Arooj Aftab
her sound floats between singer-songwriter structures and states of pure being
Arooj Aftab’s liminal sound floats between classical minimalism and new age, Sufi devotional poetry and electronic trance, jazz structures and states of pure being.
Image courtesy: Soichiro Suizu
Arooj Aftab’s sound on her latest album Vulture Prince, is informed by Urdu verse, ancestry, mythological vultures and her brother’s death. A collection of reimagined Urdu verse and Ghazals, it is up for one of the ‘big four’ prizes at the 2022 Grammy Awards . Aftab is the first Pakistani artist to be nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy and she has only just left her day job as an audio engineer to pursue music full-time.
Arooj is listed as NPR's 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women, and The New York Time's 25 Best Classical Songs of 2018 and also has a 2020 Academy Award composing music for film.
““I am someone who has lived in different places and inherited a lot of different heritages.””
Your work is rooted in sufi tradition, what drew you to it?
The first 10 years of my life were spent in Saudi Arabia and then the next 10 in Lahore, Pakistan until I was 19. I moved to the U.S. to study music production and engineering at the Berklee School of Music. I am someone who has lived in different places and have inherited a lot of different heritages.
My time in Saudi Arabia was no different from the other “Gulfie babies”. You don't really get anything from being there. You're just there for some sort of reason. However, my love affair with Lahore is undeniable. Lahore is my parent’s hometown, they were like pure liberals in a pre-Zia (General Zia-ul-Haq) universe- a young couple, with all their friends who loves music, discourse, art and dance. They cared about the arts, and held on to it.
When I arrived in Lahore it had the still-like pace of an old city. It had that beauty, the weeping willows, the nehar- a regal, graceful quality. You can see that in a lot of the poetry and music that I gravitate towards like Begum Akthar or the 17th century poets.
Talk to us more about how your heritage inspires or influences your music-
I care a lot about ancestry and feel like respect should be given to those who came before us. When you look into the mirror and you see your mother, your grandmother and a thousand women staring back at you- that's our ancestry, that's who we are. You can't just say, I like this Ghazal- I'm going to cover it when you don't even know it. It doesn't even feel like it's yours. I see that happening a lot. I see that happening in Bollywood too- this regurgitation, a mindless repackaging, a hurried and careless drawing from influences and then it becomes nothing, just a plastic disco-like nightmare. I've just been really aware of that, especially studying jazz, it gives you this. I like to spend time until I get it right, otherwise it doesn’t come through. I think the jazz study that I did at Berkelee gave me a sense of space, time and improvisation, experimentation. The minimalism of Rumi's poetry, the works of John Cage, the cyclical nature of Terry Riley's work too, it makes sense! All of these things have been important to me.
““When you look into the mirror and you see your mother, grandmother and a thousand women staring back at you- that’s our ancestry, that’s who we are.””
YOU’RE BACKED BY A QUARTET OF VIRTUOSO MUSICIANS, SOME OF WHOM ARE MULTI-INSTRUMENTALISTS. TELL US ABOUT THEM AND HOW YOU GOT TOGETHER.
Still from NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series. L-R: Classical guitarist Gyan Riley, violinist Darian Donovan Thomas, Shahzad Ismaily on bass and synth and Celtic harpist Maeve Gilchrist.
Some of them are friends from college, some are long-time collaborators and others are musicians that I've met in New York through strong jazz community and, of course, the Berkelee (school of music) Mafia network here. I ran into Terry Riley’s son Gyan Riley. We wanted to see if we could play together and see how that would sound like and it was just amazing. This type of thing happens a lot, with people introducing me to other people. With Shahzad Ismaily who is a multi-instrumentalist, I was told that I should have known him for years, he sat in with Vijay Iyer and myself one day and now we play as a trio. Then there’s Darian Thomas, the soloist violin player- I met him at a label party and and we just kind of hit it off. The New York music organism is very deep, you know?
I think you can find collaborators. But you have to be looking hard for the people that will connect with your music and with you. Play the way you are, as you are, you don't have to perform ethnic like exoticism right now- it’s ridiculous and offensive. For me, it’s an ongoing process of having this pool of amazing collaborators who can interchange because everyone has busy schedules. There are people who are part of the main team, like a rotating family of musicians who I feel safe with and share mutual respect with.
You’ve been performing the song Mohabbat live since 2010 and your rendition has changed over time. Tell us about your evolving connection to it?
I feel like I have always loved those original lyrics by Hafeez Hoshiarpuri especially the first two lines, “Mohabbat karne waale kam na hoñge, Terī mehfil meñ lekin ham na hoñge”. It's incredibly empowering and wonderful to be able to say, ‘I'm so sure you'll have lovers, you'll have people who will admire you, and be in your corner. You'll have so many of them, but I just won't be one of them’
Just those two lines that he wrote, could sum up so many different moments in your life. You could have had a breakup, you could be walking away from a toxic situation, you could have lost someone or, it could even be a political statement. There's a dark humor in there too and goes back and forth about, whether it is a sad thing or not. It is so much about the participation and nonparticipation, and the choice of participation and the continuation of that thing, or person in and of itself in a very grand and generous gesture.
Mohabbat. From the full-length album VULTURE PRINCE on New Amsterdam Records.
I've always felt it was so deep and meant much more than what it was presented as- a sad, beautiful puzzle. That’s why I wanted to render his original lyrics with a big ray of emotions, happening as moments inside of a really long song- the funny one, the nostalgic one, the hopeful one, the heart wrenching one, and then kind of the end. I just didn't know how to do that. It's so easy to say it, but how do you do that musically? I've been performing this song live since 2010, but it's only now that it made sense, musically.
Aftab’s music has earned her a pretty high-profile fan in former president Barack Obama. In July 2021, the former president listed “Mohabbat” on his official summer 2021 playlist.
““[Arooj Aftab] calls forth the poetry and euphoria of Pakistani Qawwali and Sufi styles, swirled into modern, interpretive riffs from rock, hip-hop, classical and jazz.””
You have pushed the envelope on Sufi music and doing it with non-traditional instruments. If you were given a blank canvas of a stage, what would your dream project or event be- what does the Grammy nomination mean to you?
I haven't really got there yet. I've started thinking about it, but there's just so much going on right now, that it feels insane to start thinking about the production of a whole show while still on tour. I would love to build out the production of my live show. Right now it’s simple- we just go and we perform, and it's really sweet. I do believe that we're getting to a point where it needs to look amazing. The most important thing for me right now is to get through this Grammy weekend. It’s been busy and insane and, it is all happening so soon, that we are not able to do anything else. At the same time it's very stifling, since I have to write a new record.
Arooj Aftab was featured on a billboard in Times Square, New York as Spotify's artist of the month for their "EQUAL Pakistan" initiative.
Spotify's new initiative "EQUAL Pakistan" is a playlist that aims to amplify the voices of Pakistani female artists, by giving them a platform that highlights and celebrates their music. The playlist features women producers, instrumentalists, vocalists, songwriters and more.
who are some of the musicians who have inspired you
Reshma, Begum Akhtar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Anoushka Shankar, Esperanza Spaulding, Buika
and who can we find on your playlist right now?
Jean Baptiste, Shabaka and The Ancestors, Lorraine. I think all these records came out in April last year and feel like siblings of each other. I’ve been listening to these three records on repeat!
What message do you have for your fans
I'm just really looking forward to playing music in Chicago again after what feels like billions of years. The last time I performed there was for The World Music Festival in 2011.