Check out this bhangra by the beach, Nova Scotia style

The World
Maritime Bhangra dance in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia.

Bhangra is a style of both music and dance that's popular in the Punjab region of India.

But a new bhangra video that went viral has a distinctly different backdrop: Peggy's Cove, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. 

In the video, two men dance on a big granite ledge in front of the Atlantic Ocean. 

Hasmeet Singh is part of the Halifax-based group, called Maritime Bhangra.

He's shocked and overjoyed by the responses the video has received.

"It was one of those things we usually do, right? We just go anywhere and start dancing and make a small clip out of it and just post it," he says. "I would say in the first few hours we saw that people were taking a lot of interest in this and we were very happy. We were like, 'Okay, this will get like 1,000 or 1,500 views.' And it looks like it's going to go 300,000 in a few moments."

Minutes later that number was 326,000 and counting. It's all about momentum. But there are plenty of bhangra videos on the internet — why did this one take off?

"To be honest, the first factor is Peggy's Cove," he says. "People living in Halifax and on the east coast, they always relate themselves to that ocean. So when they see rocks they just feel connected through their ancestors and their family members and the time they have spent there with their family."

There's also the special connection you get to other cultures through dance. It connects in a way that's different from music or even food.

"I think dancing is so much an expressive thing," Singh says. "As they say, actions speak louder than words. So when you are doing a specific thing and have a meaning attached to it … it brings more attention. It gives us the ability for others to connect with us."

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