Home: Where Everyone is Welcome
Home: Where Everyone is Welcome, is a collaboration between Paul Avgerinos, Kabir Sehgal, and Deepak Chopra with the intent to bring us together as one country, one people.
Home: Where Everyone is Welcome – An Interview with Paul Avgerinos, Kabir Sehgal, and Deepak Chopra
Interview by Victor Fuhrman
In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet, “The New Colossus.” Her precious words are inscribed on a bronze plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. The words read,
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
For many generations of Americans, these words were also inscribed in their hearts; recognizing that other than the indigenous people of this fair land, we are all the descendants of immigrants.
Yet recently, there seems to be a memory lapse…a forgetting of how immigrants built this country with their sweat, toil, tears, blood and dreams; and a rejection, based on fear and ignorance, of the value of those who would come and join us in this purely American adventure.
What can we do to restore the memories, eradicate the fear, and inform those who have been misled about the seeds of greatness from foreign lands that blossomed and continue to flourish in this country?
Paul Avgerinos, Deepak Chopra, and Kabir Sehgal have collaborated on a beautiful collection of poems and songs inspired by American Immigrants called, Home: Where Everyone is Welcome.
Paul is a first-generation American, whose father Costas emigrated from Greece to the U.S. in 1938. Paul is a Grammy-winning artist, composer, producer and engineer with 23 critically acclaimed New Age Albums to his credit. He is active in creating scores for a variety of television shows. He is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University and runs Studio Unicorn.
Kabir Sehgal is also a first-generation American and his parents are both from India. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author of eight books such as Coined and Jazzocracy. He is a multi-Grammy and Latin Grammy Award Winning producer. He is a US Navy Veteran and works in Corporate Strategy at First Data Corporation in New York City.
Deepak Chopra needs little introduction. He was an immigrant from India who moved to the U.S. in 1970 and became a citizen in 1984. He is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine, founder of the Chopra Center, author, lecturer, and music composer. Time Magazine labeled him one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.
The Interview with Paul Avgerinos, Kabir Sehgal, and Deepak Chopra
Victor Fuhrman: Deepak, what was your personal experience with the immigration process, how did you feel when you arrived and your years leading to citizenship.
Deepak Chopra: I left India and came to the United States in the 1970s as a medical doctor. Some of my first experiences include working in the emergency room of community hospitals. It was a totally new experience, one in which I experienced pride, adventure, and much happiness.
Of course, I was grateful to be in the US, and it has given me opportunities beyond my wildest dreams.
Victor Fuhrman: Kabir, what was your personal experience with being the first generation son of an immigrant.
Kabir Sehgal: I grew up in the south as the son of Indian immigrants. My father was a successful businessman who ran an engineering firm, but he still faced discrimination and intolerance. At my high school, students wore confederate belt buckles. Nevertheless, I’ve always been grateful to my beloved country and I joined the military as a reservist so that I could defend it.
Victor Fuhrman: What are your feelings on the current anti-immigrant climate and what those with open hearts and minds can do to turn this around.
Deepak Chopra: What’s going on in America right now can suffocate the creativity and imagination of future generations. When people face fear, they close down emotionally, and we put in jeopardy an open society. We’re going through a period of tribalism that threatens the very fabric of our society. I encourage everyone to try to enlarge their empathy for others – by reading stories and listening to music of people from different cultures, so you can “walk in their shoes.”
Kabir Sehgal: We have to resist the current political climate, as it’s turned inhospitable and unwelcoming to immigrants. Building a wall isn’t just a physical act but a mental one in which Americans can shut down and hide from each other. And we need to create art to melt away these borders and walls. We want to send the message of welcome and belonging.
Victor Fuhrman: What are your personal favorite poems or songs on the project.
Deepak Chopra: Infinity, which is about a personal hero, Albert Einstein.
Kabir Sehgal: Home, which is about my father.
Victor Fuhrman: Paul, talk to me about your own musical aspirations. How did they develop?
Paul Avgerinos: Well, like a lot of young musicians, I started out playing in the school system. I played trumpet, bass, and guitar in local rock bands and stuff, but around the age of 15 and 16, I started realizing that music had a great spiritual power besides its more obvious powers to uplift and entertain and comfort. I started realizing that music was a spiritual path that one could awaken through music, could expand one’s consciousness through playing and composing and performing music in a very spiritually focused way. That was a big breakthrough, and everything started changing very quickly at that point for me.
Victor Fuhrman: Were you exposed to Gregorian chants as a young man?
Paul Avgerinos: I was very blessed to hear all kinds of music, and one of the artists that really took me to a whole other level was Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, who I heard when I was 16. At first, I was just dumbfounded. I couldn’t even understand what he was doing, it just seemed so complicated and sophisticated.
But, of course, I grew into it, and he’s one of the main reasons why I went into music professionally. There’s no doubt about it. It was just a very blessed experience.
Victor Fuhrman: Was he a disciple of a guru?
Paul Avgerinos: Yes, Sri Chinmoy.
Victor Fuhrman: He was inspired by Sri Chinmoy. And then, also, he had introduced Carlos Santana to Sri Chinmoy, and a lot of the music that came out of that experience. It was very transcendental.
Paul Avgerinos: It’s very true, and the amazing thing was every Saturday, Sri Chinmoy would come by car up to Norwalk, Connecticut, which was about 20 minutes from where I was growing up in Wilton, Connecticut. I used to go down to these meditations and sit in a room with Sri Chinmoy and about 15 other devotees. One day, we came in from meditation and standing at the front was Carlos Santana all dressed in white. And Guru said, look at little Carlito, oh, what a good boy he is, you should all be like him. A lot of us were musicians, so we all said, yeah, we want to be just like him. It was so funny.
Victor Fuhrman: The music that came out of that period was really transcendent. It was breathtaking music.
Paul Avgerinos: Yeah, it was a very special time in music: jazz-rock fusion, new hybrids that had never been heard before. A very powerful and transformative time, very blessed time to be coming up as a musician because influences were so strong and rich all around.
Victor Fuhrman: Was that what set the seed in you for creating new-age soundscapes?
Paul Avgerinos: Well, I started out doing a lot of jazz and jazz-rock fusion and classical music and all to build my skill as a musician, but, then I realized that what I really wanted to do was to help other people to be more peaceful and more centered and meditative and contemplative and to help their spiritual awakening. And so, by creating music that helped my spiritual awakening and my contemplative nature, I was able to serve a larger purpose. This is what often happens with people in New Age music.
