Multi-hyphenate Kabir Sehgal is demystifying creativity
He released his latest album "stars and static," and says you don't have to choose between the who you are professionally and creatively
Kabir Sehgal's path in life has included working in finance, music, and even the military.
Courtesy of Kabir Sehgal
Words by Anjana Pawa
On March 26, Kabir Sehgal released stars and static, a lo-fi album using recordings of sounds captured across the United States to build reimagined versions of some of the country’s most iconic songs. It is, by any measure, the most ambitious thing he has done, which is a big statement given his hefty career. But it is also a project that makes complete sense for an artist like Sehgal, given how he got to where he is today.
The multi-Grammy Award-winning record producer and sound engineer is also a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, U.S. Navy veteran, former vice president at JPMorgan, and composer. He has produced more than 100 albums and released 18 as an artist himself. Looking at his biography, it may be surprising to learn just how much he’s done, but Sehgal has a word for it. He calls it a "portfolio career." Having multiple careers at once, he explains, can fall into place organically or can happen by design. For him, it’s a little bit of both.
"stars and static" was released on March 26.
Courtesy of Kabir Sehgal
Sehgal grew up in Atlanta in an Indian household, where his father was an engineer and his mother was a professor. In fifth grade, his sister brought home a Miles Davis album, which lit a spark in him that eventually started a fire. This fire burned into a love for jazz music. "I could not believe that they were improvising," he recalls to JoySauce. "This was music that they were making up as they were playing." That flame never went out—it just spread to many different, and somewhat unconventional places for an artist. He understood early that loving jazz music and building a life around it were two different things. "I didn't think I wanted a career as a full-time jazz musician," he says. "You have to be really good and play exceptionally well. It wasn't the life I imagined for myself."
So for this reason, Sehgal pursued a career in finance. He went into the corporate world, where he joined JPMorgan and worked in emerging markets. There, he was tracking economic developments across the globe and got what he calls a "birds-eye view of the world economy." But the creative hunger was still there. He started to use his paychecks to fund recording sessions. He also began inviting clients from his finance job to recording sessions instead of golf outings, and building what would become a parallel world he would live in alongside his professional life. "I don't play golf. I don't ski," he says simply. "I make music. So I would involve my friends and clients into music making and that began my career."
Sehgal thrives in this space and the idea that you don't have to choose between the person you are professionally and the person you are creatively. You can let them inform each other and resist the cultural pressure to collapse your life into a single lane. “A lot of the people I know are jazz musicians that have day jobs," he says. "I try to demystify this. It's okay to have a day job and take the pressure off your creative career." That pressure relief, he argues, is what lets you make honest work.
For him, eventually with time, the secondary career became the primary one. After 15 years in finance, Sehgal stepped away from the corporate world and into the throes of a fully creative life. The transition was strange at first, but things seemed to fall into place on their own. “There is no morning meeting, there are no clients, it's on you to figure it out," he shares, recalling the change in pace. "Some of that is like, ‘What comes next?’ And I've been lucky, one project kind of led to the next project." And these projects weren’t just small recording sessions. Some of the most unlikely collaborations in recent American music came through these projects. His production of American Dreamers by the John Daversa Big Band, featuring 53 DACA recipients, won him three Grammy Awards. Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration, which Sehgal made with President Jimmy Carter, won the Grammy for Best Audiobook just five weeks after the late former president’s death.
But the awards, he is careful to say, are beside the point. "The reason I make music is because I love it," Seghal says. "There's no such thing as ‘best music,’ no such thing as ‘most successful music.’ As artists, we have to make the music we love to make. Any acclaim or recognition that comes with that is icing on the cake, but not the cake itself." What the recognition does bring is access to new spaces and new people. The collaborators become more unlikely and the projects become layered with more weight. Nowhere is that clearer than on his latest project, stars and static in which his love for jazz and soft meditation also shines through.
The broader concept behind stars and static came from Sehgal wanting to make something honest about where the country stands at a genuinely complicated moment. "Our country is going through an interesting time, a challenging time," he says. "I want to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America while acknowledging some of the static that we're living in."
From left, John Lewis and Kabir Sehgal on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
Courtesy of Kabir Sehgal
At the heart of the album is a sobering moment housing the track “we shall overcome (selma sunrise).” In 2017, Sehgal traveled to Selma, Alabama with Congressman John Lewis and walked with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was the exact site where Lewis was beaten on Bloody Sunday in 1965. After their walk, Sehgal recorded Lewis reading a passage from President Barack Obama's 2015 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches.
As an Indian American working in jazz and lo-fi, Sehgal is also making a quieter point about who belongs in these creative spaces. "I'm not making Bhangra and Bollywood music," he says. "I'm putting myself into this idiom of jazz and lo-fi music, which is very universal and inviting.” He doesn’t believe creativity needs to be boxed into what you think you should be creating. “I encourage other South Asians to go out and make music, because it's a place you can really express yourself and make it your own." That invitation runs all the way through stars and static. "The Indian American experience is the American experience," Sehgal says proudly. "All of our experiences make up the American experience—it's not just one American experience."
Published on April 6, 2026
Words by Anjana Pawa
Anjana Pawa is a Brooklyn-based culture reporter who regularly covers music, entertainment and beauty. You can find her on Twitter at @apawawrites.