SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
New York-based comic Pooja Reddy recognizes the details of her life can sound like an outlandish setup to a joke. She turned her small-town Kentucky youth of hunting, fishing and country music into a new country cabaret show that defies stereotypes in witty ways. Jewly Hight of Nashville Public Radio got a preview.
JEWLY HIGHT, BYLINE: Plenty of comics draw material from their childhoods. Pooja Reddy does that, too, but plays up the paradoxes involved.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WISH YOU WERE HERE")
POOJA REDDY: Y'all, I had an amazing childhood. They would have written books about it, like Chicken Soup for the Indian Girl's Soul, who was the only brown person in her school, and her classmates would call her Pooha (ph) 'cause they thought she was Mexican.
HIGHT: In that original song, Reddy describes the Kentucky farming community of her youth, a place where she learned about Southern politeness and chewing tobacco at a tender age. What it lacked was doctors, like her dad, which is why her South Indian immigrant parents settled their family there. They've all since left, but Reddy recently returned to reminisce.
REDDY: It felt like I had a very normal, Southern upbringing just like any of my other classmates did. But at the end of the night, I was just going home, and I was eating pappu and annam and biryani and eating some South Indian food.
HIGHT: Her family sometimes trekked to the nearest Hindu temple 90 miles away. Reddy also socialized with her friends at their Christian congregations.
REDDY: I don't think I've ever been confused about my identity in terms of how Indian I am or how American I am. That's never been a conflict for me.
HIGHT: It was others who had hang-ups. When she left the South for an internship, she says people felt the need to tell her their low opinions of Kentuckians. Like...
REDDY: I've never met anyone from Kentucky. It's probably because they're not smart enough to leave. How could you be from there? I think experiences like that made me want to tell stories about what it means to be a person of color that has a strongly Southern identity.
HIGHT: Storytelling is a skill Reddy's always used to bridge cultural differences. In one of her signature comedy bits, she recalls begging her parents to let her join her friends at a sleepaway camp run by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
REDDY: I'm convinced that the only reason they let me go is because it was called Camp Currie.
(LAUGHTER)
REDDY: They're like, finally, our daughter is showing an interest in cooking.
HIGHT: Reddy first dabbled in satirical writing to friends during another internship with the Obama administration. After relocating to New York, she made comedy a priority, hitting open mics, landing residencies and eventually workshopping what would become her new country cabaret show.
REDDY: "Pooja Reddy Is White Trash."
HIGHT: She'll premiere it at the famed New York nightclub Joe's Pub this month. Central to the show is Reddy's take on country music, a genre she's always wanted to reimagine. During her Kentucky visit, she stands at the edge of a lake dotted with pontoon boats. When she hung out here in her teens, the soundtrack was the Bro-country come-ons on the radio.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COUNTRY GIRL (SHAKE IT FOR ME)")
LUKE BRYAN: (Singing) Country girl, shake it for me, girl.
REDDY: I would listen to the country songs, and the protagonists would be, you know, (singing) blonde hair, miniskirt.
And I was like, well, that's not me. And so I would be writing myself into the music. (Singing) Brown skin, mustache (laughter). (Singing) Her mom doesn't let you text her (laughter).
HIGHT: Reddy's clever upgrade is a playfully audacious song actually titled "Mustache." In spirit, she says it blends the self-assuredness of the first country song she ever loved, Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REDNECK WOMAN")
GRETCHEN WILSON: (Singing) 'Cause I'm a redneck woman. I ain't no...
HIGHT: ...And a famous Bollywood number.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHEILA KI JAWANI")
SUNIDHI CHAUHAN AND VISHAL DADLANI: (Singing) My name is Sheila, Sheila Ki Jawani.
HIGHT: And it speaks for Reddy's 15-year-old self rolling her eyes at white beauty standards.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSTACHE")
REDDY: (Singing) I got a mustache. Gave the waxer panic attack. God, give me a man that can handle that. I got a moustache.
HIGHT: Reddy's self-aware jokes and skewering of stereotypes show that no population of people is monolithic, not cosmopolitan northerners, rural southerners, children of immigrants or fans of country music.
REDDY: We're not all that different. And maybe if somebody who looks like they wouldn't be a typical southerner, maybe if it's coming from me, then you might actually buy it and believe it.
HIGHT: And get a laugh out of it.
For NPR News, I'm Jewly Hight in Nashville.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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