Arooj Aftab

also up for best global album i think.

she's on my year-end list, great album

same

vinyl just went up on bandcamp i guess... last batches sold fast

yeah you gotta be careful where and when you put it on haha

it’s firmly a “don’t drive with this” album for me, along with prefab sprout’s i trawl the megahertz

― bezos did the dub (voodoo chili), Wednesday, July 21, 2021 6:17 AM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

off topic but i find this comment funny because I actually associate I Trawl the Megahertz with driving (specifically, during the first wave of the pandemic, when it felt like the world was collapsing)

anyways, just listened to this record and it's indeed lovely

yeah it's def one of my favorites this year, I can listen forever

Me too, discovered through this thread in April. Haven't come across any mention of it anywhere else.

This album is great, I'm so behind keeping up with stuff, so ... thanks Grammys?

not sure why mohabbat seems to be considered the standout on this record.

meanwhile, saans lo has to be one of the most transcendental songs I've heard in years. the production and instrumentation on it remind me a lot of the title track from jim o'rourke's eureka

I agree it's not an obvious standout

believe "Last Night" was the lead single

I think it's just that Mohabbat's finger picking give it pace and a familiarity to a western audience. Saans Lo is gorgeous but works better as an album track than "the one" to represent her to a new listener.

i'm on a serious Arooj Aftab and Myriam Gendron kick.

who else sounds like them? long, slow, gorgeous songs ... language doesn't matter.

looking forward to seeing her at Coachella! one of my favorite discoveries on the lineup.

if you want arooj adjacent stuff (at least geographically) this is a festival my buddy did and it's packed with good artists
https://www.habibi-festival.com/

who else sounds like them? long, slow, gorgeous songs ... language doesn't matter.

first Sharon Van Etten album
julie doiron's desormais
maybe Sandro Perri's Tiny Mirrors
Ian William Craig - A Turn Of Breath
first couple Weather Station albums
Agnes Obel maybe

Qareeb (1987) by Najma

o yes corrs I think your suggestion is relevant as hell. Also don't miss the earlier music on Arooj's Bandcamp.

Mahsa Vahdat albums plus her duet one with now late blues-soul singer Mighty Sam MMcClain

nice will check

xp thanks dow, yeah that's a real gem

Bonus track with Anoushka Shankar which will be on the Deluxe edition of Vulture Prince
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibDff_3V_5E
Udhero Na

Arooj describes it as a track dearest to her heart, written in 2005 and never released. It translates to "Please undo" and refers to the "fleeting emotional moment when the thought of someone from a very old and ‘passed’ relationship just pops into your head”.

Maybe everyone knew that song already, but I listened to it again in the bath two days ago after a full day in bed nursing what proved to be not the flu but an infection, and thinking of the dear friend I lost three weeks ago, and it was stunningly beautiful and appropriate for grief, it resonated on the wall and slowed down time and brought the introspective outside.

bought a couple tracks on bandcamp today and included a message asking what her set time will be at coachella :) i'm sure it will be early in the day but we'll see.

She was nominated for best new artist Grammy, but just lost to Olivia Rodrigo

Maaan---not surprising of course, but

I thought it was just cool that they showed her! Very clearly!

Arooj won Best Global Music Performance. best in the world!!! they had to give Olivia something

A highly competitive category, full of highly respected legendary nominees. I am humbled and grateful for this win. Making a deeply personal and crossover music, in Urdu, and being seen for it… feels like a breakthrough. thank you AND congratulations ❤️ pic.twitter.com/FXyth4w9hK

— arooj aftab (@arooj_aftab) April 5, 2022

Arooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooj

She and her band were fantastic at Big Ears, even as an already-fan I was impressed.

i'm on a serious Arooj Aftab and Myriam Gendron kick.

who else sounds like them? long, slow, gorgeous songs ... language doesn't matter.

― alpine static, Thursday, February 17, 2022 8:41 PM (one month ago)

Julie Byrne! Don't know how I didn't make that connection earlier.

what is Julie Byrne up to, for pete's sake

not to take away from Arooj ... super stoked for her, and that tweet is awesome

Congratulations to the sensational @arooj_aftab on being the first Pakistani singer to win a Grammy.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/XFWPGKK1il

— Jemima Goldsmith (@Jemima_Khan) April 5, 2022

Anyone in Chicago want 2 tix for tonight's show? Happy to give them away. Wife got COVID and hate for them to go to waste.

Anyone see a show? Going up to Toronto the week and excited to catch her... at what seems to be the only non festival gig she's got booked.

I saw her live last month in a wonderful setting: a church in Amsterdam on a fully light summer evening. It was just her and two instrumentalists: Maeve Gilchrist on celtic harp and Petros Klampanis on double bass. Both play on some of the tracks of Vulture Prince, but here they carried all of the music, and it was sensational.

https://www.festivalinfo.nl/img/review/big/7848/7uhske9pwbnhlap3ty.jpg

I had expected a chamber music kind of performance, similar to her recent-ish Tiny Desk concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUYJ8_tBSSQ

…and I would have been totally fine with that, but it was nothing of the kind.
It would have been wonderful to hear Arooj sing live within any setup, her voice is amazing, but this bass-harp combo gave an extra dimension to her sound: it added grit and earthiness to the ethereal, making things so much more dynamic. It wasn’t just the bass that did this, mind, it was the interplay. harp and bass were rocking and rolling together, throbbing, percussive, droning - at one point it felt like they were taking off into the stratosphere and carrying us along with them. All the while, Arooj was treating herself to red wine and the audience to red roses. A mesmerizing experience.

