Written by: Nayha Jehangir Khan
Posted on: November 22, 2022 | 
| 中文
Maham Suhail in Berklee Discover-i (Fusion Art)
Maham Suhail is a vocalist, composer and producer, who has chartered her own unique path to creating music using scholastic practices, preservation of indigenous music, improvisation and hybridization of performance and sound design. Hailing from Lahore, her travels have taken her to the far corners of the country capturing folk notations from remote areas that infuse and charge her music with eclectic cultural sensibilities. The following is our in-depth discussion about her musical journey and career:
Maham Suhail with the Rafi Peer Band
MS: I started as a vocalist. Even as a child, I used to sing in the school choir and growing up performed and wrote lyrics with underground bands. I was born in Karachi and lived in Lahore, with ancestral roots in Kashmir. Being Kashmiri carried a sentimental attachment for me, as I felt a connection with mountains and valleys as they were more spiritual as compared to urbanscapes. Back then, I did poetry performances and wanted formal music training. As a composer, I took up the piano during my time at the university, writing these short pieces on sheet music. I was going out and recording samples, known as field recordings and incorporating them into the sound software. I would use Waves Audio to digitally manipulate audio samples recorded in remote natural environments or urban soundscapes, sometimes adding my vocals to them. These older musical explorations can be found on my SoundCloud.
Maham Suhail singing at the Rafi Peer Sufi Mystic Fest
When I started raga training, I explored folk and indigenous instrumental arrangements. With a background in poetry, I was writing in English and Urdu, pairing verses with vocal melodies and creating musical arrangements for them. I have worked with cultural organisations such as the Agha Khan Cultural Support Programme (AKCSP) and The Walled City Lahore Authority (WCLA) in various capacities. Initiating the inter-provincial Fusion Festival Punjab-Gilgit-Baltistan in 2017 as a principal composer, arranger, producer and performer in collaboration with the WCLA. It continues to influence music programming and inclusivity as a model music festival.
'Dil Mil Ravad' music video from Maham Suhail's album "Mitti"
MS: The moments that lead me here are a series of struggles that I faced in my formative years of pursuing music professionally, as it wasn’t encouraged by my family. I remained determined to find myself through music by joining the underground rock band community. I was listening to western music or classical Bollywood, but started Raga training as it was an accessible resource. I attended Raza Kazim’s Sanjan Nagar Institute and was learning from Ustads at the beginning of my music education. When I learned Shabad Kirtan, it became a defining moment for me. My ustad (mentor/teacher), the Late Bhai Ghulam Muhammad Chand was a fantastic artist, a spiritual guide and a wonderful composer who shaped my practice. Under his tutelage, I performed and sang at gurdwaras and was awarded an Interfaith Harmony Certificate. I travelled to Kolkata to attend the ITC Sangeet Research Academy as a scholar. Before returning to Pakistan, I recorded indigenous bowl instruments that had origins in Bengali Folk & Mysticism as I wanted to layer them with jazz instrumentation, creating and recording my first two songs there. These tracks are set to release as part of my ongoing music project “Mitti”. I had been residing in Valencia, Spain attending a graduate program at Berkeley College of Music on full scholarship, while working on this project. The track-by-track release for “Mitti” became a journey that is being shared with the world now. It has been recorded across borders and includes remote recordings that needed meticulous production. I have been invited to London in order to perform in improvisation sessions with the legendary free improviser Steve Beresford, who has worked with John Cage.
Cover Art (Benga-bt. song)
MS: Synchronization Music is the sound that accompanies the moving image that can be a video of live performances, film and so on. This includes sync licensing, which would mean that my songs and scores can be used in films and video productions. For frequency-based soundscapes, I worked with Jason Faust and Brian Zani, who founded the Astral Voyage Studios in LA, a huge ensemble of over 30 musicians from more than 20 countries around the world featuring music based on the seven chakra frequencies titled “Our Heart”. I see Sufism as my own primary framework, combined with wisdom and teachings from my own growth and healing experiences that resonated with their project. I worked on the video release of their song titled “Fear No More”, which was based on overcoming fear and grounding the self. The musical experimentation in using a particular root chakra frequency in this case 396hertz, presented a multitude of notes through which I chose a scale and used it to design a sound piece with a recurring pattern. I will be releasing it on my Spotify and website, as that piece was published for a limited time online.
Arshinagar Theatre Project, Proscenium 2015 II
MS: My aspirations for adventure athletics and high-altitude mountaineering have been an integral part of my life. While I was attending an Ice Climbing training camp conducted by Mirza Baig and Samina Baig, Samar was there too. We were already friends, and her tour was being sponsored by Swag Kicks for which she was working on a short documentary of ice climbing training and the expedition of Shimshal, Hunza. That's when we decided that I would work on the music composition and sound design for it. Having endured the experience first-hand, I was fully immersed in capturing the sounds of the snow boots and metal crampons against the ice or snow that became my inspiration. The scenic views and the visuals that Samar had captured became my focus, while working with unreleased music. I created digital beats using Ableton, samples of indigenous and folk instrumentation, and taking excerpts from my song “Exile to Space” that was released earlier this year.
Maham teaching children
MS: I have a few performance projects lined up in London. You can connect with me using my Instagram and website, where you can sign up for my newsletter featuring upcoming events and shows to stay updated with the music that I am working on. I plan to work with the Noisy Women Present The Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, which will be released online.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/mahamsuhail
Website: https://maham-suhail.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maham_suhail_
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4HJ21OjtMdgkgXAuwrSx9b?si=bLoa_Z0IQBOWhEpJ4h6-zg
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