Oh, jeez. There are musicians from Korea, from China, from Vietnam, from Iran, actually, too. And, in fact, this next tune is a collaboration between an Indian musician, a sitarist who's actually heir to a great family of sitarists, the son of the great Ustad Vilayat Khan. His name is Shujaat Khan, and he's joined here by a - an artist - she's Iranian. She doesn't live in Los Angeles. She lives in the East Coast. But they recorded this album here in Los Angeles.

So we have some Indian-Iranian fusion.

ARCOS: That's right.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SANAMA")

RATH: That's really nice. And it's - now, I realize it's not going to sound unusual to a lot of our listeners. It'll just sound foreign. But for me, I'm hearing Indian music with Farsi, I think, sung over it.

ARCOS: Exactly. That's what it is. It's a confluence of Indian music. Think of it as sort of the ragga meets poetry of Rumi recited by Katayoun Goudarzi. It's a beautiful record. I just love the sound of the two arts coming together.

RATH: The other thing this reminds me of is Indian devotional music. They're called Bhajans. They're like devotional songs to God. But here, what's unusual is we're hearing the poetry of Rumi as opposed to Hindu poetry.

ARCOS: Which is, you know what, I'm glad you mentioned that, because this is a ghazal. A ghazal is a love poem. It's very similar to the Bhajan that you were talking about.

RATH: Right. Ghazals are these intense, almost obsessive love songs.

ARCOS: That's right. This poem is about the pain, the longing of missing somebody when that person is not with you, and you're longing painfully for that person.

RATH: Classic.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SANAMA") RATH: Again, that's the music of Shujaat Khan and Katayoun Goudarzi. That's a piece called "Sanama." My guest is world music deejay Betto Arcos, and he's introducing us to some of the diverse music coming out of California these days.