A London native, Vishal Vaid moved to America at age four, reared in a panoramic culture split between delving into this beautiful 13th century art form and playing sports and watching MTV. While this sounds like the seeds of identity crisis, Vaid has taken both worlds—the atmospheric elegance of his vocal training mixed with unforgiving New York streets—and created music at once inspiring, gorgeous, evolutionary. Originating in Iran, ghazal arrived in India through the Moghuls and eventually became the most important devotional art form as singers like Aurangabad-born Wali Deccani fused the two predominant languages, Persian and Urdu, and made one song. Vishal is now doing the same for America. In 1994 he formed Jai Ambe, a touring trio that included a percussionist/tabla player and acoustic guitarist. It was with the rise of DJ/tabla player Karsh Kale’s Realize Live that Vishal began carving a more definitive style. A featured vocalist's on the 2001 breakthrough Realize, the album (and subsequent tou