Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bharma

His dream came true some years ago as he became a leading pioneer of bhangra, the urban pop music that fuses Punjabi culture with Western styles, and now he's heading to the Hebrides and Highland Perthshire with the Red Note Ensemble's Reels to Raga project to continue his crusade of introducing his instrument, the tabla, to new audiences.

"Indian music generally has become fairly well accepted among world music listeners," he says, "but there's a lot of work still to be done to demystify it for the music listening public as a whole.

"For me, it's still wrapped in a shroud of mysticism and magic that's left over from the Victorian era and the days of the Empire. It's always upset me, for instance, that the tabla and sitar are so rarely found in the Western orchestral environment.

"People seem scared of it but it's really very approachable and quite exciting when you get to hear it, especially at close range."

Bhamra, who grew up watching and listening to his mother, Mohinder Kaur, a much respected singer, working with the family group, won't be playing with an orchestra on his upcoming tour. With the Red Note Ensemble being a string trio, he is looking forward to letting the locals get hands-on with the tabla.

He's been playing the distinctive sounding Indian drum since childhood and as a boy of six he was considered good enough to play in the temples around Southall in south London, accompanying their singers. Today he's one of the top tabla players in the world as well as a prolific composer and record producer responsible for the rise to fame of numerous bhangra and Bollywood stars.

Although he'd met the Red Note Ensemble's cellist Robert Irvine 10 years before when they did some workshops together, his introduction to the trio as a playing partner came via an invite from the Red Note's violinist, Jacqueline Shave. She asked him to work on an album with the great London-based jazz guitarist John Parricelli called Postcards from Home two years ago.

"Jackie then asked me if I fancied working with the string trio and I leaped at the chance. Although writing for strings was daunting, in a way, because I come from an oral tradition and hadn't worked with dots on the page before, it was good experience for me," he says. "I love the idea that something I compose can now go on to be picked up by other musicians in the future and played from the score."

Robert Irvine says that, for a complete beginner, Bhamra's notation was remarkably clear – "immaculate in fact" – and the pieces he contributed to their first tour together last year worked a treat. The music was a kind of world tour, with pieces from China, Africa and Australia as well as from closer to home. This time the brief is to explore harmony and counterpoint within a raga and move onto Scottish and Irish traditional music. So they'll be regaling the Western Isles with Bach, Burns, Arvo Part, Bollywood themes, John Mayer songs and traditional dance metres.

They'll also be giving free workshops, which according to Irvine led to a shipping order of tablas being delivered to remote villages after Bhamra imparted his skills on their previous island adventure.

"The tabla and the bodhran, the drum they use in Scottish and Irish music, are quite similar, I think, especially in the bottom range," says Bhamra. "And you can interchange them when you're playing a reel, say. For me, traditional music from everywhere has the same basic ingredients and Indian and Irish music especially use similar ornamentation, so reels to ragas are quite a natural progression.

"We have a repertoire but not a programme, as such, and we might well throw it all up in the air after the first night and play it in a different order every night."

Reels to Ragas plays Coll Hall, Arinagour, Isle of Coll, on July 18 and July 19; Breakish Hall, near Broadford, Isle of Skye, on July 20; The Mission House, Finsbay, Isle of Harris, on July 22; and The Big Shed, Tombreck, near Aberfeldy, on July 23.