What makes Surrey, B.C., a 'global epicentre' for South Asian music?
Community support is big in Surrey, which makes becoming an artist a lot easier, says Chani Nattan
When the 2025 Juno Award nominations were announced last month, there was a clear theme: South Asian music and artists are rising up across Canada, and particularly in B.C.
AP Dhillon, who lives on Vancouver Island, as well as Karan Aujla, Jazzy B, Chani Nattan and Inderpal Moga, all four of whom are linked to Surrey, B.C., are up for South Asian Music Recording of the Year.
It's Surrey that's particularly notable when it comes to the genre.
Rolling Stone magazine in 2023 called the rise of South Asian music in Canada the "Punjabi Wave," and noted how many of those popular artists hail from B.C. — mentioning Aujla's Surrey connections specifically.
Juno Awards president Allan Reid has described Surrey as the "epicentre" of South Asian music, on a global scale.
Why Surrey?
For the past several years, 5X Fest, celebrating South Asian music and art, has been held throughout Metro Vancouver. Executive director Harpo Mander said that's largely due to immigration.
"A lot of international students coming from the Punjab region of India chose this as a destination or got admission in schools here," she said. "A lot of them were back in India writing, performing."
She said there are people who aren't necessarily based in Surrey, but go there to make music with artists in the community.
"Now a lot of those people are making a global impact because they were really talented and they kind of came together with other talented people."
According to Statistics Canada, in 2021 there were about 212,000 people of South Asian descent living in Surrey — almost 38 per cent of the city's population.
Harj Nagra, who has been making Punjabi music for about 12 years, said having a large South Asian population has certainly been beneficial for local artists, but added that social media has helped spread the word about the genre worldwide.
"I think like [previously], I would say there was different demographics of people that were listening, so not so much of the younger crowd," he said. "More and more people are more involved in Punjabi music and they're listening to it. They'll see someone post a video reel [on Instagram] and they wanna listen to it, they wanna make a TikTok."
Surrey-based songwriter Chani Nattan, who is nominated for a Juno Award for COOLIN, said Surrey is engrained in who he is, partly because of the pride locals take in him and other Surrey artists.
"Surrey is like the backbone of my life," he said. "I've seen a lot of artists come up from their hometowns, they don't receive as much love. Being part of this community from here, I feel like they've really embraced me."
Growing up, Nattan thought he'd have to relocate to the U.K. to get the support he needed to have a career in music, but more and more producers, photographers, videographers and studios have popped up in Surrey, making it easy to find people to collaborate with.
"Now I feel like that whole hub is in Canada and a lot of it is in Surrey."
Mander hopes it stays that way. She's inspired by the way Latin music, a regional genre, became mainstream, and stayed there.
"It's very normal to listen to like a Latin song or a Latin artist on the radio," she said.
"I think that's what we're hoping for, is that Punjabi music is not just a moment in time, but something that sticks around for a very long time from here on."
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With files from Baneet Braich and Sohrab Sandhu