<p>NEW SMYRNA BEACH — Even musicians from India get the blues.</p>

<p>Sitting outside a studio at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Sayak Barua confesses he is out of his "comfort zone."</p>

<p>The 30-year-old musician has flown, for the first time in his life, from his home in Durgapur, West Bengal, India. He has landed, also for the first time in his life, in the United States.</p>

<p>Here Barua, who plays the lute-like Indian instrument known as a sarode, has been joined by a rapper from Senegal, an oud player from Lebanon, a fiddler from Virginia, a deejay from Russia, a South Korean woman who plays a string instrument called a gayageum, a singer from Denmark and other musicians from around the world.</p>

<p>As the fellows selected for OneBeat, a cultural exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the 32 musicians from 21 countries have gathered at the Atlantic Center — their home base for the past two weeks — to test that age-old adage: "Music is a universal language."</p>

<p>And, OneBeat organizers hope, perhaps a bit of international diplomacy will happen along the way.</p>

<p>"On the first day when I woke up, I was passing by the theater and I heard someone playing the drums," Barua says, his English buoyed by the accent of his native land. The drummer, Parfum Zola, was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.</p>

<p>Barua got his sarode and the two musicians began jamming.</p>

<p>Then Zola "started singing in his native song," Barua says. "His native song was like, you know, the blues scale of guitar — (sings) da da da da da da. Something like that."</p>

<p>But Barua noticed the song resembled an Indian musical scale known as Raag Dhani.</p>

<p>"It's a different name in different places, but it is the same," Barua says. "We made something happen and in the night we performed in the initial showcase. The OneBeat people I think they were surprised because so quickly we jammed up together."</p>

<p>Even Indian musicians get — that is, understand — the blues. </p>