Khudgarzi (Dinked Edition #437)

Khudgarzi is the stunning, self-produced, debut full-length album from American composer and theatre artist, Sheherazaad. A cinematic blend of dystopic folk-noir and experimental pop laced with South Asian musical sensibilities, that has established her as one of the most distinctive new voices in contemporary music. Immersive, genre-defying soundscapes.

‘Khudgarzi’ (English: Selfishness), is the anticipated follow-up to the American songstress-producer-theatre artist Sheherazaad’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.

Alongside the album’s announcement, 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.

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 time zones: 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.

Side A

1. Qatil

2. Pakeezah

3. Registaan

4. Gulukara

5. Mard

Side B

6. Haqeeqat

7. Andhera

8. Zeher

9. Kohinoor

10. Haqeeqat II