What makes Brampton the grooming ground for Punjabi rap-pop stars like Sidhu Moosewala and Deep Jandu | Eye News,The Indian Express
Newcomers with the music bug get support in every way from lyrics, music direction and videography to marketing and performance gigs
This is Brampton, where anything and everything can happen,” crooned Sidhu Moosewala in B-Town (2019) as a tribute to the city that built him. It was here in 2017 that the 23-year-old student from Mansa village first made music that shot him to fame and he joined the A-listers of Punjabi rap and pop. Today, Brampton, a city in the Greater Toronto Area, has become a global powerhouse of Punjabi music. From Deep Jandu and Fateh Doe, Noyz to Selena Dhillon and Jonita Gandhi, the latest stars on the Punjabi music scene, write, compose, shoot and perform here.
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Once known as the Flower Town of Ontario — it used to be a major exporter of roses in the 1870s — the East Coast city of 600,000, most of them immigrants, has now become a nursery of young musicians who learn the strings in high school and are globally celebrated veterans by the time they cross 30. Ikky Singh, the newest star on the horizon, who dreams of taking Punjabi music “everywhere”, was just 20 years old when he signed a deal with Warner Music Canada last year after Magical love got half a billion views on YouTube. Jandu, considered the father of the city’s distinctive style of music, mix of hip-hop and rap, with Punjabi lyrics and desi themes, is all of 32, while freelance videographer Rupen Bhardwaj was just 18 when he was discovered by Moosewala in 2018.
Everyone in Brampton knows how Moosewala, who was then the most-heard artiste on Spotify, walked into Bhardwaj’s house, watched his videos and was floored. Bhardwaj dropped out of school to pursue his passion and has an impressive list of celebrity clients including Diljit Dosanjh. Bhardwaj has directed six videos for Moosewala, including Legend, which was shot in Brampton.
With people of South-Asian descent forming over 40 per cent of the population, there aren’t many barriers to entering the Punjabi indie scene in the city, also called “Singhdale”, “Browntown,” or “Bramladesh”. Over 20 per cent of the town speaks Punjabi, while Urdu, Gujarati and Hindi can also be heard on the streets.
Rating: 5