Dosti, which means friendship in both Urdu and Hindi, seeks to transcend political and cultural barriers through cross-cultural musical collaboration.

Through the process of sharing, listening, and collaborating, the Dosti musicians model creative, cooperative, and egalitarian cultural exchange between India, Pakistan, and the United States – providing a positive template for cross-national discourse and people-to-people diplomacy. By providing musicians from India and Pakistan the infrastructure for collaboration and integration, Dosti creates a unique opportunity to reconnect musical traditions and re-link the politically fractured South Asian subcontinent. By facilitating the project in the U.S. and including American musicians, the U.S. participates as capacity-builders and as equal partners, establishing a model of cultural interaction that can positively impact diplomatic and political discourses.

The Dosti Music Project brought together a group of musicians from Pakistan, India, and the U.S. for a month-long residency and tour in 2015 and 2016. An initiative of the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, produced by Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, Dosti invited a group of Pakistani, Indian, and U.S. musicians from a wide variety of traditions, ranging from Sufi singing to beatmaking to avant garde jazz, to collaboratively write, record, and perform original music, reinvent traditional music, and develop impactful initiatives aimed at local and international communities.