Grammy winner for Best Global Musical Performance, Arooj Aftab, plays the Chan.
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arooj aftab
When: July 13, 8:00 p.m.
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Where: Chan Center for the Performing Arts, UBC
Tickets/information: chancentre.com
In April 2022, arooj aftab he became the first Pakistani artist to win a Grammy Award.
The Brooklyn vocalist won best world music performance for her song Mohabbat. Taken from her third album Vulture Prince, released on New Amsterdam Records in 2021, the nearly eight-minute-long song incorporates elements of Indian classical music, pastoral folk, orchestration, and atmospheric and ambient chants. It is a perfect example of the artist’s unique multicultural compositional fusion.
The seven-song album also generated enough attention for Aftab to earn a nomination for best new artist. Unsurprisingly, that honor went to teenage newcomer Olivia Rodrigo.
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The production of the two musicians could not be more different.
“Either way, it feels really cool, because I’ve been honing my craft for a while and this album fits into the trajectory of trying to do something that there aren’t a lot of examples to compare it to,” Aftab said. “Trying to put all the different pieces together is not easy, particularly as an independent artist. So Vulture Prince feels like a triumph of all my musical goals clicking into place, or at least starting to. It’s what every artist wants.”
It’s also recognition that very few artists get, particularly when the music they make incorporates everything from a love of Mariah Carey and Hindustani classical flutist Hariprasad Chaurasia to avant-garde minimalism and swing jazz and blues. Vulture Prince is one of those rare releases embraced by an audience so wide that it could include everyone from Pitchfork and National Public Radio critics to former US President Barack Obama.
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“You know, when you put your heart into a project and then you put it out into the world, you don’t want to hear crickets,” he said. “You want your door to come crashing down, and that’s what’s been happening.”
That it is happening in such a wide cross section of society is not surprising to Aftab. While industry orthodoxy tries to impose genres and categories on their music, it fails. The artist feels this reflects a sea change in contemporary music made in a globally connected world. Who says a playlist can’t feature American minimalist Terry Riley right next to a Mohit Chauhan fuck banger followed by a Mariah Carey hit?
“There is a movement for both musicians and audiences in the world of avant-pop/post-classical/whatever you want to call it that is genderless,” Aftab said. “Everyone loves it and no one really cares what to call it. My music carries ancient information that nods to centuries-old traditions and poetry, right next to jazz and pop. South Asian music hasn’t had that moment yet, but for a long time it’s been about a crossover.”
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A self-taught guitarist who does not have decades of formal training in any style of traditional music, Aftab feels free from the limitations that training might create when it comes to songwriting. The techniques used to create Vulture Prince’s beautiful opening melody, Baghon Main, did not follow any kind of strict structure and yet seem incredibly meticulous in construction. Everything on the album is organic.
“If I feel an idea forming in my mind, the most important thing is to record the key feeling on some kind of recording so that I can go back and develop it later,” he said. “Capturing that initial spark, that feeling, before it changes is the most important thing. Beyond that, there is no formal process.”
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This approach means that the next record is always in process. As the Vulture Prince follow-up unfolds, Aftab says it will start to become clear. On the heels of the Grammy win, whatever comes next has “very big shoes to fill.”
“I’m very excited about it, but I don’t know much about it yet,” she said. “That’s fine, because I can let it build and loosen up, prioritizing writing some more cool ad-libs. The only real difference is that there is no break between heading straight to the fourth album.
“There is a recording of a jazz trio that was made a few years ago with me, the pianist Vijay Ayer and Shahzad Ismaily, which will be out early next year,” Aftab said. “It was something we really did for fun, but we decided we liked it so much that we wanted to record it. I’m really looking forward to it coming out, because I think it sounds really good.”
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Aftab’s major degree from Boston’s Berklee College of Music is in music production and engineering with additional studies in jazz composition. She admits to having very specific ideas about the sound and presentation of the recordings. Every song is built with a blueprint of what goes where in the song, but there’s always an opportunity to build on that too. Aftab admits that acting favors sticking to order over any spontaneous improvisation.
Either way, is bringing the meticulously constructed music to the live stage a challenge for her and violinist Darian Donovan Thomas, guitarist Gyan Riley, harpist Maeve Gilchrist and bassist/synth Shahzad Ismaily?
“I’m happy to delegate to front of house because I couldn’t worry about mixing and making music at the same time,” he said. “Obviously we take the time to ensure fidelity, but we fully recognize that it will be different every time. I have some great ideas on how to mix sounds and make room for new things with the players I’m working on, but I’d rather not divulge that at this time.”
In that case, save it for the next album and tour. Arooj Aftab appears as part of the Indian Summer Festival 2022 in a co-production with Chan Center for the Performing Arts.
