DEBUT ALBUM RELEASE

Mannat

Shumaila Hemani

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Mannat (A Prayer, A Wish) offers prayers for the health and wellness of the world as it goes through the extremities of climate change. Based on Sufi poetry from South Asia and sound recordings of heavy rainfall, floods, and other environmental sounds from Pakistan, Mannat features, “Perils of Heavy Rainfall,” an acousmatic composition featuring

Mannat (A Prayer, A Wish) offers prayers for the health and wellness of the world as it goes through the extremities of climate change. Based on Sufi poetry from South Asia and sound recordings of heavy rainfall, floods, and other environmental sounds from Pakistan, Mannat features, “Perils of Heavy Rainfall,” an acousmatic composition featuring Sufi poetry from Sindh and recorded in Edmonton Studios, which won the Second Prize, Listening During COVID contest (2020) and was published in the Goose, the Journal of Environment, Arts, Culture (2022) in Canada. This album is an awakening about climate emergency and the need for action. “It’s an appeal to the world to come together to support 33 million climate refugees as a result of heavy flooding in Pakistan that drowned a third of the country in August 2022.”

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    Track 1- Perils of Heavy Rainfall 9:57
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    Track 2- The Great Calamity 10:01
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    Track 3- Displacement (2022) 9:48
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    Track 4- Forgotten Ways of Thinking 6:04
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    Track 5- Mannat 7:26
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    Track 6- A Trial by Fire 9:16
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    Track 7- Living with Purpose 3:44
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    Bonus Track - Anticipating 5:20
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Acousmatic Composition: Mannat

“Sonically it [mannat] is a very rich piece and allows the listener to be immersed in the different musics, chanting and drones in a beautiful way. ” - Hildegard Westerkamp

— Canadian Soundscape Composer

The Concept of Mannat

Mannat is a kind of a prayer for fulfilling a wish such as that related to growth in finances and career, love and marriage, family and children, health and wellbeing, etcetera, that devotees make at shrines. Sufi singers at the shrines direct their performance towards fulfilling the mannat that listeners bring to the darbar— the royal court of the saint. In countries of South Asia, including Pakistan, where women are not permitted into mosques, Sufi shrines also function as a gathering place; however, the orthodoxies inside and outside the shrine scorn women's participation. When devotees' mannat fulfills, they come back to the shrine to offer their gratitude by a monetary offering and sometimes by singing a song in praise of the saint.

LIsten

An outstanding team of musicians stretched globally across Edmonton, Canada, the US, and Sindh, Pakistan, contributed to this album.

Mehdi Rezania  (Edmonton, AB) a mesmerizing Iranian Santur (zither) player, Ojas Joshi (Edmonton, AB), a tabla maestro and much-loved student of Ustad Zakir Hussain, Akbar Khamisu Khan (Sindh, Pakistan), an alghoza (double-reed flute from Sindh) maestro and the son of legendary player Khamisu Khan, Ismaili Meerjat (Sindh, Pakistan with dambur (five-stringed lute) at the dargah of Shah Latif, and Adam Maalouf (New York), a New York-based global percussionist from the Banff Arts Centre's World Music Residency. 

The Shah jo Raag Academy, Bhitshah (Sindh, Pakistan)

Mannat is an outcome of my shagirdi (discipleship) in Sufi poetry with two lineages of Sufi performers

The 18th Century Sufi Mystic: Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai

Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai is an 18th century Sufi mystic from Sindh, Pakistan. His poetry is revered by Muslims as Quran in Sindhi and Hindus as Gita. Bhitai is acknowledged to be from the Kazmi Saadat dating back to Imam Hussain and Ali, grandson of Prophet Mohammed.  His poetry was compiled by his followers, called the Raagi faqirs, after his death and printed in lithographed and then print form in the 19th century. These editions are referred to as Shah jo Risalo. According to scholarly, consensus, there are Thirty chapters knowns as "surs" in Latif's poetry and each based on themes or epics. Latif's poetry consists of poetic forms called "bait" and "waee" and have been re-composed in the popular Sufi style of kafi. The original form of this sung poetic tradition, called the Shah jo Raag, is recited and preserved by the faqirs at his shrine in Bhitshah, and the only instrument used in this form is a five-stringed lute called the dambur.  Shah Latif was a follower of the Persian mystic and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi and verses in Shah Latif's Risalo pays homage to verses in Masnavi.  In Sindh, Shah Latif is also revered as the national poet of Sindh and his poetry is a prayer and an inspiration. 

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