Diljit Dosanjh: Udta Jatt who has the world rocking in Punjabi

Diljit Dosanjh was already a phenomenon when he became the first Punjabi artist to perform at the Coachella music festival last year. Yet, when he strutted onto that stage in southern California wearing his trademark kurta-chaadra and turla-style turban with sneakers, proudly declaring ‘Punjabi aa gaye, oye’ with his chest out, something shifted. He unlocked a new and unprecedented level of fandom. Haroon Rashid, a radio presenter with the BBC Asian Network in London, says for the longest time Bollywood was the only global superpower from India. “But here is a man who sings in a regional language and has succeeded in a way no other Indian artist has been able to. This October, he performs at the O2 Arena, the biggest music venue in London. In the past, we’ve seen Arijit Singh, Atif Aslam and AR Rahman sell it out, but for one night. Diljit has sold it out for 3 nights,” he explains.
As he informs us in his song ‘Mombattiye’, he’s been ‘too much busy’ off late. In April, the 40-year-old singer-actor kicked off his grand Dil-Luminati Tour with a bang, becoming the first Punjabi artist to sell out the 54,000-seater BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, Canada. He has since repeated the same magic at stadiums across US, UK and Europe, casually creating history every other week. Besides the tour, he has also released singles with international artists, made an appearance on American late-night television, and got British pop sensation Ed Sheeren to jam in Punjabi. In his parallel career as an actor, he front-lined two movies — the widely lauded ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’ in Hindi and ‘Jatt and Juliet 3’, which became the highest grossing Punjabi film overseas.