Arooj Aftab’s artistic practice is centered in collaboration and a desire to build bridges across language, culture, and time. A vocalist and composer, Aftab’s music draws on references ranging from medieval Urdu poetry to jazz rhythms and harmonies. “My music is world-building,” she says. “It is a meeting of ancient tradition with contemporary style, resulting in new music with a broad appeal that spans generations and genre.”
Movement as an immigrant musician
Aftab’s music brings to the fore the expertise she has gained in decades of composing, singing, and performing. Her process is collaborative, and is a window into the language, cultural, and musical connections she has built along the way. “My music reflects my movement as an immigrant musician,” she says. “As an immigrant musician I can stay in motion without remaining ‘other,’ without losing sense of who I am.”
Born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents, Aftab spent her earliest years in Saudi Arabia before her family moved to her parents’ hometown of Lahore, Pakistan, when she was 11. At the age of 20, Aftab moved to the United States to pursue studies in music and music engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Building a foundation at Berklee
Berklee enabled Aftab to connect with musicians of many backgrounds and experiences, and to challenge herself to expand on how she works. “It always felt like such a singular journey until that moment,” she says, noting how the ability to connect with other musicians, composers, and songwriters provided a wealth of opportunity to expand on her music in meaningful ways. The school’s focus on jazz and collaboration had a profound impact on Aftab, and has been foundational in her approach to her work since. “Jazz is not just collaborative, it’s improvisational,” she says. “There’s a significant amount of improv in all of my music, and I purposely leave space for it.”
The curriculum at Berklee also appealed to Aftab for the particular technical expertise it would afford her. Studying music and sound engineering has provided Aftab the tools necessary to articulate and specify the qualities she wants to come forth in her compositions and recordings. These tools gave her the expertise and confidence to advocate for what she wants in her studio experiences and outputs, which have enabled her to create the type and quality of music she has envisioned. “It was beyond valuable to have that,” she says, “to get that confidence to stand in that room and dictate how you want a recording session to go down.”
Home and away: Touring the globe
Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Aftab feels the city is home. “New York is not like any other place on the planet,” she says, noting that the city’s artistry and diversity have enabled her to connect and collaborate with artists she admires. For most of the past two years, Aftab has been touring intensely, an exhausting effort, but one that is also deeply fulfilling, as it provides the shared experience of connecting with people through art. “Touring and performing live is such a sacred act,” she says. “Give audiences beautiful, incredible, unapologetic music and art, and they’ll grow.”