Oi Va Voi: All the klezmer you can eat. Oi vey! Photograph: PR
It's a given that one of the many areas in which post-war patterns of immigration have had a profound and hugely positive impact is British popular music. Starting with Lord Kitchener's arrival on the Windrush in 1948, the influx of African-Caribbeans into Britain has altered the sound and substance of UK music so profoundly and in such a multitude of ways it's almost impossible to quantify.
The musical legacy of decades of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigration took longer to make itself apparent, at least within the mainstream, but has become much clearer in the last couple of decades through artists as diverse as Cornershop, Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney, Jay Sean, Panjabi MC and MIA .
Given that, historically, it's usually fallen to the children and grandchildren of first generation immigrants to make the music that reflects both their family's original cultural roots as well as the realities of their own status as British citizens, it may yet be too soon to expect Britain's music scene to have absorbed the most recent significant additions to the cultural melting pot. The current popularity, both on the live circuit and in the broadsheets and glossy music mags, of bands like Beirut, Oi Va Voi and A Hawk and a Hacksaw may suggest that the expansion of the EU and the rapid increase in eastern European immigration is already having some effect upon British listening habits, but in reality these bands simply provide well-intentioned Anglo-American interpretations of someone else's musical traditions.
Do we have to wait patiently, then, while Britain's substantial new eastern European communities establish roots deep enough to enable them to make their own impact on British music? Or - given the accelerated rate of cultural assimilation these days - perhaps it's happening already, somewhere out there in the eternal now: is there a below-radar Polish ska scene or a Romanian folk-jazz crossover movement ready to break cover any day now? All thoughts welcome - but a word of warning: Katie Melua doesn't count.
