00:00It's time to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights,
00:04and this year Billboard is taking you inside one of the world's hottest Diwali parties
00:08and one of the hardest to get into.
00:13This ultra-glamorous invite-only affair started as a small gathering in the Tribeca loft
00:17of music industry veteran Anjula Acharya, who introduced artists like Lady Gaga,
00:22Britney Spears and 50 Cent to India while launching the career of Priyanka Chopra in the U.S.
00:28But in 2019, she moved her party to the Pierre Hotel on New York's Upper East Side,
00:33drawing celebrities from Padma Lakshmi to Mindy Kaling and hundreds of millions of
00:38eyeballs on social media, showcasing the ascension of South Asians in pop culture.
00:42This year, 300 lucky guests were invited by a house committee that included the CEO of
00:47Warner Music Group, the chief content officer at Netflix and Billboard's editorial director,
00:52Hannah Karpf, with the soundtrack for the evening curated by Jay Sean,
00:55who made his U.S. Billboard chart debut in 2009, breaking cultural barriers as a South Asian artist
01:02with back-to-back Hot 100 Top 10 hits, including Down, which spent two weeks at No. 1.
01:15But the belle of the ball this year was undoubtedly Nora Feti, a rising Canadian
01:20Moroccan pop star with 47 million Instagram followers, who moved to India from Toronto
01:25at the age of 22, learned Hindi and became a Bollywood sensation. She stole the show with
01:30an electrifying performance of her new song, Nora, and a string of her most beloved Bollywood hits,
01:36supported by a team of world-class dancers from Atma Performing Arts.
01:41It was an exciting taste of what's to come as Nora gets ready to release her first EP
01:55through Warner Music Group and heads on tour in 2025. The all-that-glitters-the-volleyball
02:01glitters brighter every year, and with a slew of young Indian artists climbing the Billboard charts,
02:06we can't wait to show you who performs next fall.
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