40 min
Punk Rock, Mental Health, and RomComs with Shahjehan Khan American Muslim Project
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- Islam
Boston-based Pakistani-American actor, musician, behavioral health consultant, and self-identified miscreant Shahjehan Khan joins us to discuss his recent work voicing the dashing Italian American tour guide Matteo on RomComPods. Debuting as Apple’s #1 fiction podcast, we hear how this project expanded his definition of art, where COVID-era performers are recording these days, and how Shahjehan took his own journey through Pakistan in order to find himself. (Have you noticed how Americans are always going abroad to find themselves?)
We also learn how his role as co-founder/guitarist/songwriter of the ever-evolving and internationally renowned South-Asian American punk rock band The Kominas has been a 15-year exercise in community building. As someone in long-term recovery who has at times felt like he had a fractured identity, he candidly details his mental health struggles, its correlation to creativity, and debates with Asad about the stigma of addiction in the Muslim community. Shahjehan reveals what it’s like to personally disrupt a Trump rally, and how it feels to finally be a brown guy cast in a white role. Find out what you should be watching, reading, and listening to, and the incredible way that the complicated Muslim American narrative is advancing.
This interview with Shahjehan Khan was recorded in November 2020. You can learn more about his band, the Kominas, at kominas.bandcamp.com. The first season of RomComPods is available wherever you get your podcasts. View his recent performance as the co-lead actor in Guards at the Taj by the SoHo Shakespeare Company here. Finally, check out his ongoing project, Chaand Sequence, a COVID-era collaboration between artists who are children of immigrants creating music and art as a means of self-healing.
Shahjehan's Recommendations:
TV: Churails, Ramy, Insecure, Man Like Mobeen
Movies: Sound of Metal, Mogul Mowgli, Swipe (short)
Books: Moth Smoke
Podcasts: Today, Explained, The Daily, Deconstructed, Yo, Is This Racist?, Politically Re-Active, Immigrantly, See Something Say Something
American Muslim Project is a production of Rifelion, LLC.
Writer and Researcher: Lindsy Gamble
Show Edited by Mark Annotto and Asad Butt
Music by Simon Hutchinson
Hosted by Asad Butt
Follow us on Twitter (@AmMuProj) or Instagram (@american_muslim_project/)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Boston-based Pakistani-American actor, musician, behavioral health consultant, and self-identified miscreant Shahjehan Khan joins us to discuss his recent work voicing the dashing Italian American tour guide Matteo on RomComPods. Debuting as Apple’s #1 fiction podcast, we hear how this project expanded his definition of art, where COVID-era performers are recording these days, and how Shahjehan took his own journey through Pakistan in order to find himself. (Have you noticed how Americans are always going abroad to find themselves?)
We also learn how his role as co-founder/guitarist/songwriter of the ever-evolving and internationally renowned South-Asian American punk rock band The Kominas has been a 15-year exercise in community building. As someone in long-term recovery who has at times felt like he had a fractured identity, he candidly details his mental health struggles, its correlation to creativity, and debates with Asad about the stigma of addiction in the Muslim community. Shahjehan reveals what it’s like to personally disrupt a Trump rally, and how it feels to finally be a brown guy cast in a white role. Find out what you should be watching, reading, and listening to, and the incredible way that the complicated Muslim American narrative is advancing.
This interview with Shahjehan Khan was recorded in November 2020. You can learn more about his band, the Kominas, at kominas.bandcamp.com. The first season of RomComPods is available wherever you get your podcasts. View his recent performance as the co-lead actor in Guards at the Taj by the SoHo Shakespeare Company here. Finally, check out his ongoing project, Chaand Sequence, a COVID-era collaboration between artists who are children of immigrants creating music and art as a means of self-healing.
Shahjehan's Recommendations:
TV: Churails, Ramy, Insecure, Man Like Mobeen
Movies: Sound of Metal, Mogul Mowgli, Swipe (short)
Books: Moth Smoke
Podcasts: Today, Explained, The Daily, Deconstructed, Yo, Is This Racist?, Politically Re-Active, Immigrantly, See Something Say Something
American Muslim Project is a production of Rifelion, LLC.
Writer and Researcher: Lindsy Gamble
Show Edited by Mark Annotto and Asad Butt
Music by Simon Hutchinson
Hosted by Asad Butt
Follow us on Twitter (@AmMuProj) or Instagram (@american_muslim_project/)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
40 min