AROOJ AFTAB

PAST WINS best global music performance (“Mohabbat,” 2022)

NOMINATED THIS YEAR best global music performance (“Shadow Forces”), best alternative jazz album (Love in Exile)

[Musicians] work hard, and we’re really sensitive people. It’s really difficult to translate the state of the world and the current human condition into this thing that is music that holds so much of people’s emotions together. The Grammys are important because they give you this giant accolade for that. It’s a really special thing to be there among all your peers, to be nominated among incredible albums, to even submit among everybody and then to perhaps win. It’s a beautiful thing.

Since I won, when somebody’s introducing me before a performance or if it’s on a prospectus or any type of thing, it now says, “Grammy Award-winning artist Arooj Aftab.” Whether it’s a performing arts center programmer or it’s a festival programmer or it’s grant organizations or just the audience as a whole, and even musician peers, it has had a very significant impact. There has been an undeniable shift since I won. What that means? I’m not sure. (Laughs.) But what I can say is that it definitely does something — something positive.

It opens you up to an audience that may not have otherwise found your record. I always watch the [Academy Award]-nominated animated shorts because I don’t really know about that [area of film] that much. There are people who like music in that way and are like, “OK, I’m going to check out all the Grammynominated albums in this new jazz category that I like.”

It’s thrilling; it’s the highest accolade of music. At the end of the day, it’s awesome to win a Grammy — it really just is.