That Other Ish: ADIHA - The Boogeyman

ADIHA - The Boogeyman

International artist and author ADIHA examines forbidden love with unique story-song concept for “The Burning One”

HOUSTON, TX – An alluring story of forbidden love between a young woman and a mysterious dark figure takes shape in the first installment of “The Burning One” series, created by exotic and mysterious artist ADIHA. Weaving this unique story through multiple mediums—from a book to film to animations to music—ADIHA explores the attraction to misunderstood darkness, personified in her story as a jinn-being. Jinn are more commonly known in Western culture as genies. We are all too familiar with the lovable “Genie” from Aladdin, but in contrast, ADIHA’s jinn character is a byproduct of haunting folklore, allowing her interpretation of jinn to have a darker, more mysterious connotation. Stories suggest that jinn are a different kind of being made from “smokeless fire,” and that these amorphous entities live amongst us, probably in some inter-dimensional plane.

“’The Burning One’ tells the tale of a human girl who forms a relationship with a male jinn – a being made from fire,” ADIHA confirms. “It’s a concept that I’ve worked on for many years, and I was inspired by this idea since childhood. We would tell our own scary ‘jinn’ stories, which to me, were much scarier than ghost stories. Jinn are beings too, understood from religious text and from literature like The Arabian Nights. And I think that’s the most interesting part of it for me, that they coexist with humans but are separated by interdimensional boundaries. Many people do not like to talk about jinn because they’re afraid the interest will attract them into our world. I’ve gotten more than a few angry stares from adults when I was a child, asking them more about the topic of my intrigue. I’m trying to use something with a basis in history, religion, and folklore to create an interesting, and albeit probably taboo, fictional story.”

That story unfolds in multiple ways in a multimedia approach with an initial release of five songs – the first of which is a new song called “The Boogeyman” that was released on Halloween weekend. ADIHA will continue the story every other week with new single releases on Fridays. And each single will be accompanied by a tantalizing excerpt of the story. “The Boogeyman” is an introduction to the story, setting the stage for the rest of the series. The young girl encounters the jinn as a child. He scares her by showing up in her room while she’s sleeping and threatening to “bite her toes off.” However, at the same time he charms her “like Michelangelo at his rough marble slab” by making her daydreams come to life from the “as-yet unhewn reality.” It’s the first step in what will become a complicated inter-dimensional relationship, ADIHA said – one that will ultimately reach its climax with the last single in this installment, “Quantum Entanglement.”

“With ‘The Boogeyman’ I wanted to have more of a Middle Eastern vibe to pay homage to the historical roots of the jinn concept,” ADIHA said. “You can hear the drums and the background music that have kind of an Arabic feel to it, and even in the music video, you’ll see me wearing some traditional clothing. But every song in this story will have its own sound. The next song that comes out on Friday the 13th will be haunting and more classical, while ‘Quantum Entanglement’ will be more atmospheric and dreamy. But all of them will fall into that darker place because that’s the tone that fits my story. The dark is often considered ugly, but sometimes the most beautiful things can come from the dark. I’ve learned this from my own life. It’s okay to appreciate the dark.”

ADIHA is no stranger to music, having trained professionally as a vocalist, she focused on classical pieces and opera in her previous years. Her dad is a guitarist and had his own band in his younger years in Pakistan called The Sound of the Silhouettes, accounting for much of ADIHA’s inherited love of music. Though she has always had a love for music, she’s spent much of the previous decade going to dental school and practicing as a dentist. But 2020 brought major changes in her life and inspired her to get back in touch with her passion for music and storytelling. She’s spent much of her life creating the world of “The Burning One”, she’s spent much of this year bringing this world to life, and she’s excited now to share the “multiverse” of storytelling with audiences far and wide.