Last month, common Punjabi rapper Shubhneet Singh’s forthcoming India tour was cancelled after tensions erupted between India and Canada.

The cause was an argument that broke out over an previous social media submit the place he had shared an incorrect map of India. The Canada-based singer (recognized to followers as Shubh) was accused of supporting the demand for Khalistan, or a separate Sikh homeland – a delicate subject in India, which saw a violent insurgency over the motion within the Eighties.

Canada has the most important inhabitants of Sikhs outdoors India’s Punjab state, and is dwelling to common Punjabi diaspora musicians who divide their time between the 2 international locations – touring, producing or just visiting India, the place they’ve an enormous fanbase.

So the diplomatic row – sparked by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying his nation was investigating “credible allegations” that would hyperlink the Indian authorities to the homicide of a Sikh separatist chief – has nervous musicians who name each international locations dwelling. (India has denied the allegations and stopped issuing visas to Canadian residents.)

Shubh, as an illustration, requested folks to “refrain from naming every Punjabi as a separatist or anti-national”, however he nonetheless faces criticism and a few Indian cricketers – together with former captain Virat Kohli, who as soon as known as Shubh his “favourite artiste” – have unfollowed him on social media. Another Indo-Canadian rapper AP Dhillon, who has tens of millions of followers, additionally confronted boycott calls on social media after he posted about musicians having to “second and triple guess our every move” after Shubh’s live performance was cancelled.

Both Shubh and Dhillon are amongst a crop of younger hip-hop musicians in Canada who’ve taken the Punjabi music trade by storm over the previous decade. Their songs – with chords steeped in funk, hip-hop and arduous rock, together with Punjabi lyrics and imagery – communicate to each the Sikh diaspora in addition to a broader viewers, and infrequently high worldwide music charts. Earlier this yr, actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh turned the primary Punjabi to carry out at common California music competition Coachella.

Industry specialists and individuals are carefully watching the row between Delhi and Ottawa – analysts say ties at the moment are at an all-time low.

“Whenever countries get into conflict, whether it’s soft or hard, one of the things which gets affected is cultural trade, as we have seen with our neighbour Pakistan,” says Nirmika Singh, former govt editor of Rolling Stone India, who now runs a expertise administration firm.

Cultural collaborations between Indian and Pakistani musicians and filmmakers have stopped over the few previous years.

Some, nonetheless, assume that the Punjabi music trade – each in India and Canada – is much too large to be affected.

“Whatever is happening is purely political and a living relic of today’s cancel culture,” says Punjabi songwriter Pali Gidderbaha.

“Listeners don’t care about what happens on a diplomatic level – all they want is a good melody and entertainment. And Punjabi music always delivers.”

Numbers appear to again this. In 2022, 4 of the ten most-streamed songs in India had been Punjabi and included tracks by Indo-Canadian rappers corresponding to Dhillon and Gurinder Gill, in response to streaming platform Spotify. That’s spectacular – and a part of a larger shift – in India, the place Bollywood songs historically dominated music charts.

The nature of common Punjabi music itself has been influenced by the twin cultures it’s located in.

In the Eighties and 90s, Punjabi folks singers corresponding to Amar Singh Chamkila had been massively common amongst Sikhs in Canada. Musicians like Daler Mehndi additionally routinely toured the nation.

As the neighborhood grew, a more recent era started mixing fashionable hip-hop sounds with parts of conventional Punjabi music.

Many additionally used music to highlight political points, spotlight their identification and bemoan non secular violence.

But critics have accused some Punjabi musicians of glamourising violence and propagating hedonism. Rapper Sidhu Moose Wala – who was murdered final yr – usually made headlines for songs which touched upon Sikh militancy and had been accused of glorifying gun tradition.

Experts say that a few of the arduous speak comes from the vocabulary of hip-hop itself.

“Hip-hop is the music of resistance. It has been remarked upon as a vehicle for socio-political and economic realities of Black Americans, as well as a vehicle for satire regarding disparities in America,” say lecturers Harjeet Grewal and Sara Grewal who’re engaged on a ebook that explores Sikh hip-hop within the world diaspora.

For Punjabis who grew up overseas, music can also be an necessary medium to mirror on their identification.

In Canada, the variety of Sikhs surged within the Nineteen Seventies when the Khalistan motion started gaining floor in India. The immigrants and their kids not solely needed to construct new lives, but additionally cope with racism and mistrust.

Many hip-hoppers use their songs to speak about these experiences and the way, within the language of the streets, they hustled their method up.

In the video of Dhillon’s hit music Brown Munde, he and different rappers are proven doing blue-collar jobs – working as mechanics, in a meals supply kitchen and at development websites.

“An artist can connect with their inherited culture while also expressing lived experiences of racism and discrimination. The same music is also used to express joy and satire,” the Grewals say.

Canada-based cinematographers Rupen Bhardwaj and Sukaran Pathak, who’ve labored with artists like Dosanjh and Moose Wala, say the music makes an attempt to indicate the darker, harsher realities of city life.

For an outsider, this will likely appear confrontational and provocative – however the music brings collectively Punjabis who might have “allowed their geographic distance from home to lead to estrangement”, the duo add.

However, Sumail Singh Sidhu, a historian of radical Punjabi mental custom, says that a few of the incendiary content material may be a results of the “alienation” younger Punjabis face abroad.

“Instead of having an organic connection with the Canadian society, a lot of the people are just thrown in at a young age, making them vulnerable to a sanitised and linear understanding of being Sikh,” he says, including that desirous to “belong somewhere” may snare them “in a persecution complex”.

Ms Singh says that “personal becomes the professional” in hip-hop, placing musicians in a tough spot.

But she provides that it is also necessary for them to concentrate on political points.

“During episodes of high political tensions, a lot of reason and rationality is suspended and people get provoked by everything. So artistes need to be sensitive in dealing with the situation.”

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