Want to fight racism in Russia? Send in Lily Allen, some reggae bands and an outspoken Muslim rapper. But perhaps this celebration of multicultural Britain says more about the tensions in our own society.

It's a sunny evening on the banks of the River Neva in St Petersburg. In the grounds of the Peter and Paul Fortress, a crowd of Russian teenagers, some of them sporting white jeans and mullet haircuts, are dancing to drum'n'bass. Their enthusiasm is directed at the two-man Glaswegian-Punjabi sound system Tigerstyle, who are wearing a mix of turbans and brightly coloured Adidas tracksuits. One of them is holding a microphone, into which he shouts the refrain: "Bad boys inna Russia/Rude boys inna Russia," while his sidekick bangs out frenetic rhythms on a dhol, a Punjabi drum.

This isn't some wild fantasy involving cultural miscegenation, rave music and Eighties fashion drawn from the depths of my subconscious; the Tigerstyle sound system is real and it's here to play the UK Flavours festival. Organised by the British Council and featuring artists such as the singer Lily Allen, dub producer Mad Professor, reggae band Misty in Roots and the multi-ethnic rap group Fun-da-Mental, who blend elements of traditional Pakistani music with techno, punk and hip-hop, UK Flavours aims to "celebrate the multicultural city". Which city isn't specified, but the intent is clear. Russia has a high level of racist violence. Last month, Damir Zainullin, a 23-year-old ethnic Tatar, was stabbed to death in a racist attack by a St Petersburg gang. A 2006 report by Amnesty International described racist killings in the country as being "out of control". This British Council export is a positive attempt to showcase the influence of immigrant cultures on British pop music and trumpet the strengths of inclusivity.

Despite the fans' enthusiasm, however, the event has largely been ignored by the powers that be. Maybe they had their hands full with diplomatic expulsions and international relations of a different kind. Even with the involvement of a local anti-racism NGO, Russian officials showed little interest, and although Vladimir Putin was actually in town at the same time, he chose to watch a boxing match a few hundred metres down the road, evidently preferring bare-chested pugilism to Lily Allen's onstage banter ("This song's about men with small dicks . . . Oi, what's the Russian for small dick?").

But there is something more peculiar, even unsettling, about this event. In the current political climate, in which migrants entering the UK are seen as a potential threat, rather than a benefit, it seems strange to be telling others how to embrace integration. What's more, UK Flavours presents a less harmonious view of British society than you might expect from a government-sponsored project. Last year, Fun-Da-Mental sparked a rash of scare stories in the press about their album All Is War (the Benefits of G-HAD), which supposedly contained lyrics praising suicide bombers. The truth wasn't quite so shocking. The track in question, "Cookbook DIY", was making a comparison between terrorists and scientists who design bombs for their government, without praising either side, but that didn't stop the Labour MP Andrew Dismore from calling for the arrest of Fun-Da-Mental's Muslim frontman, Aki Nawaz.

Toby Brundin, the concert's organiser, says the British Council isn't aiming to preach. "You can't come into a foreign country on a high horse and say, 'You should be doing this or that,'" he says. "The message we're sending out is simply drawing attention to the reality, rather than the rhetoric, of what multiculturalism can mean."

For Nawaz - born in Pakistan, raised in Bradford, organiser of gigs for Rock Against Racism in the late Seventies - appearing at this official celebration of British culture in front of a Russian audience cheerfully waving Union flags makes him uneasy, to say the least. "That Union Jack just gives me fucking nightmares," he says. "All I ever saw it as was a symbol of hatred through the National Front and the BNP. I find those ideas of nationalism and being patriotic to be complete and utter red herrings.

"There are aspects of Britain that I just reject completely and wholeheartedly. I find there's a really narrow-minded attitude towards people of colour. I even reject the notion of Britishness: it's not defined, and I've said before: 'Until you define it, don't tell me that this is what I have to be.' Everybody's got the right to be British or not to be British. Be what you want but don't tell the children of immigrants what they have to buy in to."

Nonetheless, there are elements of British culture Nawaz is happy to identify with: "There is an underlying positive culture in the UK. The music coming out of Britain has been absolutely amazing; it has got an incredible history and you can't get away from that. And obviously that's been a part of my upbringing - if I hadn't got into punk I wouldn't be presenting my music like I do."

The Guyana-born, London-based Mad Professor, whose real name is Neil Fraser, agrees. "Even before governments started to bring in laws [against discrimination], musicians were working together," he says. "You had bands from the Seventies like Hot Chocolate, with people from different cultures who were equals. The Beatles worked with different types of black musicians; the Rolling Stones went to Jamaica. You know, these were guys who didn't have to wait for no government to tell them to love black people."

The truth about multicultural Britain, as the sociologist Paul Gilroy writes, is that it has found a "democratic expression" through pop music in the face of widespread indifference from the British establishment. That this expression has now been adopted by official representatives of our national culture such as the British Council says a lot about how we'd like to be seen by the rest of the world. The British Council has done well to throw the dissenting voice of Nawaz into the mix, but does UK Flavours really give an accurate snapshot of modern British life?

Fraser thinks so. "To be honest, this is how it is: we are from Britain, whether we are Carib bean in origin or Scottish in origin. We all make up this thing called the United Kingdom. Because we choose to live there and choose to make it our home, we are a part of British culture."

But do the Russian fans brandishing the Union Jack look to Britain as a model of ethnic cohesion? Nawaz sees their flag-waving as the result of a branding exercise, in the same way as fashionable Russians who stroll up and down Nevsky Prospekt, the main drag in St Petersburg, wear Union Jack T-shirts: "Maybe they've been sold the dream of England, just like my parents were sold the dream of England. I can take you to little villages in Pakistan and people have got the Queen's photograph up on their walls. And I'm going, 'These are the people that colo nised you, these are the people that slaughtered you,' and they're like, 'Yeah, but we forgive them.'"

"Shum", the lead singer of WK, one of two Russian bands to play on the UK Flavours bill, has a simpler explanation. "I think that it's a sign of respect. People coming here know that they're visiting a different 'team' and they want to show the people who are visiting that they're interested in them. So they take their flags."

It's difficult to say what tangible effects an event like this will have in spreading the anti-racist message. Could it make a difference? Fraser is generally positive, arguing: "It's always good when a nation sees how other people live." As he speaks, Bob Marley's "One Love" - a song overplayed to the point of meaningless cliché - floats over the sound system, as if to comment on how pop music is far too tied up with the shallow platitudes that serve international capitalism to communicate any deeper message. A cynical view, perhaps. But then there is an alternative opinion, that of the excited Russian fan who shoved a giant bottle of beer into my hand and, in broken English, repeatedly told me: "Music . . . no language . . . you, me, far apart . . . but music, no need language." You decide.

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