Blending British-Indian Bhangra with alternative electronic and hip-pop, Swami is a band unlike anything you've heard before.

After 10 years, seven albums, tracks used in films and winning a UK Asian Music Award, Swami are still a very innovative act.

Diamond Duggal, the band's founding member who also DJs under the name DJ Swami and produces, talks to go! about their appearance at the Mela.

"We're absolutely looking forward to it, we've played Croydon before so it'll be good to be back.

"Community festivals and Melas are all about connecting with your community in another country or place. But it's also more diverse, with other people who are interested in hearing music with a flavour they've never been exposed to. It's good to see the diversity in the UK - when we were in France and North America the Asian community there is still only first or second generation, whereas here we've got a sense of familiarity with the Asian culture through music, arts and film."

Swami are proud of their unique sound, but Duggal recognises it's a difficult thing to achieve for newer acts.

"It's a difficult challenge to try something new because everything always has a label. Swami don't have any role models to follow - we make our music because no one else is making it but it's taken a long time to get to this stage and it takes a while to develop progressive music, so it's not something you can expect new bands to do straight away.

"We're hoping new acts will take a leaf out of our book and branch out away from tradition and into other areas. Some people hold onto their culture because they're removed from it, but I think culture is a transient thing and as we make more progress and become more inclusive it changes."

The band's influences over the years have been affected by changes in line up as well as musical tastes, and Duggal explains how he's taken on board the sounds of his home city, Birmingham.

"Birmingham is a very rock-oriented place with Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath and I've grown up playing the guitar. A lot of people are making music just through computers, which is fine, but for me playing an instrument is important.

"I don't want to make music that's regarded as minority or ethnic. Whether people are white or black or brown I want my music to bring communities together, that's my mission really.

"The changes in line up have progressed my ideas of how I wanted the band to be. Over the last 10 years, we've moved on from experimental underground Asian to an international electro pop act. Everyone who's come and gone has learned something from it. The current line up is exactly where we want to be right now. We're taking influences from the past and looking at the future too, and the pop, electro and Indian influences feel very right now."

With the release this year of their seventh album, 53431 ('Swami' in numbers), Swami are putting together a greatest hits collection with a couple of new songs.

"This is our 10th year of Swami and we've developed a diverse fan base from our songs appearing in Hollywood, Bollywood and English movies.

"Now we've put a collection together for an international audience with some new songs too. Our new material is more English oriented lyrically because it's an international language, but there's enough melody and rhythm to keep an Indian feel to it. We're releasing an English version of the track Sugarless in North America to create a wider appeal. We don't just preach to the converted.

"We want people who've never heard our music before to be pleasantly surprised. When we played in Canada there were our hardcore fans in Swami t-shirts, but also other people who were wide-eyed and smiling who'd never heard us before but were loving it."

www.swamimusic.com