Meet Arooj Aftab, the First Pakistani Woman to Win a Grammy

Arooj Aftab's track 'Mohabbat' featured on Barack Obama's summer playlist.

Arooj Aftab's track 'Mohabbat' was nominated for a Grammy for 'Best Global Music Performance'.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

Arooj Aftab’s track 'Mohabbat' took home the prize for Best Global Music Performance at the 2022 Grammys. Aftab is an artist of Pakistani-origin and moved to the US in 2005 to study music at the Berklee College of Music.

Her music derives itself from ghazals and has influences of several genres like jazz and reggae. She takes inspiration from poets like Rumi, Hafeez Hoshiarpuri and Mirza Ghalib and her next album, Aftab tells Stereogum, will borrow from Chand Bibi’s buried works.

Aftab released her first album ‘Bird Under Water’ in 2014 and the next ‘Siren Islands’ in 2018 and both albums are brim with melody and nods to her culture and heritage. Aftab’s track ‘Mohabbat’ also made its way to Barack Obama’s annual summer playlist.

Obama described his playlist as "a mix of old and new, household names and emerging artists, and a whole lot in between."

Aftab’s music was also featured on musician Elvis Costello’s list of ‘cultural highlights’. Costello writes for the Guardian that at one point he couldn’t tolerate music with a ‘backbeat or electric instruments’ and was ‘rescued’ by Arooj Aftab’s voice and the track ‘Inaayat’ (featuring words by Ghalib) from ‘Vulture Prince’.

Interestingly, the release of ‘Vulture Prince’ was accompanied by the release of a perfume oil created by Dana El Masri.

The perfume oil’s tone is described as, “Wet earth, ripe stone fruit and a faint smokiness tell a story about the color purple and all its beautiful scents amplified by monsoon season”.

The 'Vulture Prince' perfume oil.

(Photo Courtesy: aroojaftab.bandcamp.com)

Talking about why she chose Urdu as her medium, Arooj Aftab tells Morgan Enos, “It's inherently poetic, and that's really fun for me, because I don't like to have a lot of lyrics. I don't like to have a lot of verses. I like a simple, minimalist approach to even words and the delivery of lines.”

The other musicians nominated with Aftab under the 'Best New Artist' category are Jimmie Allen, Baby Keem, FINNEAS, Glass Animals, Japanese Breakfast, The Kid LAROI, Arlo Parks, Olivia Rodrigo, and Saweetie.