Khudgarzi

Sheherazaad’s Khudgarzi follows her acclaimed 2024 EP Qasr, tracing a woman’s deep dive into duty and autonomy, sacrifice and survival. Written after a broken engagement, it draws on the figure of the Khudgarz Aurat - the “Selfish Woman” - long used to police women seeking agency.

Across ten theatrical pieces, sung mostly in Urdu with passages in English and Tamil, Sheherazaad builds an oral archive of storytellers, courtesans, historians, survivors and witnesses. Rather than offering resolution, Khudgarzi presents feminine survival as ritual, strategy and insurgency.

Her dystopic folk-noir and dark pop sound expands here through tanbur, santoor, veena, rabab, ghatam and gungaroo, alongside weather recordings, breath and animal sounds. Recorded between Brooklyn, London and the Bay Area, it features more than thirty musicians, including Ria Modak, Sarathy Korwar, Jay Chakravorty, Shunya, Qasim Naqvi, Irfana and Daatri Dadhich.