Arooj Aftab, the revered Pakistani singer and songwriter, blends jazz, poetry and pop genres to create her unclassifiable sound. Her music is informed by a meticulous layering of sound, thoughtful melodic arrangements and extended song structures. This is all showcased on her 2023 Grammy-nominated album, Love In Exile in collaboration with prominent New York jazz and experimental artists Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily. Aftab is preparing for the release of her new album in 2024, a direct follow-up to her 2021 breakthrough album Vulture Prince.

Ahead of her debut Australian tour, Aftab reflects on her work with Iyer and Ismaily, the influence of physical space on creativity, and what she’s anticipating for her performance of her breakthrough album Vulture Prince at Melbourne Recital Centre.

Jonah Orbach: Are you in Brooklyn now?

Arooj Aftab: Yeah, I am in Brooklyn. It’s really snowy, super cold and grey. At least there’s snow, because if it’s going to be this cold, it needs to at least look nice.

JO: You were on the road a lot last year and now that you're back home and it’s the start of the year, the Grammys are also coming up. What’s been keeping you busy?

AA: The year has started and is in full swing! The Grammys are in a week. We’re going to go to LA. My album is coming out in a month or two; I think it’s going to start rolling out in April. So just for the album release, things like shooting the music video and getting various bits and pieces of content that support the record, getting all those ducks in order, which I’m really excited about.

JO: Were you able to have any kind of time off after last year?

AA: Yeah, I went to a somewhat unknown place, yet to be touched by capitalism. It was this beach village in Brazil, and I was able to spend almost a month there just kind of chilling out, which was really nice.

JO: I wanted to ask about your process for writing music. Do you tend to sit on music, or is it a quicker, more reactive process?

AA: It’s hard to say because the process keeps changing depending on what’s going on and how the year is going. Last year there was a lot of touring, and so you’re on the road, you’re working and you're being inspired at the same time. My process is to just go with the flow and look for inspiration in whatever is happening to me and then kind of harvest the music as it is instead of trying to work it out in a more formal way.

JO: You kind of let things flow a bit more?

AA: Ideas are all around, right? I like that. I like the freedom of it. It’s scary because sometimes there’s no idea for a long time and you think, oh, shit. But so far, it's been okay. I keep collecting [ideas] and I have a nice knack for knowing which ones need to stay on the back burner and develop more and which ones need to be developed.

JO: How do you know if something is missing or when you’ve got to stop tinkering with something and call it quits?

AA: It’s hard. It’s a really hard balance. I mean, once the music feels like it’s past its incubator stage, as you said, I definitely put on a more precision-based hat and then polish it so that the songs are not just sort of ambient or a free jam. I fucking hate that shit. I need things to have a beginning, a middle and an end, and for it to take you through a cohesive story. That’s really important to me.

And then when things should stop being tinkered with, honestly, never. You can always keep fixing stuff. It’s something that you learn with time: how to stop yourself or walk away. Again, it’s not something that is formulaic and can be applied to each person. Some people really need to do that. I’ve seen creatives and I’ve seen musicians who need to be super immersed in the mixing, the engineering, and all the nitty-gritty, and they make a lot of changes. I kind of have to keep walking away. I have a more airy approach.

JO: There’s a quote from Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, that reads, “Hanging on to your work is like spending years writing the same entry in a diary.”

AA: His book is great. He’s saying all the right things. All of those things are true about the process. I’m glad someone collected them all and published them so that they’re there now.

JO: Is there something sonically that you tend to gravitate towards when you’re creating?

AA: I like music that has a lot of layers, with different musicians sharing parts that interlock, but when you listen to it, it doesn’t seem like a lot is going on. It is kind of a difficult thing to achieve when we live in a world where stuff is so overproduced. I try to make the music seem really easy on the ears, even though there’s all these secrets inside of it.

JO: What was it like to collaborate with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily on Love In Exile?

AA: It was extremely freeing to sing as an instrument and to have the confidence that whatever I do, they will have my back. Musically, they’re so good and they’re such good listeners. They’re really good improvisers. I mean, if you’re a good improviser, you could probably just play all over somebody, and that sucks. But they’re also really intense listeners and they know how to blend in with the moment and not noodle around. So, to play and tour with them all year and to do the record with them was really amazing because you could just jump as high as you wanted without the fear of falling because you knew that they would catch you. Every live show was improvised; nothing was learnt or written. We did, I don't even know, like, sixty shows that way, which is nuts, but it was great to do that. It made me more confident, and it made me feel freer. It made me a better leader, too.

JO: Playing with people in an improvisatory setting requires a lot of listening, which also requires a lot of trust. Did it take a while to build up that trust or did it happen straight away?

