India is distinctive in many ways, especially in its sounds. Its classical music, unlike the academically studied forms almost everywhere else, is mostly improvised, albeit within familiar structures, while pop songs are highly orchestrated, rigidly scripted affairs.

And so it does make a kind of offbeat sense that Kiran Ahluwalia, Canada’s most exciting purveyor of subcontinental singing, went from the challenging intricacies of classical training to her own personal blend of pop, Bollywood, ghazals, and world music. She performs Wednesday (August 5) at Christ Church Cathedral, as part of MusicFest Vancouver, and then Thursday (August 6) at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons.

Although she was born in the Bihar State of Northern India, Ahluwalia’s parents were globetrotters, and she grew up in Ontario, with side trips to Hong Kong, New Zealand, and other places. She also worked as a label rep for Putumayo Records in San Francisco. A few years ago, she moved from Toronto to New York City, where her eclectic musical identity came into focus. In fact, this whole decade has seen unstoppable growth on her part, as evidenced by the four CDs she has recorded so far.

Her aptly titled 2003 album Beyond Boundaries earned her a Juno Award, among other prizes. Her most recent collection, the even more polished Wanderlust, has just been released in the U.S., and has already snagged a Songlines Music Award for best newcomer. Indeed, with her unique mix of sinuous, poetry-based ghazals, including influences from jazz, blues, and even fado—all delivered with impeccable control of her instantly recognizable instrument—she seems poised to do some serious border-crossing. This was contemplated, by phone, on the eve of a European tour slated to segue into the first return to British Columbia in more a year.

“It’s true that this has been a special decade for me,” says Ahluwalia, calling from her Manhattan apartment. “This is when I went from being a student to a creator of this music.”

Although she spent the 1990s in an office job, she pursued singing full-time, sometimes in India with ghazal master Vithal Rao.

“My basic training is in Indian classical music, but even when I was studying, I was doing it to be a better ghazal and folk singer, and a better composer. It gets you using all the different scales and rhythms, and it’s 95 percent improv, so it’s very good training for that. My first recordings were pretty straightforward, but for my second CD, I invited an Afghan player and a Brazilian percussionist. [Maritimes fiddler] Natalie MacMaster was on my third record.” (Much of this can be heard, and seen, at www.kiranmusic.com/.)

By that time, the singer, whose lyrics range from modern Punjabi to archaic Urdu, had met innovative, Pakistan-born, California-raised guitarist Rez Abbasi, and they melded in several ways.

Kiran Ahluwalia had her basic training in Indian
classical, but as she puts it, “when I was studying, I
was doing it to be a better ghazal and folk singer”.

“He brought in a lot of jazz and western-music influences to the chord structures, affecting the way my melodies sit on a bed of harmony. It worked out very well for us, I think, because I was looking for a guitar player and he was looking for a girlfriend!”

They subsequently married and made the move to New York, where he was already based. (His sounds can be sampled at www.reztone.com/.) Together, they developed more complex arrangements, adding African and Portuguese guitars and singer Shahid Ali Khan in the devotional qawwali style.

The program she’s bringing here with Abbasi and her backing quartet is called Love Songs With Kiran Ahluwalia, and the singer suggests this may be the final tour with this current style.

“Through my journey as a musician and composer, it’s starting to look as if, by next year, I really won’t be able to call myself a ghazal singer anymore. I’m using these forms as a launching pad, and I’m very conscious right now that I am heading into a hybrid genre for which there really is no name.”

Still, the raven-haired singer is not undergoing any kind of packaging makeover at the request of a record label or other outside force. Her passions simply keep finding new voice.

“Oh, it’s organic, absolutely,” she insists. “It’s just like anything else: if I see a beautiful dress, I want to own it. If I fall in love with fado, I want to possess it. And the way to do that in music is to compose something so I can invite those musicians to play on my CD.”

Meanwhile, the singer is subscribing to the learn-as-you-go university of global music-making.

“I feel so incredibly lucky. I’ve combined my particular vision with Rez’s experience, with touring and keeping bands together, and now it’s all just incredibly easy to travel and keep having new encounters with the world.”

By now it’s clear that if Ahluwalia finds any colourful new garments on the road, they won’t be staying in the closet.