Desi Pride Block Party celebrates South Asian queer community through dance and music
The outdoor event in South Vancouver included drag numbers, community booths, and Indian snacks and drinks
Desi drag performances and music were at the centre of the party on the corner of Main Street and 50 Avenue in Vancouver. (Suneet Gill)
The Punjabi Market Plaza in Vancouver’s Little India filled with expressions of Desi culture and Pride on July 19, featuring South Asian drag performances and Bollywood and fusion music.
Presented by community organizations Sher Vancouver, the Punjabi Market Collective, and Queer Art Exchange, their first-ever Desi Pride Block Party served to celebrate South Asian and BIPOC queer joy ahead of Vancouver’s Pride parade in August.
With the South Asian and brown community being a prominent minority group in B.C., Sher Vancouver Program Coordinator and Peer Support Facilitator Angit Modaher said there needs to be more events and visibility out there.
“This being a public event, anybody can swing by and say hi and get involved,” said Modaher, who co-organized the block party with Joshna Hirani, Sher Vancouver’s manager of community engagement.
“So I think that just shows the true nature of how friendly and welcoming we are as a culture in general. We’re showcasing everything that we have being queer, South Asian, welcoming, and all those things that come natural to all of us.”
The block party featured an all-South Asian lineup of drag performances from Bad Shah, Jolene Queen Sloan, Ra, Destinee Dosanjh, and Nimrat Sra, who also emceed the event.
“Due to drag, I found my gender identity,” Sra said. “It was a tremendous journey from the very beginning, like how step by step, I endured each and everything — performing styles and then outfits and feeling comfortable in that. So [it’s] not just a self-expression but … a soul thing right now.”
Following the drag performances, visitors took to the floor to dance. Throughout the event, they also had the opportunity to receive free henna tattoos from mehndi artist Teejita Gupta and Indian-specialty coffee from Kareena Fagwani’s Alai Coffee business. There were also free snacks available for grabs, such as Indian biscuits.
The event’s music was led by DJ Surbee (Surbhi Negi) and Shak Jessa and drummer Saanya Shah.
The Vancouver Park Board’s queer Inclusion team had a booth where visitors made buttons. Movement, a Metro Vancouver transit riders non-profit, also had a table at the block party.
“Movement is running a bunch of different campaigns across Metro Vancouver,” Program Coordinator Nav Sharma said. “We want to make sure that people have equitable, fair, and accessible access to transit that’s abundant and also affordable.”
The event was sponsored by Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Office of Equity and Inclusive Communities and the City of Vancouver.
Punjabi Market Collective Chair Jag Nagra said the non-profit has been working with the city for a while now, with the outdoor Punjabi Market Plaza on the corner of Main Street and 50 Avenue being a new project where different organizations can run activities.
“I think a lot of people forget that the Punjabi Market is still here,” Nagra said. “A lot of the conversation tends to be like, ‘Oh, Surrey is where you need to go now for shopping or community.’ This is where it all started. So we want to remind people it’s still here. It’s still thriving.”
Nagra added with the block party being a Pride event, she hopes people take away that queer South Asians are here and “in every corner of every city.”
For attendee Viplav Subramanian, the event was a beautiful celebration of being both South Asian and queer.
“I think affirming ourselves and our queerness is so much easier when we also affirm our brownness,” they say. “I think this is a medium where you can easily do that. You’re able to celebrate aspects of that and cherish parts of yourself that cannot be done in queer spaces that uphold white normativity.”
Modaher hopes the Desi Pride Block Party will spark more conversations about queerness and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
“There is definitely openness in the community, but we just need more,” Modaher said.
“We just need it to be the norm where nobody raises an eyebrow, no one says, [‘Oh my God, what happened?’]. Just really making it the norm that queer people are here and we’re not any different — we’re the same human beings we’ve always been.”
