C Roo: On Keys for Diljit Dosanjh’s Record-Breaking DIL-LUMINATI Tour
From London to Punjab, the keys behind the biggest South Asian tour in history.
When Punjabi superstar Diljit Dosanjh stepped onto the stage of London’s O2 Arena in 2024, history was made. Within minutes of tickets going on sale, the first show sold out, prompting two additional dates that quickly followed suit. By the end of the run, over 60,000 fans had filled the O2 across three consecutive nights, making Dosanjh the highest-selling South Asian artist ever to perform at the venue.
At the heart of this record-breaking tour was an international collaboration, bringing together musicians and production talent from across the world. Among them was C Roo (a.k.a. Clement Rooney), a London-born keyboard player engaged by Obelix Arts to join the DIL LUMINATI tour on behalf of Saregama, one of India’s oldest and most influential record companies.
From September through December 2024, the tour travelled across Europe’s leading cities — Paris, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Dublin, Amsterdam, Milan, and Düsseldorf — each drawing audiences of around 40,000 people. The final stretch brought the team to purpose-built outdoor stages across India, Qatar, and beyond, including New Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Punjab.
As the tour’s Western keyboard specialist, Rooney’s role was both musical and adaptive. Half the show’s setlist drew on Dosanjh’s traditional Punjabi repertoire, rich with harmonium and mandolin textures. The other half featured his collaborations with American artists, with polished pop arrangements and bold electronic sound design. Rooney’s task was to bridge these two worlds seamlessly, translating harmonium technique to the keyboard in a Western framework, and adding arena-style synthesizer moments of shape and melody that elevated the sound to stadium scale.
Performing on Nord keyboards and software synths, Rooney shaped much of the show’s harmonic and textural landscape, balancing traditional warmth with modern power. Each night concluded with the song Main Hoon Punjab, whose final moments featured an extended solo by Rooney — an amalgamation of the themes that ran through the evening’s music. Sensitive to the flow of the show, and in deep respect of both the music and the man at its centre, the solo drew together the tour’s spirit of connection and celebration. (Video provided below.)
For Obelix Arts, the project represented a meeting point of global artistry and cultural exchange. “Clement brought not only technical fluency but also a deep musical awareness that allowed Punjabi tradition and contemporary Western pop to coexist naturally on stage,” said a spokesperson for Obelix Arts.
The collaboration with Saregama, the modern continuation of the historic His Master’s Voice record company, gave the partnership a thoughtful symmetry — a British musician performing under a label whose legacy connects both the UK and India, now reimagined in a thoroughly modern, international context.
From Paris to Punjab, the DIL-LUMINATI tour stood as a testament to scale, sound, and shared artistry. For Rooney and Obelix Arts, it marked not just a series of performances but a statement about what modern live music can be: borderless, collaborative, and profoundly human.
