceive as exotic. Before long, Indian directors were shooting in Germany’s Europa theme park, atop the skyscrapers of Singapore, and on the beaches of Sydney.

“For an audience sitting in a small town in India, especially in the old days, nobody could tell what the world outside was like,” said director Shyam Benegal, who is regarded as the father of India’s “Middle Cinema,” a realistic alternative to frothy Bollywood. “You go to see a movie. You’re in Sydney, Mexico, Egypt, New York—wherever. The world has truly been opened up for our own audiences.”

New York has figured prominently among these locations in recent years. Six Indian productions were shot in the city in 2008, four in 2009, and two in 2010 to date. With a new initiative from Yash Raj to make its catalog available for streaming on NetFlix, and collaborations already in the works between India’s Reliance/Big Pictures and Steven Spielberg, truly global Indian cinema appears to be just beyond the horizon.

That would be fine with Mr. Rahman, who would like Americans to know more about the diversity of Indian cinema—and its music. As for the “Jai Ho” tour, he said he had a new global listener in mind when he assembled the material.

“We tried to pick out songs that would be universally appealing, to mix together elements in ways that have never been done before. It’s very exciting.”