The merger of South Asian sound with North American music isn’t new. We saw it in the ’90s with the popularity of Asian underground musicians from the U.K. being sampled in hip hop, R&B and pop. Old Bollywood disco also unintentionally birthed acid house music in the ’60s, eventually taking over Chicago’s scene 30 years later.
Recently, Punjabi hip-hop, bhangra, rap and R&B have taken Canada by storm. In Billboard Canada’s first article series in October 2023, which I contributed to, there were interviews with established and rising stars Karan Aujla, AP Dhillon, Gurinder Gill and Jonita Gandhi.
Billboard Canada showcased South Asia’s intertwined history with music in the West. And it captured Canada’s deep-rooted connection with its Punjabi community.

But the racist anti-Indian backlash to these articles was something I didn’t expect. There was a flood of comments online, many more than usual, arguing that this wasn’t “Canadian” music.
Regardless of the impact of Punjabi sound on Canadian music, anti-Indian sentiment follows artists.
Back in March, Karan Aujla made history by being the first Punjabi to win the Fan Choice Award at the Junos. What followed was a swarm of criticism, focusing on Aujla’s status as a permanent resident.
Right-wing journalist Harrison Faulkner posted on X that “there are some who want you to believe that this is Canadian music as it was performed at the Junos last night. Karan Aujla, who won a Juno, was born in India and is a citizen of India. He holds PR [permanent resident] status in Canada.”
Sumeet Dhami works as a journalist on OMNI Television’s Punjabi newscast in Ontario. About the Aujla Juno win, Dhami tells The Grind, “I remember there were comments saying this isn’t Canadian music, people were saying stop the influx of immigrants. It’s baffling because if you know about [Aujla], he’s adding so much to the Canadian economy, even just as a permanent resident.”

Dhami says that after OMNI reported on it, “it felt like most of the comments were hate related, anti-Punjabi related, compared to people being like ‘this is amazing,’” which she says is the typical response when musicians win awards.
Dhami also produced the OMNI documentary Melas to Mainstream: Punjabi Music’s Boom in Canada, which aired earlier this year.
“We were feeling a cultural shift where there had been a lot of moments for Punjabi music, and it wasn’t just [about] feeling Punjabi, it was feeling like the music of Canadians,” she says. The documentary, though, was met with many negative anti-Punjabi comments. Dhami summarizes them as being about how “we don’t belong here or our music doesn’t belong here.”
She says the last two years have seen a rise in these comments, with people wrongly blaming immigrants for inflation and cost of living problems.
Anti-Indian hate is also in Toronto’s club scene. Producer and DJ Mrii is part of collective MAAZAR, throwing Eastern diaspora-influenced events across the city. “I post a lot of TikToks of my events … and people will [comment], ‘oh no, it smells like shit in there,’ when they see a bunch of brown people being celebrated,” she says.
Mrii notes racism and discrimination also comes from within South Asian communities. “There’s a lot coming from our own people, as well as people on the outside.”
There is a constant wedge between those who have been in Canada generationally and newcomers. A tweet blew up in mid-July sharing that sentiment, seemingly from an upper-class person advocating for a caste system (or wealth-based system) to be imposed on South Asian immigration. Part of the tweet reads: “These new migrants, defiling the beaches and groping women, come from illiterate, low class backgrounds and have no sense of civic duty nor are they capable of learning.”
Brampton rapper, community ambassador and artist Spitty, whose background is Gujarati, produced a documentary called Motherland aimed at breaking stigma in Brampton. “The core of the documentary was to let people from the city speak on the city,” he says of his hometown, which is often the target of anti-Indian racist commentary. “Twitter or anywhere online has this negative hate that piles on and people bandwagon on these [hate] trends [but] many of those people haven’t been to Brampton or spent time there.”
The solution to anti-Indian hate, in Spitty’s eyes, is to show people what happens beyond the stereotype and to speak up. “I feel like a lot of the bigger artists in the brown scene might not really be speaking on it as much, but there are people who definitely do,” he says. “[Diversity] has always been here in Canada, like the ‘cultural mosaic,’ and now with the way immigration has gone, people take it out on others.”
The push for change Spitty speaks about is happening beyond music, with student protests and young artists and DJs speaking up against xenophobia. DJ Angelphroot, for example, uses her social platforms to challenge those anti-Indian comments.
However, with the saturation of anti-Indian hate on social platforms and politicians not pushing back, the future is uncertain.
This article appeared in the 2024 Dec - 2025 Jan issue.