‘We want to take South Asian music to the world.’

Trailblazers is an MBW interview series that turns the spotlight on music entrepreneurs with the potential to become the global business power players of tomorrow. This time, we meet Ikwinder (Ikky) Singh and Ajay Charlie ‘B’ Saxena, Creative Director and Head of A&R, respectively for Toronto-headquartered 91 North Records. Trailblazers is supported by TuneCore.

On April 27, a sold-out crowd of 46,000 at Vancouver’s BC Place stadium witnessed history being made.

The performance that night from superstar Diljit Dosanjh marked the biggest-ever Punjabi concert held outside of India.

Three months later, in July, Dosanjh ended his sold-out North American ‘Dil-Luminati Tour’ at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in front of another 42,000 fans, grossing more than USD $27 million for the 13-date run, according to Live Nation.

The Toronto concert capped off a successful few months in North America for Dosanjh. His tour was the largest-ever North American tour by a Punjabi artist, and he also became the first-ever Punjabi-language artist to perform on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in June. Last year he became the first artist to perform entirely in Punjabi at Coachella.

Dosanjh’s string of historic firsts in North America highlights South Asian music’s rapid global rise.

Global consumption of music from India has rocketed by more than 2,000% on Spotify over the past five years, and at the time of writing, the second-most followed artist on Spotify, behind Taylor Swift, is India-based singer and composer Arijit Singh.

Diljit Dosanjh’s expanding profile in the US and Canada, meanwhile, also points to the growing mainstream popularity of Punjabi-language artists in North America specifically.

Canada in particular has become home to a new generation of Punjabi diaspora superstars.

The Punjabi Wave in Canada has been gaining serious momentum in recent years, led by artists like Ikwinder Singh (Ikky), AP Dhillon (recently signed to Republic Records in the US), as well as Jonita Gandhi and Karan Aujla (both affiliated with Warner Music), plus India-born, Canada-based rapper, Shubh.

As Ikky explains, the size of the wider South Asian diaspora in Canada has played a big role in the market’s emergence as a key global creative hub for Punjabi music. “We have this strong [presence] in Canada because of immigration. Generations [of South Asians] have been here,” he tells us.

Toronto-born Singh, a prominent music producer with over 9 million monthly listeners on Spotify has racked up over 2 billion streams globally with songs like Shubh’s Baller, Diljit Dosanjh’s Chauffeur and Sidhu Moose Wala’s Bambiha Bole.

His album with Karan Aujla, Making Memories, hit No.5 on the Canadian album chart last summer, the highest-charting Punjabi album in the chart’s history.

Singh also runs an imprint called 4N Records in partnership with Warner Music Canada and Coalition Music, and serves as Creative Director of 91 North Records, a JV launched a year ago by Warner Music Canada and Warner Music India to support artists of South Asian heritage.

“Our biggest audience is India and Canada,” adds Singh. “So it was perfect in a sense to form an alliance between those countries.”

91 North’s roster features Canadian Punjabi artists Chani Nattan, AR Paisley, Gminxr and Jonita Gandhi.

Punjabi Music’s appeal in the Canadian market has soared since 91 North was formalized a year ago, evidenced by Making Memories’ high chart position and Warner Music-affiliated artist Karan Aujla becoming the first artist of Punjabi descent to win the only fan-voted award at Canada’s JUNO Awards in March.

“We wanted to start this JV in Canada, because that’s where the big cultural revolution is happening in terms of content creation.”

Jay Mehta, Warner Music

“We’ve had a good start,” Jay Mehta, Managing Director, Warner Music South Asia, tells us. “You can’t get bigger than having Karan Aujla [score] one of the most successful [Punjabi] albums of all time [in Canada], and winning a Juno Award.

“But a larger goal is to ensure that we truly take South Asian music to the world. And we wanted to start this JV in Canada, because that’s where the big cultural revolution is happening in terms of content creation.”

Looking beyond Canada, however, Mehta says that Warner Music sees the 91 North concept as a global proposition that can bridge the gap between South Asia and other diaspora markets. “California is another hub where a lot of artists are starting to create great music,” he says.

