Arooj Aftab became the first Pakistani Grammy winner when she took home the global music performance award for her song “Mohabbat” in 2022.
A year later, actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh stepped onto the smoke-filled stage of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California, becoming the festival’s first artist from the Indian state of Punjab near the border with Pakistan, a region known for its vibrant musical culture.
In August, the first-generation Indian American artist Avara sat in a bed of rose petals at a concert hall in Brooklyn for the opening performance of her first tour. Fans crowded around the stage for a glimpse of the artist, who has gained over 250,000 new monthly Spotify listeners since November 2024 — a more than 250 percent increase.
“I started getting a bunch of her TikToks,” said audience member Alex Kim, a 22-year-old music assistant. “Everyone has a short attention span these days, but I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I actually really like this.’”
Following Afrobeat, K-pop and Latin music, songs with South Asian influences are the latest global trend to build audiences around the world. In April, Warner Music Group launched 5 Junction Records, a label dedicated to selling South Asian-influenced artists to North American listeners.
“It’s something that’s been forming slowly,” Billboard CEO Mike Van said about the overseas surge of South Asian-influenced artists. “We started to see these growth spurts over the last couple of years because of all the technology, evolving tastes and activation of these diaspora audiences.”
MIXING GENRES
5 Junction Records general manager Jürgen Grebner told The Associated Press that his label looks for artists with strong fan bases in their home countries. A No. 1 song in India “automatically will chart in the Top 20 on Spotify’s global charts,” he said.
Born to Moroccan parents in Toronto, actor-turned-singer Nora Fatehi became a Bollywood celebrity to perform at a FIFA World Cup and billions worldwide watched the closing ceremony in Qatar. A Toronto talent agency encouraged her to explore opportunities in India. Eleven years ago, she moved there, learned Hindi and began auditioning for every modeling and acting role she could find, determined to make a name for herself.
“The Indian audience is the reason why I am what I am today. So while I’m making myself into a global artist, I’m bringing them with me,” Fatehi told the AP.
In the multibillion-dollar global music business, musicians often need to team up with local artists or brands to expand beyond their popularity at home, Grebner said.
“The only way really to win in those markets is to collaborate,” he said.
The international girl group Katseye features members of Indian, Japanese and Filipino descent who starred in a recent Gap ad.
Fatehi’s single “Snake,” featuring US pop and R&B singer Jason Derulo, reached the top 20 on Spotify charts in both the UK and Canada.
EMBRACING CROSSOVER
Some music from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives evolved as a way to teach Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and other spiritual teachings thousands of years ago, said Professor Francesca Cassio, chair of the music department at Hofstra University. One North Indian classical genre, khyal, gained popularity in the West during the 1960s as sitar great Ravi Shankar influenced musicians like the Beatles and John Coltrane.
As the US becomes increasingly diverse, it’s been encouraging to see younger audiences showing an “overall acceptance of global sounds,” Van said.
Van pointed out that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are leading the charge in embracing music that crosses cultural lines.
“Artists have a direct connection now to their fans,” said Van. “You’ve got clips now, literally edited down to 10 seconds or less, that are capturing people’s attention that can go viral. And so it’s a new way of not only promotion, but also again, consumption and discovery.”
“’A THIRD CULTURE KID’“
Avara, the 25-year-old artist, said she gained a social media following by posting videos that blend her meditative R&B and soul music, with elements of her years of Indian classical and Western vocal training.
In Marietta, Georgia, she grew up feeling “never a part of the brown community but never completely a part of the American community,” she said.
“I was around a lot of white people and people that didn’t look like me and I rejected a lot of parts of myself,” she said.
Her debut album, “a softer place to land,” honored the artistic community that shaped her over the past two years. Her next project, “MARA,” is about reclaiming her identity as a “young brown girl” through the lens of a “third culture kid”— someone who grows up balancing their parents’ heritage with the cultures they’re raised in, she said.
She described her next album as a mixture of every culture that has influenced her over the past 25 years, blending Indian vocal riffs with Spanish guitar, reggae, and other styles.
“I’m trying to create something completely different,” she said. “I’m trying to create a new genre with this stuff that comes from those influences of what I learned as a kid.”
