Diljit Dosanjh’s Untold Story

We all love listening to music and watching movies, which make our emotions happy and relieve stress all day and night. In India, several actors and singers have a fan following of billions of people. 

Introduction

No one gets success overnight, and hence, neither does Diljit, so here we will share the untold story, including his music journey, struggling days, and international stardom. 

Source: Google Images

In this article, we will share the interesting hidden story of India’s most loved singer and actor, Diljit Dosanjh. He has performed several music concerts and live shows loved by his fan following in India. Diljit has done several movies in which he played the lead role, and this is the time when people admitted the hidden talent of Diljit Dosanjh.

This Punjabi singer is famous for singing songs in the Punjabi language and is recognised as the most loved singer in India. 

Table of Content

Important Facts about Diljit Dosanjh

Story of Diljit Dosanjh

Born Diljit Singh in the village of Dosanjh Kalan, Punjab, the man started his career singing bhajans in a gurdwara in the vicinity. Those who knew him as a teenager often describe him as a “bashful boy” who “had barely any beard but had rhythm, bhangra well, and tied a very good turban.” Rajinder Singh, an old song producer who gave his first break to him, once told the Indian Express, quoting Diljit “He was a very god-fearing beeba boy, hungry to learn.”.

At age sixteen, he made his first album. Of the tracks, they didn’t seem to go well at nightclubs, but at wedding parties, people found his full innocence and haunting voice most attractive. Immediately, he began receiving shows almost every day. Shortly afterwards, his parents sent him to Ludhiana to live and train under his uncle, a local musician. It was indeed a fertile time for pop music with the likes of Daler Mehndi and Panjabi MC, who sang “Mundian to bach ke,” taking Punjabi sounds to the world. In 2006, Dosanjh made his first international tour to Canada before releasing his second album a year after, this time under the new name, Diljit Dosanjh.

Source: Google Images

One after the other, Dosanjh, by 2010, had also made his way as a popular actor in Punjab’s vibrant film industry. Six years later, he made his debut in Bollywood. Currently, he is a global torchbearer.

For the non-initiated, Dosanjh is an incredibly hot Punjabi singer who recently debuted on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show last week. The 40-year-old proudly sits atop what is known as the “Punjabi wave,” a new generation of artists fusing traditional Punjabi music with rap and hip-hop. He was introduced by Fallon as “the biggest Punjabi artist on the planet.” Dosanjh, dressed in traditional attire, performed the numbers Born to Shine and G.O.A.T. in front of a packed audience.

“A few seconds into it and everyone was dancing,” says Sucharita Tyagi, a film critic who saw the show. “You should have seen the faces of the house band—they were mind-blown.”

A versatile actor in India, Dosanjh also does all his films with his singing and has also proven himself as a very good producer. For some who may not even have seen his films or followed his music, he is an apparent social media star who constantly creates the same hullabaloo using some funny videos on Instagram—a very well-liked and shared video by many is wherein he has a ridiculously distressing conversation in Punjabi with the voice assistant Alexa.

How Does Diljit Dosanjh Win Hearts with His Versatility

Dosanjh is popular as a versatile actor who sings in all his films as an accomplished producer back home in India. And to those who might not have seen his films or followed his music, he is a social media star who is constantly making a stew out of funny videos on Instagram; a video of his hilariously frustrating conversation in Punjabi with voice assistant Alexa has become quite everyone’s favourite.

For Dosanjh, it is interesting yet particularly different because his image—or at least, because he is in hyperbole—marks the antithesis to a Punjabi hip-hop stereotype; he is not good at the music’s dark and gritty sound or vocabulary and does eschew anything organic-traditional, in his case. 

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That is really where the crux lies. His voice is as soulful as it is rich; he sings with a baritone that soars and quivers with emotion at all the right places. In his shows, he makes the house reverberate with energy (and gets Ed Sheeran to sing in Punjabi). And his performances on screen can bring people to tears or laughter. 

