Even voorstellen - Sheherazaad - “Khudgarzi”
20/11 (erased tapes/konkurrent)
Sept 26 “pakeezah” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MTWgVIUfrM
Sept 26 "Andhera" (Darkness) (Vincent Moon-directed acapella video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yx56bSTjvo
LIVE 02.02.27 Antwerp, BE — De Roma
Sheherazaad announces her long-awaited debut full-length album ‘Khudgarzi’, due for release on November 20 with Erased Tapes. She also shares its haunting, anthemic first single, "Andhera," which is accompanied by an intimate acapella version of the song, captured by French filmmaker Vincent Moon in his renowned La Blogothèque-fashion in Victoria Park, London.
‘Khudgarzi’ (English: Selfishness), is the anticipated follow-up to the American songstress-producer-theatre artist's highly praised 2024 EP ‘Qasr’. The record encompasses a woman's forensic deep dive into the space between duty and autonomy; sacrifice and survival. While composing, Sheherazaad became consumed by the figure of the so-called Khudgarz Aurat – the "Selfish Woman" – a label she had heard since childhood, levelled at women whose desire for agency was often met with suspicion or exile.
"Selfishness became a kind of silent prayer," Sheherazaad recalls. "A portal into a haunted universe of anxieties and desires. I was made to fear a 'selfish' kind of woman – embracing her felt like stepping into a forbidden forest I'd been running away from."
Written in the aftermath of a broken engagement, 'Khudgarzi' carries the emotional debris of rage, guilt and grief, while imagining an alternative mythology populated by women who shapeshift between storytellers, courtesans, historians, survivors and witnesses. Across ten theatrical pieces, Sheherazaad refuses neat resolutions, instead creating an oral archive where feminine survival is neither sanctified nor condemned, but revealed as an ongoing ritual of performance, strategy and insurgency.
She shares "Andhera" (Darkness), an album centrepiece. The song emerges from the same shadowy universe first conjured by last year's single "Gulukara". It’s a Bolly-goth pop hymn, following a vilified lover who ushers in cosmic darkness, transmuting heartbreak into something vast, mythical and the deepest pigment of darkness.
Sheherazaad elaborates: "I wrote Andhera (Darkness) after I'd met the love of my life, where for some reason, romantic gloom and obscurity was still bleeding out of me. The song was largely composed in an ex’s coat closet as I tried to keep my volume down lest I interrupted what I felt was his “real” work outside. So I'd sing at the rock bottom of my vocal range, praising feminine darkness and the ancient murky cosmos. It became a frilly goth anthem, with eyeliner running down its cheeks, where the beloved is essentially just the color black."
Musically, 'Khudgarzi' expands the wilderness of Sheherazaad's signature dystopic folk-noir and dark pop sound, where instruments from Hindustani, Turkish, Arabic and Carnatic traditions – including tanbur, santoor, veena, rabab, ghatam and gungaroo – intertwine with weather recordings, breath, echoes, moans and the sounds of the animal world. Resultingly, every song becomes its own self-contained universe: an enchanted back alley, a desert wasteland, a rain-soaked steel plant, or an artificial constellation suspended in silence.
Mostly sung in Urdu, with passages in English and Tamil, the album explores layered questions of language and belonging. Throughout, Sheherazaad preserves the intimacy of room noise and stillness, allowing spacious arrangements to absorb the brooding lyricism. "So much music feels like an assault to me," she says. "I want to open a gentle rupture, where a listener may truly sit with herself."
The songs came together like a diasporic family across disjointed timezones: recorded between Brooklyn, London, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with fragments arriving from Istanbul, Islamabad, and Trivandrum among others.
A cast of more than thirty musicians contributes to the project, including Ria Modak, Sarathy Korwar, Jay Chakravorty, Shunya and Qasim Naqvi, while emerging India - based artists Irfana and Daatri Dadhich appear as sympathetic co-narrators. Though born from an exploration of selfishness, the record ultimately became an exercise in shared storytelling and generosity.
Neither villain nor virtue, 'Khudgarzi' presents selfishness as instinct and reclamation. Rather than offering answers, Sheherazaad leaves space for listeners to navigate their own relationship between sacrifice and selfhood, illuminating a world of contradictions that lingers long after the final note.
More about Sheherazaad:
Sheherazaad is an American composer and theatre artist, whose cinematic blend of dystopic folk-noir and experimental pop laced with South Asian musical sensibilities has established her as one of the most distinctive new voices in contemporary music. Raised in California in a second-generation immigrant household and now dividing her time between India and Brooklyn, her richly poetic songwriting explores broken tongues, and unbelonging through immersive, genre-defying soundscapes. Since the release of her acclaimed ‘Qasr’ EP, she has toured internationally, composed for New York’s Off-Broadway stages, and collaborated with artists including Arooj Aftab (who produced ‘Qasr’), all while continuing to wield her multidisciplinary practice across music, theatre and the written word. Her self-produced debut full-length album, ‘Khudgarzi’, arrives November 20 via Erased Tapes.
'Khudgarzi' track list:
1. Qatil (Murderess)
- Pakeezah (Pure One)
- Registaan (Desert)
- Gulukara (Songstress)
- Mard (Man)
- Haqeeqat (Reality)
- Andhera (Darkness)
- Zeher (Poison)
- Kohinoor (Diamond)
- Haqeeqat || (Reality ||)