AA: I mean, that’s the whole origin story of the group: we just played one show together and the trust was all there and we were all on the same page musically. And that's why we had to do it again and again and again. And then we thought, there is something really special between the three of us and we should record it. And here we are, with two nominations and a whole year of touring! We have had a beautiful year together, with a lot of growth, exploration, surprising each other and getting closer.

JO: How important were the post-production stage and collaboration with Damon Whittemore in making this record?

AA: He was hugely instrumental, from the mixing to the layered tape loops that he put in. He totally understood what we were doing from a musical perspective without us having to say anything at all. He was offering this extra layer of processing, which was super fitting.

JO: Has collaboration always been a big part of your creative process?

AA: Yeah, I really think that we aren’t actually doing anything else. We are collaborating all the time, so it’s good to embrace that. I think it keeps things really exciting. I think it also puts importance on who you play with. It makes you build personal relationships with people, and it helps connect you to a community. I think collaboration is really just a deeper way of saying what’s already going on.

JO: I also wanted to ask you about the physical space of your music. Do you envisage your music living within any specific environment or landscape?

AA: I grew up in Saudi Arabia and was there for the first decade of my life. Being in a desert topography definitely influenced the way I think about music. I love gardens, I love flowers, and I like the cold. I do think that physical spaces translate into music. Everything really translates into music for me. I’m interpreting things that move me. I’m interpreting them into music all the time. Kind of like a neurotic thing. And not necessarily the geographical location, but the elemental aspect of places, of physical places, plays a role in how I write music.

JO: Did Saudi Arabia influence you in any other ways?

AA: Man, if that’s a link, it hasn’t been unpacked yet! Like I said, when I think about Saudi Arabia, I think about family. We spent a lot of time together as a family because you’re in a new place that’s kind of isolating. My parents never stopped being obsessed with music. I guess being close to them, in light of us not having a larger community to belong to, made me listen to a lot of the music they liked. And then, on the other hand, the desert topography is really beautiful, and you see this kind of subtle wealth in Saudi that is different from what you see in Dubai. There’s like Gucci and gold and all this elegance. You could see the most beautiful Arabian stallion with a guy who works at the palace while you’re going home or something. As a kid, I was seeing these glimpses of ancient tradition, strange beauty and weird restrictions that I’m only now unpacking and trying to find the beautiful parts of.

JO: I know we’ve touched on it briefly, but I wanted to officially congratulate you on your Grammy nomination! What is it like to be nominated and actually win a Grammy?

AA: Winning a Grammy definitely helps, and it feels pretty great. There is a larger music industry that acknowledges a Grammy win in a way that is interesting and also worth unpacking. It’s an accolade that holds weight in certain factions of the industry, like in the programming world, the label universe and that sort of thing. Amongst musicians, I’m not sure. We’re just pawns in the game. We’re just exploited. So, there are mixed feelings about what it means.

The competitive aspect of it is also kind of strange. I think everybody is making great music, and I think we are just going to have to keep doing that. Some people are making incredible music, have really successful careers, great tours, great album sales and they don’t have a Grammy. Then there’s someone like me who won a Grammy, had a breakthrough album after many years of making this delicate, beautiful music that did not reach a larger audience, and now it's doing well. And what I will say is that it's pretty awesome to win a Grammy. You should try to do it. I wouldn’t shun it, but I also wouldn't make it my goal. That’s definitely not what one should do.

JO: You’re playing at one of my favourite venues in Melbourne, the Recital Centre.  How excited are you to come back to performing Vulture Prince?

AA: I am super excited. We barely played Vulture Prince last year, so, I mean, hopefully we still know how to play it. In all of the Vulture Prince hype and the 200 shows and all of that, we didn’t go to Australia or New Zealand. I’m glad that it’s finally happening. March is my birthday month. It will be my birthday on the 11th, so I’m really excited to share Pisces season and Vulture Prince with you guys.

JO: Does it feel like a switch of gears coming back to Vulture Prince, or do you feel like you're now bringing something new?

AA: It’s good to end a chapter that wasn’t meant to be forever and return to Vulture Prince. It’s actually perfect timing because the new album is the Vulture Prince follow-up. So, it’s nice to perform the album one last time in its entirety. It will be nice to premiere it in a territory that hasn’t heard it live and then release the new album in April.

Arooj Aftab – Vulture Prince is on show at Melbourne Recital Centre March 8. Tickets available.

Arooj Aftab 2024 Australian Tour Dates

• Wednesday, March 6th: City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW
• Friday, March 8: Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne VIC
• Sunday, March 10 and Monday, March 11: WOMADelaide, Botanic Park/Tainmuntilla, Adelaide SA

Tickets via Arts Projects Australia