Sheherazaad - Khudgarzi Sheherazaad

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.