Punjabi Delights in Forbidden City Singapore: The Space of Flows and Place

Bringing place-centredness to the undifferentiated space of globalization, Saskia Sassen considers cities as strategic global sites and shows that transnationalized modes of production and consumption co-exist with "thick places" in the global city (Sassen 2006). Bhangra is now understood as a British Asian music produced by the hybridization of Punjabi dhol beats with western rhythms of pop, reggae, hip hop, and rap but it is derived from a Punjabi dance genre of the same name. By examining the multiple places in Singapore in which new Bhangra mutants are performed, this research note argues that the digitized circuits of consumption and entertainment in the global city foreground a new global politics of place formed through transnational ethnic networks.