Arooj Aftab’s life has been one of movement: from country to country and through musical styles, which reached a peak when her sublime, spiritually calming song Mohabbat picked up Best Global Music Performance at the 2022 Grammys.
At 38, New York-based Aftab has come a long way from playing Oasis’s Wonderwall for friends at high school in Lahore to having Mohabbat on Barack Obama’s 2021 summer playlist. The song came from her hypnotic Vulture Prince album, which is mostly in Urdu but included a subtle reggae groove on the English-language Last Night, based on a poem by the Persian Sufi poet Rumi.
The album –on numerous “best-of 2021” lists, including the –won her Pakistan’s prestigious Pride of Performance award.
