Pakistan’s mellifluous singer Arooj Aftab has won a Grammy award for her popular “Mohabbat” rendition, becoming the first ever from the South Asian country to win the coveted distinction at a ceremony in Las Vagas.
Arooj’s soothing rendition of poet Hafeez Hoshiarpuri’s ghazal, a poetic form in Urdu, “Mohabbat Karne Wale Kam Na Honge…” won her Grammy award in the Best Global Performance category.
The singer, 37, expressed her delight in the achievement, saying she felt beyond thrilled.
“I think I’m gonna faint. Vow, thank you so much. I feel like this category in itself has been so insane like Burna Boy, Wizkid, Femi Kuti, Angélique Kidjo…”
She was also nominated in the Best New Artist category, but that honor went to singer Olivia Rodrigo.
Born to Pakistani parents in Saudi Arabia, Arooj moved to the United States in 2005 to study music at the Berklee College of Music. She released her first album Bird Under Water in 2014.
Before landing in Boston, Arooj spent her teenage years in Lahore where she learned to play the guitar in autodidact and gradually acquired her singing style while listening, among others, to Billie Holiday, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Mariah Carey, and Begum Akhtar.
In her early years, Arooj promoted her music in Pakistan, being one of the first musicians to use the Internet in the early 2000s. Soon her renditions of “Mera Pyaar” and “Hallelujah” went viral and launched the Pakistani indie scene.
She pursued production and engineering at the prestigious Berklee School of Music.
Her work is characterized as calming and has been hailed for its “healing” effect. She has described her work as the neo-Sufi musical form, which infuses Sufi traditions with inflections of folk, jazz, and minimalism.
In 2012, she performed at a concert organized by the Asia Society of New York where Pakistan’s living legend Arif Lohar also sang the popular Sufi song “Alif Allah Chambey di Booti”.
The released her third studio album Vulture Prince shot Arooj to critical acclaim. Former US President Barack Obama included her track “Mohabbat” on his 2021 summer favorites list.
Arooj has performed at a number of major New York venues including Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, also opening for Mitski at The Brooklyn Steel in 2018.