This is the same setup, at a (Dutch) festival last October, but here the two instrumentalists are much more restrained still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPRuWiI2ZPQ

She seems to perform in ever-changing formations tho - clips from other recent performances show her with bass and guitar (at Sintra’s Palácio da Pena - speaking of amazing locations!) and guitar and violin (at Glastonbury).

saw her at Roskilde Festival, wonderful set, Gyan Riley on guitar (doing some wonderful flamenco type shredding) and Petros Klampanis on double bass

kind of a weird stage presence, she insisted on us not taking things too seriously

Woah, didn't even know she was touring... looks like Toronto show is sold out... have fun!

super excited to be seeing her in Montreal tomorrow night!

she insisted on us not taking things too seriously

She was genuinely stunning last night. Her voice is incredible—the album doesn't quite do it justice really. Reminded me that when I played Vulture Prince for my partner her first reaction was "you have to see this kind of music live" (meaning, more or less, qawwali/ghazals), and she was right!

The lineup was Gyan Riley on guitar and for one song some kind of electric...idk, something in the sitar family tree (which I wouldn't have minded hearing more of), and Darian Donovan Thomas on violin, which he also made sound like a synth sometimes. Sounds like the same as Glastonbury. They were both great, though if I had to complain about anything, Riley got a bit more of the spotlight than necessary I felt, a few times I got itchy waiting for Aftab to sing again while he soloed. She has a dryly funny stage presence too

Toronto had those 2 guys and Maeve Gilchrist on harp, too. Great set. The audience was extra hott though - big reactions for every single solo. Neat to see her in a 600 capacity club... wonder if that'll be happening much more, now signed to a bigger label and whatnot.

Wow---makes me wonder how far into a fairly high-profile Western Hemisphere career/possible stardom Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan might have gone, if he'd lived longer---she's got the advantage of (pretty much, of not altogether) starting her career in the West, in Brooklyn, I take it, and her (pretty much, if not altogether) Western Hemisphere line-ups are of her own choosing, it seems, dunno how much choice Khan had in recording with Michael Brook and so on, although there were several collections of the uncut, prewesternized voyages in the 90s: Shanachie's Greatest Hits, for example, and their wilder release, Intoxicated Spirit omg. I dunno about the Real World stuff, never listened much, but remember liking his cut w Eddie Vedder(!) in the midst of Dead Man Walking onscreen, however it may have fared on the soundtrack album. Devotional and Love Songs and Rapture had some okay Western sounds; there was maybe just one rock-ish track on the latter.

Riley got a bit more of the spotlight than necessary I felt, a few times I got itchy waiting for Aftab to sing again while he soloed

have to agree, good as he was

some kind of electric...idk, something in the sitar family tree

I also wonder what it was, here's a bad photo I took, maybe someone can help identify the instrument:

https://i.imgur.com/PuMCQcW.png

Ooh that is actually cooler looker than I realized in a dark & neon-lit club (Aftab made fun of the lighting at one point; I felt kind of bad for the tech, but they were pulling out all the stops to an absurd degree).

Still not sure what it is--I said "sitar family" because iirc it made a sustained, droning noise rather than a something more lute-like. It could be a really simplified veena maybe? I can't remember what his hands were doing while playing it though

I saw her last night in Ljubljana. Beautiful music, crystal clear sound. She could tone down the between-song banter a bit, which I felt broke the spell at times. By all means talk to the audience but I found some of her anecdotes rambling and not as funny as she thought they were. I just wanted them to get on with the music. Wonderful musicians [guitar & violin] + voice, though, obviously.

lol i loved her banter but can see what you mean

I like the idea, as mentioned on here upthread, that she likes to put her audience at ease. But some of her gags and stories were just lame or didn't hit their targets. Oh well, sorry to dwell on that aspect because it was otherwise a very special gig.

I do agree it doesn't really benefit the music

maybe some of it is nervousness

but the music's so good it doesn't really matter

Here's a brief interview with her in this 'culture news' report on Slovenian TV, in which she comes across really well: https://4d.rtvslo.si/arhiv/kultura/174891899 [I'm in the background briefly!]

I love what she says about connecting with the music even though you don't understand the language. I love the idea of someone singing with gentle power in (what is to me) a completely unknown language.

I see what you mean, giraffe, but I saw her last Saturday in Katowice and personally didn't mind her stage banter at all (though she didn't really tell actual anecdotes, more just was vibing with the energy in the room).

TBH it did initially take me out of it to see her being this down-to-earth chill performer pouring herself wine on stage, joking, and taking a selfie video with the audience but I suppose it was only because I had no reference point—I had never seen or heard her speak before, only listened to Vulture Prince a lot since last year, and probably subconsciously projected the heavy emotions in the songs onto the person behind them. So maybe I half-expected a solemn mystic singing behind a haze of smoke—but that's obviously on me!

Actually, now that I think about it, her warmth and laidback attitutde provided a nice counterpoint to the gut punches served repeatedly in the songs (the performance of the actual music was absolutely top notch). She seemed genuinely lovely and like a cool person to hang out with, her band members (Gyan Riley on guitar and Darius Donovan Thomas on violin) too.

directed by Tessa Thompson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLE-B7_bSSw

this is the single and yeah it is very much giving sade vibes, i love it

gorgeous song and video

New album Night Reign coming May 31. Moor Mother guests on a track