Diljit Dosanjh

Diljit Dosanjh sets records with his groundbreaking North American tour, becoming the first Punjabi artist to headline stadiums across the continent. PRG proudly provided video, lighting, audio, rigging and backline services to make this historic event a reality.

Story by Ryan Borba

The concert business, in recent years, has seen multiple groundbreaking firsts: Taylor Swift helming the first $1 billion tour, Madonna’s record-breaking crowd of 1.6 million fans on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, George Strait’s 110,905 tickets sold for one show at Kyle Field in Texas.

One other recent groundbreaking first, however, is a bit different from the others: a stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia, in April became the site of another historic event when Indian musician Diljit Dosanjh played before 48,000 fans at BC Place for what is being called the largest Punjabi-language concert outside of India.

These kinds of massive accomplishments take decades of work, strategic planning, maintaining a deep connection with masses of fans, years of touring working up the venue ladder, endless promotion and marketing as well as a lot of risk and nerves of steel.

“If it works, it’s amazing, but if it doesn’t work, it’s freaking terrifying,” says Baldeep Randhawa, a promoter at Live Nation, based in Canada. “Once the show happened, everybody was just happy. It was just such a positive vibe. When he was on stage, the first thing he said was, ‘We are here. We made it, we’re, we’re on stage’ and, basically we’re all on that same level now.”

As a multimedia superstar for more than 20 years and with more than a decade of worldwide touring under his belt, Dosanjh was more than qualified to accomplish the feat, but it still took some convincing.