Arooj Aftab has no interest in hiding her Grammy. The coveted golden gramophone sits on the mantle of the living room in her Brooklyn apartment. Sometimes, the Pakistani American musician has “moments of real stillness,” as she tells me over Zoom, in which she thinks about the “incredible privilege and honor” of receiving the 2022 award for best global music performance. Other times, though, she’s able to acknowledge how hard she worked to reach this milestone.
“It’s like, ‘Please, man, give me a fucking trophy,’” she says. “Because we do this really delicate thing. We do this really, really, highly complex, skilled, emotionally driven thing. We’re a very different, sensitive breed of creatives.”
Aftab’s breakout album 2021’s Vulture Prince was meditative, devastating and spiritual — an LP of experimental jazz that she readily admits “is the most non-mainstream shit ever.” (“The fact that people somehow managed to fall in love with it and give it accolades, to me, sometimes is still wild,” she says). The record was written during a time of great sorrow for the songwriter, borne from the grief of her sibling’s untimely death. Primarily sung in Urdu, and influenced by Hindustani traditions, the otherworldly record cast Aftab as a musical “healer” who aids others through their own trauma. This theme came as a surprise to the artist. “I’m such a rowdy, fuck-around kind of person,” she says, adding, “I want to move on from that. I don’t want to be associated with grief, heaviness and pain."
Her sumptuous follow-up album Night Reign, out today on Verve Records, is just as personal and intimate as its acclaimed predecessor, but finds Aftab in a state of play. “It’s less of a place to park your sadness,” she says. Some Vulture Prince through-lines remain: she still sings mostly in Urdu, it’s a jazz record, and it’s just as intentionally crafted. But there is a boldness, freedom and sexuality on Night Reign that was hidden before. Aftab tells me it’s all in the title: “The night is so elusive and has all these secrets, we have these crushes on different places and people,” she says, noting, “ It’s more sensual. That’s a big part of who I am, and I’m happy to [put] that in my music.”
On the harp-laden track “Whiskey,” Aftab sings about an intoxicated and intoxicating lover who slumps on her shoulder after a boozy night. “I think I’m ready to give into your beauty and let you fall in love with me,” she croons ethereally over smooth, fretless bass plucks. The sexy track shows a different side of the musician:, in some ways more relatable, but just as mysterious. Increasingly, she’s trying to close the gap between the audience’s perception of her and her actual personality. “I’m a really unserious person,” Aftab says, expressing some slight frustration with people thinking of her strictly as an ambient jazz artist. “How do I now get away from being responsible for the ancient fucking reimaginations [of poetry]? How do I make it more about me? Let’s have people get closer to me!”
One way that she has invited listeners closer is through her first ever-music video, directed by none other than Tessa Thompson, whom Aftab emphasizes is a “fucking badass.” The visuals for “Raat Ki Rani” are rife with sapphic yearning and knowing glances, befitting an artist who describes herself as a romantic. Though the video itself is quite beguiling, just like her music, it is important to note that Aftab’s first visual offering in her career is a markedly queer one. “My work is never in your face. It’s never obvious. There’s always secrets inside of secrets,” she explains. “It’s always trying to be the most elegant and beautiful thing.” She takes the same approach to expressing her identity in her art: “I don’t need to tell the press specifically or have really obvious overtones of queerness in my work in order for me to be queer.”
For many marginalized artists, there is often a pressure to produce a media-friendly narrative about overcoming personal obstacles. Aftab observes that the same story is not really demanded of “carefree, happy-go-lucky white artists with guitars,” who typically don’t have to connect their music to their identity, culture, or ethnic background. “As an artist of color, as a female artist, and as an artist from Pakistan I’ve had to navigate that a lot,” she tells me. “And the last thing I want to do is make queerness something sellable.” She attributes some of that aversion to the inherent pigeonholing that can come with identifying as a queer artist, which Aftab would like to avoid. “Corporations use queerness to their advantage, and then it is detrimental to our careers,” she says. She prefers to let her ever-evolving body of work speak for itself, communicating deep truths through “the odd language that is music,” as she calls it.
That delicate but intentional approach to making queer art is evident throughout Night Reign. On “Bolo Na,” Aftab features Philadelphia poet and activist Camae Ayewa, who performs as Moor Mother, marking the first time the collaborators have recorded a song together. Aftab thought the track was the perfect opportunity to harness some of Ayewa’s “incredibly swaggy” vibes. “She’s someone whose pen is so strong,” she tells me. The track also gives listeners a peek into Aftab’s inner goth kid. The dirge features lyrics about unrequited love that were penned when Aftab was only 16 years old; until recently, she believed the song was a bit immature and too corny to immortalize. “It was just one of those horrible songs that you write as a kid. They should never see the light of day,” she says with a smirk. But she found that revisiting it with Ayewa, a pioneer of contemporary resistance music, gave it new life, helping to reshape it into something more urgent. “Bolo Na” ultimately became a post-punk track à la Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds that rails against patriarchal and heteronormative systems. (“Fuck the establishment,” Aftab says. “They don’t fucking love us.”) Aftab sent Ayewa the track midway through the process, letting her know it was no longer a love song, and giving her carte blanche to rage on the track. “And she sent me back the hardest fucking bars I’ve ever heard in my life,” Aftab recalls.
The follow-up album also comes at a fascinating juncture for Aftab’s career. One one hand, the acclaim and recognition for Vulture Prince has given her the seal of approval to turn her “little art into a small business,” as she jokes. But the media maelstrom surrounding her precedent as the first Pakistani woman to receive a Grammy brings a certain “amount of eyes” to whatever she does next. When prompted about any anxiety around the release of Night Reign — whether people will think it shirks expectations or surpasses them — she says that she doesn’t think about music in those terms. “Our chronology is not the same as the way people put it,” she says. “I’m still here showing people what I can do. I’m still writing my story.”
The story of Night Reign is that of an artist who trusts her intuition and leads with unwavering honesty, even on finely drawn, almost feather-light songs. “I feel like [the album] is in the perfect place,” she says.“It’s all the things I wanted it to be. It celebrates life, as opposed to the grief of the loss of life.” And however this evolved sound lands with listeners, Aftab is reminding herself of all that she’s accomplished — including that Grammy on the shelf. “You fucking did that, bitch,” she reminds herself. “So just chill out. Whatever it is that you’re doing, just keep doing that because it’s working.”
Night Reign is available now via Verve.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.