Diljit Dosanjh is the First Panjabi Artist on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon

Last week, in a first for a Panjabi singer, Diljit (Daljit) Singh Dosanjh made his debut on US TV on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon called Dosanjh the ‘greatest Panjabi artist on the planet.’ Even before the show, the back-room humor got a lot of eyeballs. Dosanjh performed Panjabi songs in the traditional turle wali pagg, kurta and tehmat (traditional turban with a flare, tunic, and a long loincloth with folds in the front). In 2023, Dosanjh became the first Indian artist to perform at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. His Born to Shine Australia Tour in 2023 was a big success. In 2024, on his Dil-Luminati Tour he became the first Indian artist to perform at a sold-out stadium show at BC Place in Vancouver and Rogers Centre in Toronto or at Chicago. Those with similar levels of fame like AP Dhillon or the late Sidhu Moose Wala model their appearance on Western rappers and delve into darker themes of Panjabi culture — guns, violence and objectification of women. Dosanjh’s music, for the most part, rooted in Panjabiness, is about love, desire, a sense of yearning, and is reminiscent of traditional Panjabi folk songs. His music has appeal beyond Panjab and in promotional videos he appears humble and humorous. In films, though he has done comedies in Panjabi, in Bollywood he refused to play the ‘Sikh characters for comic relief’ stereotype imposed by the Hindi film industry for decades or cut his hair except for a recent biopic Chamkila where he wore a wig. The Indian Censor Board has stalled his movie Panjab 95 – a biopic on human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra in which he plays Khalra – for over 18 months now.