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Artist
Arooj Aftab
12+ albums
chamber folkjazzpakistanisinger-songwriterfemale vocalists
about
Arooj Aftab (born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on 11 March 1985) is a Saudi-born Pakistani vocalist, music composer, and producer based in the United States. She works in various musical styles and idioms including jazz, minimalism, and neo-Sufi. Aftab won the News & Documentary Award at the 2018 Emmy Awards. She was nominated for the Best New Artist award, and won the Best Global Music Performance award for her song "Mohabbat", at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards in April 2022. She became the first-ever Pakistani artist to win a Grammy Award. Raised in Lahore, Pakistan, from the age of 10, Aftab came to prominence in Pakistan in the early 2000s when she developed a style that combines Sufi-mystical poetry with the spirit of independent rock. This sound catapulted her to stardom from a then fledgling underground and online music community in Pakistan. She eventually moved to the U.S., earned a degree at the Berklee School of Music, and now lives in New York City. Her music is inspired by the poetry and musicality of Rumi, Abida Parveen, and other Sufi poets as well as the reworking of classical Pakistani and North Indian forms like khayal and kafi. She says Sufi words have impacted her writing: “It is very much about the feeling that (Sufi poetry) leaves you with: calmness, peace, patience, simplicity. And then sadness, longing, wandering, searching, openness, oneness. I try to take all these qualities and weave them into my music.” She is adamant that her music not be defined as
