Shedding her ‘other’ status
Pakistan-raised Arooj Aftab, who sings mostly in Urdu, finally finds herself in the conversation.
THOUGH THE differences between best new artist nominee Arooj Aftab and the nine other musicians up for the coveted Grammy are apparent — Aftab sings mostly in Urdu on her 2021 album “Vulture Prince,” for one — the Pakistanraised, Brooklyn-based vocalist has little interest in being considered an outlier on the Recording Academy’s list.
“I’ve been part of this industry for so long that I don’t deserve to be other-ized anymore,” Aftab says over Zoom.
Still, by nominating her, she acknowledges, “they’ve actually changed history. The world music voters, the classical voters, the jazz voters and all of these factions — so many of them aren’t plugged into mainstream pop,” says the 36-year-old.
Aftab is speculating on her odds from Brooklyn. A day prior, she’d returned from a combination European tour and workrelated detour to Pakistan. She was there when the Grammy nominations were announced. In addition to new artist, Aftab got a global music performance nod for the “Vulture Prince” song “Mohabbat.”
Jet-lagged and a little overwhelmed by the new attention, she notes that, since she moved to the U.S. to attend Berklee College of Music when she was 19, she’s lived longer here than either in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. “The American dream is playing itself out on its own, right?”
She adds, “I wanted ‘Vulture Prince’ to transcend boundaries. I wanted to combine all of my experiences and have them translated in the music.”
Born to Pakistani expat parents in Saudi Arabia, Aftab and her family returned to their native Lahore, Pakistan, when she was about 10. She spent her teen years there before being accepted to Berklee to study voice. After graduation, Aftab moved to New York, where she’s been part of the city’s jazz and new music scene for the last 15 years.
Pianist and composer Vijay Iyer met Aftab in early 2017 when they shared a bill as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival in
New York. Backstage, Iyer sat down at what he described in a recent phone chat as “a funky upright piano.” With Aftab beside him, Iyer says, “we spontaneously created something on the spot.” They’ve been collaborating ever since and recorded an album together, though it doesn’t yet have a release date.
“It’s a real breakthrough in a lot of ways, and not just for her, but America,” the pianist says of his collaborator’s Grammy recognition. “It feels like a new step, culturally, that someone like her, who sings in Urdu and is channeling these really deep lineages and histories so authentically and honestly, could be at this American pop culture pinnacle.”
Those willing to explore Aftab’s “Vulture Prince” will find seven songs featuring both acoustic and electronic elements. Initially a more upbeat production after two meditative previous albums, its trajectory was disrupted by the unexpected death of a close friend and, two months later, the death of Aftab’s younger brother.
“I had to take a step back and calm down and actually revert to the healing energy power of the music, which is something I was running away from as I was trying to make it more acceptable,” she says. After the losses, she removed the drums and reworked some of the rhythmic structures, which “gave it a lighter feel .... It flew more once we removed an instrument that needs tempo all the time.”
For lyrics, she turned to minimalist Asian poets including Mirza Ghalib, Rumi and Hafeez Hoshiarpuri. “There’s incredible poetry written by my ancestors dating so far back,” says Aftab. “I can focus on melody and on how I can get musicians to transcend their instrument and interlock with each other.”
Those interlocking elements extend to the album itself, which she describes as a song cycle with a main character, the Vulture Prince of the title, who represents her — and each person’s — journey
through the world. The vulture, she explains, “has been exalted as this bird that doesn’t hunt. It eats things that are already dead, which has this dark and nasty connotation — but also this very beautiful circle-of-life connotation that is an integral part of folklore for so many different cultures.”
Like vultures, she says, “we have our darkness, but we also contribute to the betterment of the world.”