The first thing to his fans, he is a “been Munda” or “good boy” and is able, through spontaneity and natural charm with an extremely relatable persona, to become one of the most endearing stars of this time. “Ask three people in a room why they like the man, and they’ll give different reasons: his acting, singing, or just the Instagram content he makes,” Tyagi says. “But they’ll all have one thing in common: their love for the person he is.”

He made history last year as the very first Punjabi language singer to perform at the Coachella festival. He pitched a collaboration with pop singer Sia and joined Sheeran while he was touring India. 

In various interviews, the most interesting part of Dosanjh’s narration states that it is not by chance that he is where he is today, as he has worked hard day in and day out to get here, practising and singing during all his free time and clashing with opportunities that he wasn’t given. The modesty with which he carries himself often makes him appear to be an innocent bystander in his path to fame. 

“As you grow as a star, you usually want to recreate yourself, but that has never been the case with Dosanjh, who doesn’t go the personal excess route even when his fame explodes,” says communication consultant Dilip Cherian. “By being this modest good boy, he presses a whole bunch of right buttons with the audience,” he adds. 

How Does Dosanjh Master the Art of Being Real and Cool

Yet, Cherian believes that there is more than meets the eye—and indeed some of Dosanjh’s authentic persona could perhaps be performative. Indeed, Dosanjh himself has said that contrary to his image as a “pure soul,” who is not bothered about the hustle, he is always trying to overtake competition: “This is my job, and I don’t make bones about it.” Dosanjh has intentionally stayed away from being ‘an edgy bad boy’—the usual path most of the peers have followed observes Cherian. 

Apart from a brief phase in his career where his songs talked about guns and men’s pride, he has mostly avoided anything controversial—unlike revenge and violence in Punjabi pop, he is inclined to portray faith, love, and traditional themes. Some of his most popular tracks, like G.O.A.T. and Born to Shine, talk about how he isn’t here for the money but to make a big name for himself and his village.

Source: Google Images

Each concert starts with him declaring, “Punjabi aagaye hai” (ejected), then goes on to sing only in his first language and says he couldn’t care less about saying English very well. “When you come from a melodramatic small place like mine, you want the whole world to know about it,” he said once in an interview.   

Though he knows about his roots—every song from his repertoire that tries to represent some facet of his Punjabi identity—he is not bound by them. While he experiments with old and mainstream bhangra-influenced pop sounds that age-old tryst with traditions within the songs, he never stops at that.

When it comes to acting, it has mostly revolved between comedy and serious, between light-hearted satires like Jatt & Juliet and serious ones like Udta Punjab, which talk about insurgency and the whole problem of addiction present in Punjab.

Those like Tyagi, who have met him, describe him as a “shy and quiet but extremely watchful man.” But it has never deterred him from putting on social media stunts and cracking jokes, most of them at his own expense.

“After spending years in the industry, Dosanjh has got his people in place who help him manage that image—which is just about staying authentic but also carefully straddling the domestic and international audiences with his choices,” Cherian shares.

Dosanjh: Talent, Humor, and Big Ambitions

What the verdict may be about his authenticity, however, it is undeniable that Dosanjh is indeed a man of singular talents.

Even Dosanjh’s self-deprecating humour feels purposeful sometimes. He races to crack a joke on himself—including about not being fluent in English—before someone else can. But behind

The facade of lightness is a serious performer who is always thinking about his place in the world and how he, a small village boy from Punjab, can topple it with his art.

It might be his music that would be the bedrock of his career. Yet, Dosanjh offers much more than that; he is a whole package, a mix of old and new, simple and stylish, all of which make him utterly relatable.

Conclusion

Diljit Dosanjh is a hard-working singer who earned this name and fame in the music industry with his passion and god-given skill of singing in the Punjabi language and dashing aura. His singing style matches with the modern style of living standards, due to which he is considered the most loving singer, not only in India but also on the international stage.