India, May 17 -- In the smoky, dim-lit bar of Brussels, in 1993, Bickram Ghosh sat transfixed. Fresh off his first ever concert with the legendary Pandit Ravi Shankar, still in his kurta-pyjama, he watched as an African-American musician abandoned his congas mid-performance and began to play his own body - cheeks, chest, arms - crafting intricate rhythms that seemed to leap from his very skin. In that instant, Bickram saw music untethered from tradition, alive in a raw, elemental form. A spontaneous exchange followed: his embroidered kurta for an Afro-print T-shirt, and a crash course in body percussion that would later ripple through his music in ways he couldn't yet imagine.

Long before that night in Brussels, rhythm had been the air B...