AROOJ AFTAB:
IN HEART AND MIND

Born and bred in Lahore, Pakistan, and now based in NYC, Best New Artist nominee Arooj Aftab blends an array of sounds and styles on her 2021 album Vulture Prince (released on New Amsterdam; she recently signed with Verve). Her musical amalgam has earned widespread admiration, fusing as it does jazz, indie pop, classical, devotional and other forms. The Berklee College of Music grad earned her degree in music production and engineering and jazz composition, and she wields all that expertise with grace on her new set, which has also scored a Grammy nom for Best Global Music Performance (for the song “Mohabbat”).

Congratulations on your Best New Artist Grammy nomination. What does this recognition mean to you?
It really means a lot. I feel like it’s hard to process what it means. As with many musicians like me, I have just taken everything that has broken me and built me in my life and put it into my music. A delicate, stylistically diverse music that historically doesn’t get recognition. So this moment is really validating, to say the least—and rewarding of my journey, too.

Your music represents an elegant fusion of several stylistic and cultural traditions. How do you characterize that fusion, and what have been your greatest inspirations?
Again, it’s a very personal music, rather than traditional. I’ve explored the depths of classical music, minimalist music, jazz and so much more and have been steadily and carefully melding them together in my music as they are melded in my heart and mind. Some of my influences are Terry Riley, Morton Feldman, Julius Eastman, Abida Parveen, Jeff Buckley, Begum Akhtar, Anoushka Shankar, Abbey Lincoln, Esperanza Spalding, Meshell Ndegeocello...

How did your work as a composer and your training as a producer/engineer factor into the creation of Vulture Prince?
I think it helped a lot. My skills have grown a bit since the last record [2018’s Siren Islands], and it feels good to flex that. For me as a producer/composer, the instruments, the instrument players and finally, the voice all must meet in a homogeneous space where—at the risk of sounding too floopy—we transcend our instruments and ourselves. I spent a lot of time decorating that space on each song of Vulture Prince.

How has the pandemic affected your process?
It gave me time to slow down and think deeply about the arrangements and mixes on Vulture Prince, so in a way the pandemic affected me positively.

Is there anyone in particular you’d like to meet on Grammy night?
Ha! I haven’t really thought about it. Everyone! All the peeps! I am very social. I want to have a good time on Grammy night.