The “Cockney Venus” and half-caste heroine in Angela Carter’s heady novel Nights at the Circus (1984) is Fevvers, who claims that she was hatched since her father was a swan. It is the last year of the 19th century and the winged Fevvers travels far and wide, being the world’s greatest trapeze artist of her day. In this fin-de-siècle tale, with its surrealistic kind of logic – dark desires and twisted dreams – everyone’s rootless and everyone’s at the margins of culture, wherever they go.

“I have based the album on being an outsider. The space between two cultures can be confusing, but it can also be very energetic,” says the 24-year-old Bishi, who used Carter’s title for her own debut album – arguably one of the best unknown pleasures of the 00s. Everything about this extraordinary female is “multi”, she’s like one of those goddesses with several arms who can do anything. Bishi plays the sitar like it was an electric guitar (she has been Ravi Shankar’s personal student in Delhi), in fact, she turns everything beautiful with her voice, storytelling and all the instruments that she masters.

Earl’s Court-born Bishi describes her personal style as a cross between Josephine Baker and “Bertie Bassett”, the Bassett Liquorice Allsorts mascot. Her music is “allsorts” too: Medieval English banquet music, Eastern European melodies, Argentine tango – some beats, lots of treats – all crossed with sounds of her Bangladeshi ancestry. Nights at the Circus is lusciously produced by her friend Matthew Hardern, who also co-wrote the songs. This beauty of an album has nothing to do with “world music”; this is music for the world. 200 languages govern the scene, and I think that I’m in love.

Namaste.