Punk Rock, Mental Health, and RomComs with Shahjehan Khan

American Muslim Project

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/)

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