India, Dec. 26 -- For Indian origin musician Karsh Kale, the growing global curiosity around Indian pop and hybrid sounds has little to do with streaming spikes and everything to do with a long-overdue cultural shift. "What was always hard to push past was the racial barrier," he says, reflecting on how global pop music was once seen through a narrowly defined lens.

"Back in the '80s, pop music was generally white. It took people like Michael Jackson and Prince to break those boundaries. But Indian faces, Asian faces were not part of that," he adds.

That, has finally changed as the 51-year-old musician points to the rise of K-pop and the growing visibility of artists from Asia and the Middle East. "People are now used to seeing Indian a...