Born in Riyadh to music-loving diplomats (whom she praises as “cool cats”) and raised in Lahore, Arooj Aftab studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music; she now lives in Brooklyn. She worked in relative obscurity (despite an Emmy for documentary editing) for years before her 2021 album Prince Vulture The song “Mohabbat” launched her career. Her blend of jazzy introspection and her authoritative, controlled singing struck a chord with an audience that would not normally listen to music she describes as a mix of “jazz with minimalism, semi-classical South Asian music and folk music.” She became the first Pakistani artist to win a Grammy for the song “Mohabbat,” which also became one of Barack Obama’s songs of choice for his summer playlist.
Prince Vulture She was mired in grief over the deaths of her brother Maher and her friend Annie Ali Khan. Her centripetal stillness and sombre singing of Aftab, much of it in Urdu, were appropriate for the times. Its sequel, Reign of the nightwas released earlier this year — Recognisably in the same sound world, but more open and energetic. This summer, she made a new appearance at Glastonbury in a dazzling gold coat, joking about playing songs about the night under a scorching afternoon sun. This autumn she will perform at the London festival Round house as part of a wider European tour. But today, in an east London pub, quick and sarcastic in sunglasses she never takes off and recovering from a festival injury in the form of a broken finger, she reflects on her inspirations, her past and the enduring power of whisky and perfume.
Your last two albums are nocturnal in style, but Prince Vulture He was self-centered and distressed; Reign of the night You are more open to external things. You are curious, you look at the world.
That’s exactly it. Prince Vulture It was a dark and very soft place, full of pain and loss. It invited you into that space where something was missing or something was gone. I was trying to create a new style of music that had no model or reference to other artists. And when I built that house, I felt a sense of accomplishment and freedom.
With Reign of the nightI thought, “Now I can decorate this house, I can play in this place, I can build on what I’ve done, I can explore more of this genre that I’ve been pursuing.” And my grief has evolved, my sense of loss has transformed into a kind of sense of celebrating life. Instead of feeling someone’s absence, I now feel their presence through me. So I’m happy. I’m celebrating and I feel free. Reign of the night makes the night the protagonist. You give up your autonomy over what happens at night. And so many things happen.
How much of your inner mindscape was formed in Lahore?
Historically, Lahore is known as the city of gardens, of poets, of dancers, of literature. Everybody loved music. Poets would gather in cafes. Lahore has this Punjabi and Kashmiri culture of dressing up, dancing, partying and being innocent. And it’s really romantic because it has so many gardens, fragrant flowers, fountains, marble and all those old Mughal red bricks and old British churches.
I will always keep this relationship with Lahore as if it were an ex. You know, we had a good time. We still have a lot of respect for each other. But we can never go back to the way it was. The physical place doesn’t seem that important to me anymore. You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak if you tie yourself down to a physical place, because that place keeps changing. So I stopped doing that.
How does Brooklyn contrast with that?
I am very happy to be able to call New York my home. We all support each other, it is like a melting pot of cultures, struggle, effort, competition. And also inspiration, because all the best artists in the world come through New York and perform in New York. There are freedoms there that I don’t find anywhere else in the world. They have a fighting spirit for what they believe is right.
A concept that crosses Reign of the night She is the Queen of the Night.
The Queen of the Night is someone who has a very attractive and magnetic energy in a meeting, or maybe even just catches your eye on the street. And it’s just a passing moment. It’s nothing more than that. But over the next month, you find yourself thinking about her.
Tessa Thompson’s video for “Raat Ki Rani” sums it all up. [Directed and co-conceived by the actor, it is set on a film shoot, with Aftab positioned on the sidelines as an unobserved commentator.]
I loved the idea of the actor and his double. They are there until the very last moment, when you enter the scene. And there is an attraction there, which could even be that of being attracted to yourself, because your double is your height and your skin tone. I loved that the center of desire is not a man.
The Queen of the Night is also a flower, hence the name “Raat Ki Rani”.
Yes. The things that inspire me are flowers as a metaphor, people’s eye contact, elemental things like night, day or rain, and fragrance.
To accompany Prince Vulture You sold your own perfume oil.
I had [Egyptian-Lebanese perfumier] Dana El Masri heard the record and I told her what I think Prince Vulture would wear. She developed that scent with me.
What did it smell like?
A bit like Earl Grey, a bit smoky, not powdery at all, a bit sweet, like the dark scent of a winter night. I thought: let’s not make it obvious, like incense, let’s make it really sexy. It has to smell great because Prince Vulture is a cool kitty. Woody, but kind of unisex.
At your 2022 Barbican concert, your costume was a cross between a raven and armour. Maeve [Gilchrist, the harpist who has been a long-time collaborator on her albums] He looked like an off-duty astronaut. Perhaps the men had not pushed the boat so hard…
– as usual –
…So how important is wardrobe to you?
It’s a way of being confident and taking your place on stage. There’s a touch of humor, a kind of irony. When you combine all those things, you end up looking like that raven suit with a pretty sharp silhouette. You should walk across the stage and have people say, “Wow,” you know? But also, the look has to match what’s going on. It can’t be a bad performance and just look great.
You’ve said before that you’re uncomfortable with the concept of world music.
Am I? It’s not that I feel uncomfortable, I’m just not. I don’t play traditional music on stage, I just don’t. You can go and see Abida Parveen or Ballaké Sissoko, maybe even Baaba Maal. But I’m not trained in anything classical at all. My music is a mix of many things. It’s quite contemporary. Just because I’m coloured and I sing in a different language doesn’t mean I should be put into the world music category.
When you’re singing, what goes through your head?
I feel like I’m in my own movie. I’m telling a story, a vague story with a lot of secrets, open to interpretation. It could be about a lot of different situations, but it’s definitely all true about my life. Some of it is borrowed poetry, so I spend a lot of time with that poetry to make it my own, so I can sing it honestly. Sometimes it’s easier to sing your feelings and the things you want to say, rather than saying them out loud. It’s kind of romantic to have a song about a situation, rather than actually dealing with it.
“Whiskey”, for example…
I loved writing that because on the one hand, it’s very guilt-inducing: “You drink too much whiskey and I’m going to let you fall in love with me. And it’s your perfume.” But in a way, I’m also talking about myself. I’ve lived long enough, at this point, to have had multiple kinds of experiences, and it’s nice that it can all fit into that sentence. There are so many doors, right?
During the tour, do you get inspired by new places?
We travel a lot and that has made me distance myself from places, because you can’t capture feelings. You have to keep moving forward. It’s a bit sad, because I feel like I could live in one of these small cities, in Brazil or Portugal, or in some small Italian villages, and just be a me from a parallel universe. It’s probably happening somewhere…
Arooj Aftab will headline the lineup Pitchfork Festival London November 7th at Roundhouse, London NW1
Hair, Ami Fujita using Oribe. Make-up, Kite Luck at Agency 41. Photography assistants, Emma Ercolani and Isabella Galliano. Stylist assistant, Lizzie Ash. Photographed at The George Tavern, London E1