Jazz must change, says Rez Abbasi, and he’s set his sights on one possible path forward. “In order for this music to keep living and evolving, it has to break the boundaries,” the New York City–based guitarist contends. “You can’t call my music ‘jazz’ anymore; you can’t call jazz jazz anymore. I just prefer to call it multicultural music.”

He’s got a point. As the lineup for this year’s Vancouver International Jazz Festival indicates, what began as a specifically American art form has put down roots all over the globe. “The nature of jazz is that it’s all-inclusive,” Abbasi stresses, on the line from his in-laws’ home in Toronto. “It started with African-American music, and now there’s a big European element to it, there’s a big Latin element to it. Jazz is an absolutely multicultural music; there’s no doubt about that. And to incorporate music from India, it just comes naturally. It’s a no-brainer, really.”

Mixing Indian music and jazz is what Abbasi’s new quartet, Snake Charmer—which plays the Vancouver Art Gallery on Friday (July 1), David Lam Park on Saturday (July 2), and Performance Works on Sunday (July 3)—is all about. And as his Snake Charmer CD demonstrates, it’s a blend that comes naturally to the guitarist and his colleagues.

“There’s no point for someone like me to play jazz standards and Charlie Parker tunes on recordings,” he contends. “I mean, I’ve been playing those tunes for 20 years, and I continually study that stuff, but it only makes sense for somebody like me to incorporate these worldly influences.”

Especially as Abbasi—whose earlier releases paint him as a swinging modernist in the John Scofield mode—was born in Karachi, Pakistan. “As we mature, we tend to go back to our roots, and that’s basically what’s happening to me right now,” he says. “I’ve been doing that for several years, but it’s really surfacing now.”

Snake Charmer, the band, pays tribute to its leader’s roots in several different ways. The South Asian influences are reflected in more than Abbasi’s occasional use of the electric sitar: his wife, Ontario-raised Kiran Ahluwalia, brings her expertise as a ghazal singer to bear on his appropriately sinuous melodies, while drummer Dan Weiss is equally adept on jazz kit and tabla. And then on the jazz side of the equation there’s organist Gary Versace, who handles his instrument like he grew up alongside Richard “Groove” Holmes or Johnny “Hammond” Smith. Bringing everything together, Abbasi says, was simply a matter of letting his true musical nature emerge.

“Both cultures were basically within myself already, right? So that being said, it just took a little extra time to push those [South Asian] elements to the surface. To truly have a successful confluence of jazz with any other influence, such as Indian music, you have to retain the strength of both. And I think just because I’ve grown up with that Indian/Pakistani background, the mere fact that it’s in me already helps to bring it out.”

Which is not to say that Abbasi didn’t do some musical research before sitting down to write the tunes found on Snake Charmer. Although he expresses admiration for the band Oregon and some of his fellow guitarist John McLaughlin’s fusion projects, he says that most attempts to marry jazz with Indian music are more superficial than successful. To make sure that didn’t happen to him, he sought out as many Indian musicians as he could find, both at home and in Asia.

“Just studying is not enough,” he says. “You really need to play in bands that are comprised of Indian musicians, whether it be Indian classical or folk music. I’ve been performing with Kiran for a couple of years now, and that’s really brought out a different shade of Indian music. Her music is based more on the folk element. Indian classical music is a musician’s music; it’s kinda like jazz, right? Her music is considered light classical music, but it’s also very folky—and that really helped me come up with different motivic information in my compositions. There are little motifs that the folk musicians use, and all that stuff is part of the culture; playing Indian music with different people, some of the same motifs come up. And it becomes really interesting in that sense; you really feel that cultural aspect.”

So far, Abbasi has won nothing but praise for his cultural explorations, especially in his wife’s hometown. “People are hungry for a multicultural experience up here,” he notes. “I think it’s a little different in America; it’s more of an uphill battle to bring people to this music. Still, I just think it’s important to do something other than the traditional jazz that we hear all the time. I mean, we come from there; we love that music and we still play it all the time. But if you’re going to make a statement of your own, you have to dig deeper.”