NPR · 1 day ago

This Country Star Brings a Pakistani Vibe to His Songs

Mo Sabri grew up in East Tennessee listening to both Kenny Rogers and qawwali, the ecstatic Sufi devotional music his Pakistani immigrant parents brought from home. Now, as a Nashville country artist, he's creating something unprecedented: an album that fuses Appalachian sounds with South Asian rhythms, proving that these seemingly distant traditions share common ground in their folk roots and spiritual yearning. "I feel most free writing country music," he says, finding liberation in claiming space where many assume he doesn't belong. When he performs with the Nashville Symphony, blending slide guitar with qawwali's microtonal poetry, audiences as varied as "country folks and Desi aunties" discover they're moved by the same sound. For his parents, who journeyed "from the mountains of Pakistan to the mountains of East Tennessee," watching their son honor both worlds on such a stage represents their American dream realized - not through assimilation, but through synthesis.