Sonny Singh

Sonny Singh is a social justice educator, activist, and musician with over two decades of experience giving talks and facilitating trainings on anti-oppression, racial equity, and faith and justice issues. His transformative approach to education and social change centers reflection, honest dialogue, and critical systemic analysis. His presentations weave together storytelling, uplifting political and spiritual education, music and creativity.

His writing on racial politics, Sikhs in America, Islamophobia, and more has appeared in the Huffington Post, India Abroad, Colorlines, Left Turn, Asian American Literary Review, Race, Class, and Gender in the United States (9th Edition), and Open City Magazine. He was a 2014-2015 Open City Fellow for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, covering stories in Richmond Hill, Queens.

As a musician, Sonny is best known as an original member of the bhangra brass sensation Red Baraat, but his first musical outlet was singing Sikh devotional music in gurdwaras (Sikh houses of worship) as a child of immigrant parents in North Carolina. By 2003, he’d co-founded the political rock band, Outernational, and recorded an album produced by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. He joined Red Baraat in 2008 as a singer and trumpet player, touring globally and recording 5 studio albums. In 2022, Sonny released his debut solo album, Chardi Kala, a return to his Punjabi & Sikh roots imbued with his experience as an educator and activist. Gothamist calls his music “utterly irresistible.” JazzTimes calls it, “vibrant, ebullient, and energized…a prayer for our ailing world.” He has performed at venues like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, MASS MoCA, and the White House for its 2023 AAPI Heritage Month event.

Simultaneously spiritual and rebellious, Sonny Singh’s music is a reminder that hope, love, and devotion are crucial to our struggles and our collective survival.

Sonny has a master’s degree in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he studied and practiced the art of using education as a tool for liberation. He is currently a board member of TakeRoot Justice and resides in Brooklyn, New York.

He is a highly-sought-after speaker and training/workshop facilitator. Topics include:

• Chardi Kala: Radical Optimism in a Time of Crisis (with music option)
• Anti-Oppression Reflection, Analysis, and Practice
• Immigrant Rights and Xenophobia in the United States
• Education for Liberation: Popular Education Facilitation
• Fight the Power! An Introduction to Organizing for Social Change
• Talking About Race in the Classroom
• Addressing Bias-based Bullying in Schools
• An American Tragedy: Sikhs, the Oak Creek shooting, and post-9/11 racism in America
• The Sikh Revolution: Sikhism and Social Justice (with music option)

Photo: Shruti Parekh

Sonny Singh is featured in the PBS/WORLD Channel award-winning documentary "From Here," which follows artists and activists from immigrant families coming of age in an era of rising xenophobia and political turmoil.

Fueled by his own experiences of discrimination, Sonny Singh organizes Sikh youth in a campaign against school bullying with the Sikh Coalition.

Sonny Singh on Race Forward’s video series on intersectionality.

Sonny Singh tells the story behind his solo album, "Chardi Kala."