"Sheherazaad is intent on being known and on making the women she represents in her music known too.
Her tool for doing so is the music she makes and the stories she tells through it." - SPIN
"[Lehja is] a ballad that feels like a desolate island with gentle wisps of kanun passing through a limestone bedrock of soft piano keys as Sheherazaad describes a young woman who is ostracized for being herself, yet endures." - The Fader
"A haunting commentary on displacement, immigration and imagined homelands…
Sheherazaad sings to decolonise her tongue” - Vogue India
Today, Sheherazaad wraps up a pivotal year, sharing a new video for the track "Lehja", taken from her mini-album 'Qasr', which was released at the start of the year via Erased Tapes.
Fresh from tour dates across Europe which saw Sheherazaad and her live band stun crowds at Mutations Festival, Pitchfork London, Le Guess Who? and more, today she shares the expressive new visual. The final track on 'Qasr', the arresting seven minutes long "Lehja" (related to language and speaking-style), is a foray into Sheher’s literal storytelling ability. The song brings to life a mythical city she refers to as “Sheher” (a meta-reference to her artist persona). Lehja examines the turmoil that may surround mother tongue, pronunciation, and the fight to preserve disappearing ancestral languages. The song culminates in a refrain of “azaadi”, a chant that serves as an unequivocal call for freedom across much of South and Southwest Asia, closing the album as mysteriously as it begins.
Of the track, Sheherazaad comments: "I have always battled with “Lehja”, the final, lengthiest track from my debut album Qasr. Considering the song’s themes of estrangement and mutiny, it seems fitting that Lehja was the most stubborn piece to compose, the last to wrangle out of production, and the number I perform most hesitantly in live settings.
And yet Lehja, soaked in grief over linguistic violence and immigrant longing, is a personal portal for my own sense of artistic futurism that exists beyond this first album. It feels so sweet then, that I get to honor this ominous, honeyed folktale with a kind of handcrafted visual anthology. Through the genius of Raghavi Agarwal, the piece (of dance theater format) has been filled with a feminine placidness, intertwined with multiple glorious deaths, and so much else explored in the heroine-ic story of Lehja, my silent icon."
The accompanying video was directed by Raghavi Agarwal and stars the evocative dancing of Seven Sisters Group. Agarwal comments: "The moment I witnessed the Seven Sisters performance taking shape, I felt an instant connection to the track Lehja. The choreography and the music seemed to be woven from the same thread, each enhancing the other’s narrative. As the performance unfolded on stage and through the lens of my camera, I found myself viewing it through the auditory filter of Lehja, allowing the music to guide my visual storytelling. Lehja is a track I deeply resonate with, understanding its tale and the emotions it conveys.
This intimate knowledge influenced my direction, as I sought to reflect the song’s essence through the dancers’ movements and the film’s visual composition. The synergy between the choreography and the music created a seamless blend of sound and motion, where each frame and beat aligned perfectly."
Watch the video for "Lehja" here: https://youtu.be/2RmJF3TNO5w
Listen to ‘Qasr’ in full here: https://idol-io.ffm.to/qasr
Today, migration seems to be encoded into everyday habits. As so many of our minds and bodies aggressively globalise in unprecedented ways, previously fixed “genres” and identities of any kind are constantly being dismantled, made redundant, and born anew.
It’s from this space of flux that American composer and vocalist Sheherazaad derives song. Produced by Arooj Aftab, her mini-album, ‘Qasr’, was engendered during a time of family estrangement, grief over a lost elder, and the racial polarisation of her country as she knew it.
Translating to “castle” or “fortress” in Urdu, ‘Qasr’ is indeed a monument — like encapsulation of the real strains of displacement, the push and pull of diaspora, and the depravity of erasure and forgotten roots. These experiences and their inherent violence, hysteria, and romance imbue her sonic deep-dive into the world of the so-called in-between. “It was maddening” Sheherazaad says, “that the music of my origins didn’t yet exist. So I knew I would have to make it.”
On ‘Qasr’, Sheherazaad gives us a beguiling new soundscape, not yet of this world. But she also stokes the flame of fantasies inherent to the nomadic experience, which may finally be brought to the fore. Overall, the bewitching album finds an artist building her own fortress, while enticing us to forge our own castles, musical queendoms, and impossible dreamlands.
Sheherazaad press shot by Zayira Ray:
Links:
https://www.sheherazaad.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sheherazaadofficial/
facebook.com/sheherazaadofficial
https://www.youtube.com/c/Sheherazaad
https://www.erasedtapes.com/ |
No comments:
Post a Comment