“The UK was always a hub, but the kind of artists and the kind of content output [from] Canada; the UK has started to mirror some of those [trends]. That’s where we want to take 91 North Records – to all of these diaspora markets.”

91 North hosted a songwriting camp last month in partnership with SOCAN at WM Canada’s new central Toronto HQ, with the intention of connecting songwriters and producers from Canada and India.

The event marked 91 North’s first year in business and the opening of WM Canada’s new recording studios. Superstars like Jonita Gandhi and Ikky attended.

“Blending Western and Eastern sounds together is really important for global successes,”  91 North’s Head of A&R Ajay “Charlie B” Saxena tells us between sessions.

“When we’re looking at how we [pair] songwriters, we’ll put a top-line writer in there who just writes in English and who can do melodies, but then bring in a Punjabi writer that’s in that same space in the [Punjabi] world,” he adds.

Commenting on how Punjabi-language music made in Canada today, which blends hip-hop, trap, pop and other genres, is becoming increasingly appealing to a wider commercial audience, Charlie B adds that “Punjabi music has really come a long way”.

“I always wanted to see it cross over and I always wondered if we mixed the sounds, what we [would]  get out of it. Everything’s very experimental at the beginning, but now what we’re doing isn’t experimental anymore, it just sounds like it’s supposed to be.”

As South Asian diaspora artists rise in prominence in Canada and globally, 91 North’s Creative Director Ikky predicts that Punjabi-language artists will feature in the Top 10 on the US Hot 100 within the next two to three years.

He adds that when that eventually happens, he’d like to see multiple stars from the Punjabi-language music space break into the US market in quick succession, similar to the rise of Latin music before it.

“When we cross the bridge, it can’t just be one person,” he says. “It’s going to have to be this domination, like what happened with [Latin music artists like] J. Balvin, and Bad Bunny.”

Commenting on the parallels between Punjabi-language music’s steady global rise and the explosive success of other regional genres, from Musica Mexicana to K-pop, Afrobeats, and Amapiano, 91 North’s Head of A&R Charlie B tells us: “Afrobeats really started to soar to another level, because they made such uplifting music, and people are open to that.”

He adds: “The melodies are so infectious. The production is great. It’s the same thing with Latin music, and it’s the same thing with Punjabi music. I also see a lot of mashups online now where you have, for example, a [Afrobeats] song on a Punjabi beat or vice versa. It’s just a matter of time before one of those goes super viral.”

Here, Charlie B and Ikky (Ikwinder Singh) tell us more about their ambitions for 91 North and their predictions for the future of Punjabi-language music…

It’s been a year since you launched 91 North. What have the highlights been?

Ikky: One thing we’re very focused on is tapping into different parts of the genre. I’ve always been against saying it’s ‘Punjabi music, or South Asian music’. It’s not, it’s just music. And there are genres between that, like hip hop, pop and country.

“One thing we’re very focused on is tapping into different parts of the genre.”

Ikky

At 91 North, we’ve been able to expand from just being Punjabi music to place ourselves in Bollywood, Punjabi, Tamil. It’s really progressive growth. I’m very much into having recognition for the work we do.

What’s the process of listening back through everything written during the songwriting camp? How do you decide what to release?

Charlie B: So realistically [the reason for] putting this camp together, collectively with SOCAN, and obviously Ikky and our team, was that we wanted to get as many records as we could for our artists. But we [also wanted to help] the producers and the writers involved to grow in their field.

Some of them may not always get the opportunity to do stuff like this. They’re very grateful. But when this is all done, we will go through all the music and figure out what we want to keep, what we want to put aside.

We then have our own meetings with the writers and so forth and figure out what we do with the records. But generally, all the records will go to the artists working with us.

As part of the Punjabi wave that’s happening in Canada at the moment, what sub-genre of Punjabi music is getting the most attention from the industry and from mainstream audiences?

