Spotlight On: AROOJ AFTAB

ABOUT this week’s podcast guest + radio hour featured interview:

This week’s guest is a songwriter, singer, producer, engineer, and visionary. Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents, Arooj Aftab spent her teenage years in Lahore, Pakistan. She became obsessed with jazz and folk music and taught herself guitar. From an early age, Arooj Aftab’s love for music and her desire to find a sound of her own has been a driving force that brought her to the states to study jazz, composition and engineering at Berklee College of Music, then on to New York City, where she cut her teeth scoring and editing films. Her first album, Bird Under Water, was independently released in 2014, followed by her critically hailed electronic album, Siren Islands, in 2018. It was her third album, 2021’s Vulture Prince, that changed everything. When we last caught up with Arooj Aftab in 2022, she was up for two Grammy nominations; Best New Artist and Best Global Music Performance for her song Mohabbat, which she won. Just two years later, Arooj has five nominations to her name, including two for her collaborative album Love In Exile. Arooj’s music defies categorization. She has called what she does “global soul”, and she has evolved her work to fuse a huge range of musical influences from her life, with lyrics that are sometimes her own, sometime ancient Islamic poetry, and now on her fourth solo album, Night Reign, Arooj Aftab has stretched out even further with her writing and collaborations - yet another gorgeous world she has built and invited us into. I’m thrilled to welcome back Arooj Aftab as this week’s SHERO in the Spotlight.