“I’ve been part of this industry for so long that I don’t deserve to be other-ized anymore.” Arooj Aftab has little interest in being considered an outlier on the Recording Academy’s coveted list of nominees.
Jet-lagged and admitting to being overwhelmed by the increased attention, she notes that, considering 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?”
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 past 15 years.
“I had to take a step back and calm down a bit and actually revert to the healing energy power of the music, which is something that 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, I think, once we removed an instrument that needs tempo all the time.
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.
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