‘I’m Pakistan’s first-ever Grammy winner, but I still have to explain myself’-Asyia Iftikhar-Entertainment – Metro

Acclaimed artist Arooj Aftab refuses to be pigeon-holed as she releases her new album (Picture: Getty)

In 2022, Pakistani-American artist Arooj Aftab broke the glass ceiling with her historic Grammy win. Two years later – she’s ready to reinvent herself.

The 39-year-old artist spent her adolescence in Lahore, Pakistan. A densely-populated city at the heart of the subcontinent infused with a rich history and, according to the singer, is ‘the birthplace of her music-loving parents’.

At 18, after a viral cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Arooj bought a one-way ticket to the other side of the world to study jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston before finally settling in New York, where she has spent her adulthood.

In her music she has drawn inspiration from both South Asian and Western culture, talking in the same breath about Tracy Chapman and Abida Parveen, Billie Holiday and Begum Akhtar.

And yet, this simple biography hardly feels enough to encompass the breadth of her music and effortlessly profound attitude to life. As Arooj tells Metro.co.uk: ‘I’ve always wanted to be a pioneer, to create something new.’

Her acclaimed third album, Vulture Prince, features seven tracks delving into Urdu poetry, re-interpreting timeless classics and including electronic trance and jazz elements stylistic of the Brooklyn-based artist.

Arooj won a Grammy in 2022 for her single Mohabbat (Picture: Shreya Dev Tube)

Her single Mohabbat – a Ghazal about love and longing from classic Pakistani singer Mehdi Hasan – blew the world away and secured her a Grammy for best global music performance.

Other long-adored tracks featured in her album such as Baghon Mein and Suroor have been passed down from Lata Mangeshkar and world-renowned singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, to name a few.

But instead of shying away from this immense legacy, the composer looked this music in the eye and unapologetically made it her own.

‘For a long time, I thought “Nusrat is untouchable, nobody should cover Nusrat”,’ she admits just weeks after her newest album, Night Reign, came out.

Explaining her approach to mastering the revered, she strips away each element – from the instrumentation to the sonic structure – until she is left with the ‘soul’ of the song.

‘It took me 12 years to write it, maybe even 15 because it’s so sacred to me.

She has ‘broken the glass ceiling’ for Pakistani artists to be recognised at these award ceremonies (Picture: Getty)

‘People like Nusrat and Mehdi Hassan, these guys are our national treasures. You can’t just touch that without really making it yours first.

‘Without actually somehow psychologically believing that you have become that person in that moment. I spent pretty much half of my life knowing those songs before I was ready,’ she adds.

Her hard work paid off.

‘I could sense that the music that I was making was being heard and appreciated on much larger level than it had ever been before. It gave me so much newfound energy.’

Her global acclaim comes as Pakistani and diaspora artists are bursting to the fore. Ali Sethi is building on his already successful music career after his 2022 Coke Studio tune Pasoori went viral (and became the most googled song that year).

Meanwhile, smaller artists are steadily building their reputations from Nabihah Iqbal to Natasha Noorani.

‘Vulture Prince broke the glass ceiling and gave a lot of Pakistani musicians a new dream,’ Arooj says of her success within this turning tide.

‘It made them realise that that is possible for them and that’s amazing. You sometimes have to see something in order to believe that it’s possible for you as well.

She is tired of having to explain her music, and getting wrongly categorised (Picture: Shreya Dev Tube)

‘Being the first Pakistani to have a critically acclaimed record in the Urdu language was the chip that fell.

‘I thought: “I don’t care what’s going on, I’m going to keep doing this work, I’m going to keep making this music. This music feels important and I believe in it enough to not worry about it going mainstream or not.”‘

Although she believes a door has been busted down (and ‘about time’) after years of ‘fighting the fight’ within the music industry – there is still a long way to go to make it a truly inclusive space for non-white artists.

‘We know that if you’re not a white person [you are not allowed] the freedom to do whatever you want and to switch things around,’ she shares.

Instead, Arooj’s career has come with ‘a lot of explaining’ herself. So that’s what she does.

She continues: ‘My measure of success is being able to stop explaining things. Just let me be whatever I want. Don’t ask me for the cultural context.

The singer has teamed up with Penn Badgley (Picture: Arooj Aftab/YouTube)

She praised his help despite his ‘insane schedule’ (Picture: Arooj Aftab/YouTube)

‘But that’s how the system is built. We live in a white supremacy, a capitalist and patriarchal world. It’s not just east or west, it’s wherever the f**k you are. So those three things are going to constantly affect everything that anybody does.

‘If you’re not white you have all these layers to navigate through. But if you know that, then it makes it a little bit easier to deal with it.’

Nowhere is that truer than in her latest album Night Reign which strays away from Vulture Prince’s time capsule and instead offers an exploration of night culture within New York City. The perfect project for a self-proclaimed ‘night owl’.

‘Everybody was saying, that I was this artist who reworks old stuff and works with ancient devotional Sufi, Islamic f**king poetry. I was like… “Let’s move on from that”. I’m quite an unserious person, actually,’ she quips.

The album blends genres like ‘alternative, folk and jazz with original songwriting’ and even leans into ‘pop, R&B and soul’. All as an ode to her favourite time of day.

‘[Night] can be a little dangerous. You meet people, you fall in love, or you find inspiration, you go to shows. The night has so many things, it’s just endless.’

The music artist explores New York nightlife in her new album Night Reign (Picture: Shreya Dev Tube)

She adds that unlike Vulture Prince which was about ‘grief and loss’, in contrast Night Reign is a ‘celebration of life’.

What’s more, this album has had a helping hand from the various A-List friends Arooj has collected along the way.

Earlier this summer Arooj released an unconventional interview with Netflix star Penn Badgley in which they discussed the allure of night over a game of chess in a late-night eatery.

As Arooj explained, she met Penn and his wife after a show that ‘they really loved’ and, as fellow musicians, they all quickly became friends.

‘I asked him to do me a favor, [to put his] beautiful face in a video with me,’ she casually recounts

‘He has an insane schedule. He’s shooting the next season of You. He’s got a million other things going on, he’s got kids.

Marvel star Tessa Thompson made her directorial debut with Arooj’s music video (Picture: Getty)

‘But he carved out the time super late at night so I really appreciate that. And we were able to talk about the music of the night, in this really funny, stupid way.’

As part of this new era, Arooj even released a music video for her single Raat Ki Rani which doubled as Hollywood star Tessa Thompson’s directorial debut. Arooj also cited her as one of her ‘muses’ for the album itself.

The perfume commercial-inspired aesthetic traced a sensual connection between a model and her stand in completely removed from the ‘male gaze’.

‘I have always felt that my music belongs in a more contemporary and freer sort of space.

‘So if you’re going to imagine a music video, I don’t want any cultural tropes. I don’t want any weird prejudice s**t. I just want it to be cool and beautiful. I wanted to tell an actual story. That’s what she did.’

In fact, she’s been adopted by the entire Thompson clan, with Tessa’s musical father Marc Anthony Thompson providing vocals on the final track and her step-mother shooting the album cover.

As Arooj sets her sights on returning to London for another show in November, she reflects on the constantly evolving nature of a musician’s craft which harbours an entire lifetime within its walls.

‘We just keep putting out these reflections of ourselves and immortalizing them in the world. We timestamp where we are emotionally in life.

‘If you look at somebody’s entire discography, like Joni Mitchell, it’s the story of their life and that’s a really beautiful thing.’

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