“Hemani’s piece struck a nerve in me for its paradoxical robustness, its vocal virtuosity, the harmonic texture contained in her solo line, and the sense of working out an inner grief by building emotional power and inexorable drive right up to the final note. It ended the first half with a bang and hardly a whimper.” - Stephan Bonfield
— The Calgary Herald
About
RESEARCHER, MUSIC & CULTURE
Former Music Faculty, Semester at Sea, Spring 2020 Voyage
Shumaila Hemani, Ph.D. in Music and M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Alberta, is the former Music Faculty for Semester at Sea (SAS) Spring 2020 Voyage. Her research on Sufi sounds of the Shah jo Raag, mentored by Prof. Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, is situated at the intersection of religion, governance, and social justice at the Muslim shrines in Sindh, Pakistan. Hemani has disseminated her research at many peer-reviewed conferences in Canada, the US, and internationally. She has received several awards, honours, and recognition for her academic and artistic contributions, including First Prize at the Society for Ethnomusicology Conference (2017), the Cultural Diversity Award (2015) Laura Bassi Scholarship (2018 and 2021), the State of Kuwait Award in Islamic Studies (2015), Frank Henderson Prize in the study of Women and Religion (2017), Maud Karpeles International travel award (2015), the Institute of Ismaili Studies graduate and doctoral award (2006-09/2012-17), and many others. She has published about Pakistani women's music in a historical context in the Women and Islamic Cultures (Brill, 2017) and contributed the first report about Pakistan's music to the International Council of Traditional Music (ICTM) (2021). She has also published in the Conversation, Canadian National Post, Work of Arts, and other media. Her research monograph on Sufi performers in South Asia will be published by Routledge’s Islam and Human Rights series in 2022.
Sufi Singer-Songwriter & Acousmatic Composer
“Staying rooted within traditional forms and honoring those while also bringing in experimentation, Shumaila Hemani sings Sufi epics in South Asian Sufi tradition compellingly, says Rebecca Bruton from the New Works Calgary. Praised for enriching Edmonton by Edmonton Journal (2015), Hemani is locally celebrated for her “mesmerizing” and “emotionally nerve-striking” music that carries “vocal virtuosity,” expressing “radically different inner existential visions” (Calgary Herald, 2015). Shumaila Hemani, Ph.D. in Music from the University of Alberta and Former Music Faculty, Semester at Sea, Spring 2020 voyage, is an Alberta-based Sufi singer-songwriter, acousmatic composer, sing-style poet, spoken word artist, and traditional performer. Her composition: Perils of Heavy Rainfall, received a Second Prize at the Listening During COVID contest by the Canadian Association of Sonic Ecology (CASE). The pioneering Canadian soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp applauded her for beautifully taking the listeners to an immersive world of different music, chanting, and drones.