At L.A. college campuses, Punjabi music is opening doors to heritage long kept closed

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On a sunny Saturday morning in Los Angeles, 22-year-old Aran Singh Multani drives into the lively heart of the University of Southern California Village.The playlist running through his speakers was a perfect mix of American pop and the beats of Punjabi music.

Dressed in a layered outfit, Multani’s right wrist glinted with a Kara — an iron bracelet, known as one of five articles of Sikh faith — decorated with Punjabi language script and proudly visible.For most of his childhood, growing up as the only Sikh kid at his primary school in Los Angeles, that bracelet stayed hidden.His identity was expressed privately, at home and at the Gurdwara — the Sikh place of worship, not in public.

But the shift came at USC where he is currently pursuing a master’s program in pathology.“I started hearing the themes inside [Punjabi] music — pride in language, resilience, and history, which helps to reconnect with my identity,” Multani said while sitting in USC Village, where some students were enjoying their breakfast at Cafe Dulce.Multani’s experience is not unique.Across the United States, a generation of young Americans of Indian and Pakistani origin — the children and grandchildren of immigrants — are using Punjabi music as a bridge back to their cultures.

It is reconnecting them with their identity — they were once shy, taught to speak languages, understand histories, and importantly find common ground with their grandparents.Punjabi music has always dominated the South Asian diaspora in the United States, on the television, humming from car stereos, mainly stayed inside those domestic spaces to private life that rarely entered into the mainstream.Harinder Singh is a co-founder of the U.S.-based Sikh Research Institute (SikhRI) who spent four decades observing the South Asian diaspora and Punjabi identity taking root on the U.S.

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