ZAMEEN-A

Artist in Residence | July 2023

ZAMEEN-A is a Vancouver-based violinist/artist interested in the ways in which emotionality can be heightened within any given artistic-medium.

Exploring texture, concept, and the avant-garde through her music ; ZAMEEN-A looks to create an immersion into the poetic state of what the artist coins as "ecstatic suffering." the implementation of unique tunings alongside narrative arrangements allow ZAMEEN-A to communicate the more ineffable and even uncomfortable aspects of the human experience.

Cry [No More]

Cry [No More] is the debut album from artist/violinist ZAMEEN-A. Alongside musicians Gregory Coles and Cayne McKenzie, ZAMEEN-A looks to explore the poetic and deeply emotional state of “ecstatic suffering” by combining the sensual and moody expression of the violin as it is juxtaposed with the progressive textures of noise, ambient, and industrial production.

As a half-Pakistani musician, ZAMEEN-A has drawn significant inspiration from the diverse modal systems found in “world” music. The Persian violin, with its microtonal scales, serves as an ideal vehicle for exploring the darker and more obscure emotional states that constitute the human experience. The musicologist Khyam Allami calls microtonality one of the many “repressed possibilities” of music within a Western framework, which is heavily biased toward a normalized tuning system. This project seeks to challenge prevailing cultural assumptions by exploring musical possibilities beyond the confines of conventional western melodic and rhythmic structures, tapping into some of the most universal yet rarely shared emotional states.

Despite this, ZAMEEN-A is adamant in stating that Cry [No More] is not a “world” album. The Persian violin is merely a poetic tool. Cry [No More] is experimental in its nature and this is how ZAMEEN-A desires all her art to be understood. In this way, ZAMEEN-A takes many creative risks in the band’s attempt to modernize and re-imagine how traditional sound and instrumentation have typically been experienced.

Alongside producing their first album, a core focus for ZAMEEN-A has been in exploring the ways in which the band can develop an immersive experience for the listener by integrating a variety of multimedia. This includes short film, art installation, as well as engineering their album for quadraphonic spaces. The idea is to expose the inner world, the psyche that feels/suffers/perceives alone, and turn it outwards, revealing its true nature in its most vulnerable, raw, and exposed form.