Spotlight on South Asian Music
(Moderator: Kiran Rai) In countries worldwide, national artists with Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Afghani and Sri Lankan backgrounds are breaking big – whether it’s Canada’s AP Dhillon (who recently played his first Junos and has 10 milion monthly listeners on Spotify), the artists at the U.K. Dialled In festival, Oscar-winning British rapper Riz Ahmed, or Dutch-Pakistani rapper Imran Khan. Like most pop music “blow ups,” this one has been a long time coming, with a diaspora of 50 million SouthAsians worldwide (2.5 million in Canada), and the groundbreaking previous popularity of genres like bhangra and Sufi rock. This panel will look at the SouthAsian boom, where it’s going, and what could obstacles it could face as it acquires a mass, worldwide audience.
