It gets a lot of attention that you're each the kids of immigrants to the US, which must make for an interesting dynamic with your parents as they moved countries for a better life, and then their children say they're gonna be in a band rather than go to medical school. That must have been a difficult conversation, right?
Paul: Yeah. Because our parents moved to this country for us, there is always a financial aspect to everything. One of the key reasons people emigrate from South America to the States is literally for better financial opportunity, so anything that I did was tied to "am I going to be financially sustainable for myself?" And obviously, music is not as cut and dry as engineering or medicine. When Pinkshift started getting opportunities to play tours, record an album or do more full-time music things, presenting that to my parents (and I'm an only child), I had to frame it… You can't really go with the excitement of, "I'm in a band. I'm going to do this." You have to go in with the financial aspects of it or here's why this makes sense. It is weird. When talking to my parents, I definitely have to put on businessman mode, which kinda sucks, but it's the only way they can see what this industry is and how it works. You want to say your parents support you no matter what, and they do, but there is that thing of "we need our children to be self-sufficient so that they can take care of themselves when we no longer can."
Ashrita: It's like they planted their little seed here to grow, and we are in a rock band now. And they're like, "Oh my God, you're going to fall into poverty. This is not why we came here!"
Myron: Like Paul said, I'm an only child, so I'm like the only shot they have of generational wealth in this country. I know now my parents are a lot more understanding about it, but at first, I had to make a decision between doing the band and going to medical school. Med school was the goal for a while and had always been in their head; it had always been in my head, it's what they tell their siblings and their older family, and so when it came down to that decision, it was like, "are you crazy? What are you doing?" A lot of immediate backlash, and that was understandable.
I feel like I have to prove to them and show them the prospects of this financially and why this is such a rare opportunity for things to be growing as exponentially as they have been. We did our first national tour a year ago, and since then, we've gone to the UK, and all this stuff doesn't happen that fast [usually]. And that's not a viral thing. I'd been a little concerned that it was a song that blew up on TikTok and all these streams from one TikTok, but it's organic, and we see it every day with people talking about us and telling their friends about us. It's building this huge network of people that are actually supporting us. We see that at shows, and with my parents coming to shows and seeing that people are actually excited to see us has eased my parents' fears. I know there are still tinges of anxiety over whether this can be sustainable or not. There is still the backup of having my degree. So it could still be a lot worse in their minds.
Ashrita: For me, it's very similar for me, but I have a little sister, so I'm allowed to fuck up a little bit now. I wasn't allowed to fuck up for the longest time because I was the oldest sibling. I'm the oldest sibling of all my cousins, too, so everyone was compared to me for the longest time. I got all A's. I got a Master's, and now I'm in this band, and now my family don't know what to do anymore. There is a lot of guilt. And the guilt is they came all the way over here, and that's so hard to do. To leave your parents and everyone you know and come here because you want to develop something in this country.
I was feeling really bad about it when we started the Mannequin Pussy tour - I felt so good about that tour - but when I came back, I was like "I think I'm going to do this now." And I remember talking to an Aunty at Diwali because she seemed chill, and she said, "even if your parents don't realise it right now, this is why your parents came here because you wouldn't be able to do that over there. This is why they came here, so you could do this. They're really proud of you for that, and even if they don't say it right now, they will be." I think it's just keeping that in mind and also the small business model and having that ready and being able to back up what we do and, for the most part, our parents trust us. They trust that we are not insane. For the most part…
It's just maintaining that two-way street that they know what's going on and that we still care about them and being financially stable. We are all family-orientated people, so it's important to us that everybody is okay, but there is still a lot of anxiety there.
