(April 14, 2024) In March 2024, Sheherazaad entered America’s indie music scene as a leading voice for immigrants. Her mini album, Qasr, released under the label Erased Tapes, has been produced by Grammy winner Arooj Aftab, and contains poetic lyrics about marginalised genders and imagined homelands, with folk-pop synthesis and lively instrumentation.
Speaking to Global Indian from San Francisco, where she is based, Sheherazaad describes her tryst with music as one that found its roots in a “fanatically art-centred, immigrant household” (more on that later). She is an Indo-American artist who is working on de-colonizing music and making a compelling case for the South Asian diaspora through her melodious vocals. Her debut record, Qasr, has been produced by Grammy Award winner Arooj Aftab, and released by Erased Tapes, a London-based independent label for experimental, electronic music.
Music matters
A “fairly introverted and very spiritual person”, Sheherazaad grew up in a very musical household and she was always immersed in the art form. “My parents are musicians and have a band that still gigs and my sister was a Kathak dancer. My grandmother was a concert producer, so there was music ever present – both playing but also acoustically. My mom would be doing her riyaaz or my dad would be playing keys or my sister would be like, tapping and doing her Kathak footwork on the hardwood floor, so I was always immersed in music,” she tells Global Indian.
Thanks to her South Asian lineage, Sheherazaad grew up listening to Lata Mangeshkar and RD Burman. She began training in Western styles, though, starting with a formal voice education in jazz and the American Songbook when she was just six years old. After years of singing Western repertoire, she stopped singing losing interest in the English language. However, in New York, she began following the likes of the Swet Shop Boys and met experimental Pakistani artist Arooj Aftab. She then relocated to California and trained under Hindustani classical vocalist Madhuvanti Bhide. Naturally the synergy she found in her family’s love for music, helped her charter her own path without any resistance that is typically associated with youngsters pursuing music as a career.
Collaborating with Arooj Aftab
In March 2024 she released her mini album ‘Qasr’ produced by Grammy winner Arooj Aftab where her poetic lyrics about marginalised genders and imagined homelands are given a boost with lively instrumentation. The album showcases contemporary folk-pop synthesis with five tracks and has been released by London-based independent record label Erased Tapes. “With Arooj, there was a shared acknowledgement, understanding, energetic impulse towards similar things and so much flow and ease with no need to second guess or overthink that it made it very easy,” Sheherazaad says, adding, “She also played some instruments on the album as well. She has been a mentor in terms of how to move the work through the world and she has been a role model.”
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Power of Music
For Sheherazaad, the process of creating music is as much about silence as it is about soundscapes. “I work in a lot of silence. I try not to listen to any music frivolously. I derive from nature entirely and necessarily and I study languages. I talk to native speakers, study poetry and watch stuff by myriad speakers to understand the stylistic ways of speaking,” she explains. The process involves a lot of study and the inclusion of several elements that aren’t necessarily intended to go together. “There is a lot of inner work involved in terms of coming to peace with reconciling or not being able to reconcile certain moving parts musically, and also in life,” she says. “That tension and those questions are funnelled into the music.” She also says that she does not really choose one way to describe how her music is, especially to make it conform to a specific genre. “I sometimes feel we need to but I don’t have an answer.”
Crossing Obstacles
The challenges, Sheherazaad admits, lie in deciding where to share and perform the music, and locating audiences is always tough. “Sometimes when you create things that don’t have a neat and tidy sort of industrial line and process of how to move it through into the world, you are left with facing this big unchartered ocean of possibility,” she explains. To her, the key is to see this is as possibility and abundance, rather than a lack thereof.
Photo by Zayira Ray
Another challenge is finding a classical or traditional sort of custodian of the more classical or traditional forms or a teacher, who would be able to sit with all of what I felt like at the time were the broken parts that needed so much direction.” In her free time, she likes to sit in silence, in nature, in the forest, near a body of water and likes reading a lot of South Asian diasporic literature. Her future plans are to keep building live sets that continuously reimagine the music in various instrumentation sort of formats. “And I am currently at work on my most ambitious and next project,” she signs off.
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Music has no distinguished barrier between men and women, immigrants or native… it’s the performance that gives the edge.
Bindu gopal Rao, distinctly, sketched the life and recognition of a rising American star in a lucid and detailed manner. Although, being a part of family, where all the members are serious about making music a way of life. And the talented Sheherazad, right from the tender age knew what she wants to be… with the successful release of Qasr, the muni album, she has made her presence in the music world of the USA. WELL, this is the beginning.. we are sure that she will show her talent in future… proving, if you are talented, USA will recognize you even if are an Immigrant.