Punjabi Country: Producers Turn Tech-Support Calls Into a New Genre

CNN reports producer Assassyn and singer Jaggseer are pioneering 'Punjabi country,' a fusion born from tech-support calls with rural American customers.

According to CNN, producer Amrit Singh — now recording as Assassyn — was working customer phone support in Quebec for a Canadian trail-camera company when rural American callers started steering him toward country music. Singh, who had spent years blending Punjabi folk with hip-hop and trap in Canada's Punjabi music scene, told CNN that something clicked: "It felt like my lifestyle was always country." Seeing green Texas and Tennessee countryside that reminded him of Punjab's wheat fields, he began writing songs from a Punjabi perspective.

CNN reports that Singh's first country experiment, "Country Song," released last September, is sung partly in Punjabi by a narrator who is a Punjabi trucker — his ex has left him for Tennessee, and the lyrics name-check Dallas, Seattle and Kentucky as they cross the continent. The follow-up, "North America," with banjo licks and fiddle interludes and the hook "Punjabi guys run North America," is what Singh told CNN achieved the true fusion. Ballads like "A Turban In the Church" and "Mother of a Prisoner" tell immigrant stories of love, grief and faith, while "Goat Slaughters" and "Yeehaa" balance Punjabi's minor-scale Bhairavi thaat against country's major-key brightness.

Per CNN, the music videos from Assassyn and Canadian Punjabi singer Jaggseer — who works as a commercial truck driver himself — are racking up six-figure views on YouTube and Instagram, winning fans among second-generation Punjabi Americans and Canadians and beyond; one Instagram commenter joked that Morgan Wallen was "shakin in his boots." But the same CNN report notes racist comments invoking ICE and stereotypes, and country music's well-worn tradition of gatekeeping from people who say the music doesn't qualify as country. CNN also cites a since-removed Department of Homeland Security post on X that depicted a Sikh truck driver with the words "America for Americans."

CNN frames Punjabi country as the latest chapter in an identity crisis it says afflicts modern country music, noting that as Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, queer and now non-American, non-English-language artists lay claim to the genre, Nashville signals covertly and overtly that they don't belong. The outlet invokes Harlan Howard's definition of country as "three chords and the truth" and points to Beyoncé and Lil Nas X as earlier flashpoints. VICE's coverage of Ella Langley — whose "Choosin' Texas" sits at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after 47 weeks, per VICE — shows the same genre-crossing energy running through the charts, and Singh has even posted his own interpretation of "Choosin' Texas."

American Songwriter marks the anniversary of a useful counterpoint: on September 19, 1968, Red Foley — "Mr. Country Music" himself, the first Kentuckian elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame — died at 58 after performing two Grand Ole Opry concerts in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with Billy Walker and Hank Williams, Jr. According to American Songwriter, Foley sold more than 25 million records, and his "Ozark Jubilee" launched stars including Brenda Lee and Porter Wagoner. A genre built by a Kentucky farm kid playing his father's general store is, Singh argues, not so far from one built singing on tractors in Punjab.

CNN reports that Singh and Jaggseer plan several new songs in the coming months and are focused on building their audience and telling Punjabi stories; Singh has also been drawn lately to Johnny Cash's depictions of working-class struggle. Touring would be welcome, Singh told CNN, but his greater hope is generational: that in five to ten years some young Punjabi artist can express himself through this music. Jaggseer, who told CNN he plays country all day on his trucking routes and is "still discovering" the genre, put it simply: "my sound is fresh."