Bhangra, and the other Punjabi songs

The floor-filler is what most people mean: fast, brass-heavy or beat-heavy, a chorus you can manage after one hearing. The other Punjabi song is slow, cracked and desperately sad - Mann Bharrya, Filhall, half of what B Praak has ever recorded - and it is played at exactly the same tables, usually about ninety minutes later. Any Punjabi set that ignores the second half is a set made by somebody who has not sat through a real evening. This page leads with the first and keeps the second within reach.

The record that carried bhangra furthest was assembled in England out of borrowed parts. Panjabi MC released Mundian To Bach Ke in 1998 on a bassline he took from Busta Rhymes, who had taken it from the theme to Knight Rider, with vocals by Labh Janjua. It sat there for four years, then a German single release and a Jay-Z remix in 2003 turned it into the first Punjabi record most of the world had heard. Labh Janjua later sang London Thumakda before his death in 2015, so the same voice is on a UK bhangra twelve-inch and on a Bollywood wedding sequence.

The daru songs are Punjab's own category and it has never been shy about them. Daru Badnaam is the one that spread furthest by word of mouth, a small independent release that took its time and then would not go away. Patiala Peg names a measure of whisky and expects you to know it. Angreji Beat, Chhote Chhote Peg, Chitta Kurta, 5 Taara - the drink is not a metaphor in any of these, and there is no moral at the end.

Since roughly 2017 the centre of gravity has moved to hip-hop, and that is now the biggest non-film music economy in India. Sidhu Moose Wala, Karan Aujla, AP Dhillon, Amrit Maan, and Bohemia before all of them - the man who effectively invented Punjabi rap in 2002 and is still on the same bills twenty years later. So High, Brown Munde, 295, Softly, Tauba Tauba. It shuffles here alongside Gurdas Maan and Surjit Bindrakhia without anybody minding, because a Punjabi party has always been a place where four decades play in one night.