Ikky: I’d say it’s a mix between hip-hop and pop. We don’t really have an artist who raps. Rappers in the Punjabi industry are just singers with flow. So they could jump between hip-hop and pop. It’s really just where the beat lies.

But hip-hop and pop definitely opened the door to like, ‘Oh, these guys are cool’.

And then the pop stuff we’ve been doing lately is like, ‘How do we take our niche sound and commercialize it.’ So by no means is it  ‘pop’ in my head, but it’s just all these niche things we’ve been doing, the sounds and arrangements, that make it commercial. So in that sense, I’d call it pop.

Ikky, you made an interesting point about the difference between ‘westernization and commercialization’. To your point, If you look at other genres that have broken globally, they didn’t necessarily need to westernize to become commercial…

Ikky: There you go. I think it’s finding the fine line. When we release records, [we consider] if we are alienating our own culture and embracing someone else’s or are we alienating the culture that we want to be a part of and embracing [our culture].

It’s finding that fine line. We’ll keep [looking] for it.

How important is it for you to break artists in the US?

Charlie B: It is a dream. We want to get there, and I know we’ll get there with time. But for now, it’s just about growing as much as we can in Canada. And obviously, with success comes consumption. With consumption comes discovery.

Artists are very competitive in every genre, but especially this one. I’ll tell them, ‘Listen, there’s not a lot of you guys right now. So everyone needs to work together, because we’re all going to the same place, and we’ll get there faster if we go together.’

It’s easier said than done, but it’s definitely possible [to break in the US]. This genre is just getting off the ground, really. Globally, for sure, it’s already taken off, but in the North American market, especially America, it’s going to take some time.

What are you looking for in the artists you sign?

Ikky: What stands out most is tone. Like, I don’t care about your flow, I don’t care about your lyricism. If your tone stands out, I like that. And then work ethic. I’m a producer first, but I want to be a part of everything. I want to know what goes on in labels, what goes on in artist teams. That way I can say, ‘How do we keep this ball rolling?’ So that’s the second part. The hard work part.

“A lot of the biggest artists I know are their own people. They don’t stand behind the manager or let someone else talk for them.”

Ikky

If I send you to Spotify, Apple, and Amazon, and I can’t be there, can you represent yourself at the best level? A lot of the biggest artists I know are their own people. They don’t stand behind the manager or let someone else talk for them. They say, ‘No, this is my idea to sell. I will sell it’.

That’s something I barely see now.

What are your predictions in terms of the commercial success of 91 North’s artists in North America and globally?

Charlie B: We’re definitely on our way. The next step is to break in America and obviously break globally on a higher level. We have artists here that have grown globally, which is great, but not in the Top 10 [in the US].

“I used to call people in the US all the time [about my artists]. Now they’re calling me.”

Charlie B

But I see it going global. The reason why I say that is because I used to call people in the US all the time [about my artists]. Now they’re calling me, like ‘Hey, that artist just did 5,000 people at Hammerstein Ballroom.’ Yeah, he did.

Now that I’m starting to get the calls from American offices, I know we’re on our way. Because if they don’t call you, we’re not there yet.  So it’s just a matter of time for things to go global. Also, there are so many new stars that I’m excited about, and there are South Asian stars coming out of Australia, the UK, and Canada.

If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be and why?

Ikky: More education. I think that’s the problem in the music industry. We have vocal coaches, but we don’t have manager coaches. I think at the very minimum, you should know the industry you’re walking into.

I love so many artists, and then you meet their managers, and you’re like, ‘You’re going to fuck up this whole thing.’ And they do, because [they don’t have the experience].

Again, it comes back to, you should be selling your own music [as an artist], right? There are so many managers of artists where the artists will be like, ‘Just don’t tell them’.

I’m like, ‘Then why is he your manager!’ That doesn’t make sense, right? But it’s not their fault, where are we supposed to go find someone who helps managers learn [about the music business]?

Today, every single record is case to case. There are so many deals around, so many abnormal ways of doing things. If we have the knowledge of this, it should be spread. No one is teaching managers and artist teams how to really become [good at those roles].