New Delhi, Dec. 14 -- There's a 1983 song by English new wave band Re-Flex that keeps popping up in my mind every time I find myself on an Indian club floor. As I watch a homogenous blob of India's upper-class elite dance their way to abandon, it's hard not to sing along to John Baxter's Bowie-esque croon. "The politics of dancing," his lingering phantom sings in my head. "The politics of, ooh, feeling good."

The politics of dancing, and of the dance floor, have shaped Tushar Adhav's work for years, informing how the Mumbai-based producer, DJ and emcee-who performs under the monikers BamBoy and Kaali Duniya-approaches his craft. Growing up as a working-class Dalit kid in Mumbai's Lalbaug, he was initiated into dance music through Mumbai'...