SUMMIT OF SOUND

Why Diljit Dosanjh and Jackson Wang's cross-cultural collaboration portends the future of pop.

- EDWIN HOUGHTON

A few weeks ago, on a quiet back street in downtown Los Angeles, a meeting with momentous implications for the future of global pop took place as the city went on about its business, all unawares. Jacaranda trees shield the low silhouettes of the Arts District's converted warehouses from view of the traffic inching along nearby Route 101, the lush purple blooms a stark contrast to the omnipresent graffiti and skeletal steel bridges that rise above them to dominate the horizon. But if they had X-ray vision, commuters on this Wednesday afternoon might have noticed two rows of black SUVs lining the street leading to the loading bay of one particular godown. One squadron of vehicles belongs to the entourage of Diljit Dosanjh, actor and reigning king of modern Punjabi music, the other to Team Wang, the small creative collective which has assembled itself around post K-pop prodigy Jackson Wang.

When I arrive, each star is in his assigned dressing room, making whispered style decisions with the various handlers. Emerging from their corners to meet on set, Dosanjh and Wang seem—despite their obvious superficial differences—somehow as matched as bookends, both of medium height and with a similar wiry, athletic build. Wang was, in fact, a competitive fencer before he was discovered by a South Korean talent agency and recruited into the K-pop boy band GOT7 in 2014. As they size each other up, it's easy to imagine them as sportsmen stepping into an arena, top strikers in their respective games, facing each other over a football pitch. However, once they're each draped in formal attire and the camera starts clicking, their poise and ease with each other rather suggests two statesmen meeting for a veritable Bandung conference of beats—a reminder that musicians have a far better track record for bridging cultural divides than actual diplomats.