A lo-fi celebration of America's 250th birthday is coming to a playlist near you

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Courtesy of Kabir Sehgal

Atlanta music producer and author Kabir Sehgal visited cities around the country to search for sounds of a nation at 250 years old. He found Stars and Static.

Across two decades at the nexus of music and politics, Seghal has released 18 albums, published books including 2007’s Jazzocracy and made meditation albums with everyone from Lil Jon to Deepak Chopra, which earned him a reputation for being a the industry's leading refiner of spoken word soundbeds. 

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Kabir Sehgal

Credit: Courtesy of Kabir Sehgal

His latest project, Stars and Static, is a mostly instrumental album that combines found and field recordings with smooth electro beats, synthesizer blips and plucked guitar to ponder the role of sound in what it means to be an American in 2026. 

For Sehgal, that meant traveling to places like Boise, Idaho, and Newport, R.I. — and examining his upbringing as the son of Indian immigrants and the godson of civil rights leader Andrew Young and his unconventional path from Ivy grad, Wall Street executive and Naval Reserve Officer to a creator of lo-fi Americana with a twist.

Sehgal calls it "chill-out music," but it's deep. On Stars and Static, "America the Beautiful" is reimagined as a rumination in "America's Beautiful Festival of Ponce De Leon" and the voice of late Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis floats atop a subtle, stirring rendition of "We Shall Overcome" in "Selma Sunrise." There's also "Battle Hymn of the Bicycle," "Stars, Stripes and Sugar," and "Blues Bless Beale Street."

But can easy listening tackle hard subjects? 

It’s a formula that has worked well for Seghal, who has racked up more than a dozen Grammy Awards, including in 2025 for Last Sundays in Plains album with Jimmy Carter and this year, for Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an audio book.

Sehgal joined GPB's Kristi York Wooten in the Talk Studio to discuss his work.

TRANSCRIPT

Excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.

Kristi York Wooten: This is GPB, I'm Kristi York Wooten, and we're pleased to have Atlanta author and producer Kabir Sehgal here with us today to talk about a new project, Stars and Static. It's a lo-fi music project in honor of America 250, which of course is the celebration of our country's 250th birthday. So let's start right now with the 250th theme and talk about your parents. You're the son of immigrants.

Kabir Sehgal: My dad came to Atlanta in the early 1960s with $10 in his pocket. He likes to joke — he says when he came to Atlanta, he was "Indian No. 9." Now, there's a couple hundred thousand South Asians in the community. And he ended up working at an engineering company and became the chairman and CEO of it. And my mother, as well, she was a professor of psychology at Oglethorpe and then Georgia State University. So I've been blessed to be in this, I guess, melting pot of Atlanta for many years.

Kristi York Wooten: Your unique upbringing did give you exposure to people like Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young and John Lewis.

Kabir Sehgal: I've been blessed in many regards to be around these incredible people, but then the question is what do you do with these relationships? My view is you share them. You document them, you make music with them, and you sort of pass on the knowledge.

Kristi York Wooten: Tell us how working these experiences in relationship-sharing and building into music, what that process is like with Stars and Static.

Kabir Sehgal: I started taking songs of America, and in 2017, I went to Selma [Ala.] with John Lewis. And we went, and I asked him while we were there, I said, "May I record you?" And I set up a microphone. I said, "Please read this." And it was a speech by Barack Obama [that he had given in 2015]. I think that was the 50th anniversary of Selma. So [Lewis] read it, which was great. 

MUSIC

Kabir Sehgal: And then it sort of just sat on my hard drive for many years. So of course, what song would make sense? "We Shall Overcome." So I did a version of "We Shall Overcome" and then I added drums and some strings underneath them. So in that way, it was a special project that took many years to put together. But I also call it, in parentheses, "(The Selma Sunrise)," because [Lewis] was always so optimistic about life. He would say, "Never lose hope, never lose hope."

Kristi York Wooten: Some of the songs were recordings that had been made in different places in the country.

Kabir Sehgal: I wanted it to feature real field recordings. With the rise of AI, it's like, "OK, what's real? What's not?" Everywhere I travel, I try to record where I am. If I'm in New York, Times Square. If I am in Atlanta, and so forth. The album begins with "America the Beautiful" and I wanted to show the sounds of kids playing in a park at a springtime festival [off Ponce De Leon Avenue in Atlanta]. I recorded in a Washington D.C. near the Willard Hotel, which is a famed hotel. It's a [John Philip] Sousa march, "Stars and Stripes." I was in Little Rock. There's one called, "This is My Little Rock Sunset." So you hear the Little Rock ambiance. You know, there's the biography of me, but there's also the geography of where I've been, and I wanna share that with the audience.

Kristi York Wooten: And what do you hope people get out of Stars and Static?

Kabir Sehgal: I hope people, when they listen to Stars and Static, they hear themselves in the music. 250 is the time for celebration. I'm not sure how many people feel celebratory right now at America's 250 years. And so, while you'll be seeing parades and salutations, I know a lot of people are feeling less than that. And so, I wanted to make this project as a way to say you can still feel proud about your country and also feel some of the challenges. It's kind of a contradictory thing. But I do think a lot of people kind of feel that way. And I hope people, when they hear the music, they can feel proud about their country. In some ways, I want people to reflect on their own journey in America, what we can do better. I know that sounds lofty, but at the same time, this music is also designed for chill-out music. So I hope that people just kind of add it to their playlist and put it on the background and it gets them kind of in this low-key patriotic mood, you know?

Kristi York Wooten: Thank you so much, Kabir Sehgal.

Kabir Sehgal: Thank you, Kristi, always a pleasure.