Fresh off of her historic Grammy win, the Brooklyn-based Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab has added another feather to her cap with a debut at the much-touted Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
She graced the California desert with a set that centered her melodious Urdu lyricism, a barrier-breaking move as she became the first Pakistani to play the prestigious festival.
For Aftab, the language barrier no longer exists.
Photo: AFP
“This is a door that’s opened,” she said.
The 37-year-old — who just released a cover of Spanish flamenco revisionist Rosalia’s Di Mi Nombre — sees a revolution in popular music, with artists sailing freely past genre and borders.
“There’s a movement happening in the music industry at large,” she told reporters on the grounds of Coachella, where she delivered a moving performance of her work that fuses ancient Sufi traditions with inflections of folk, jazz and minimalism.
“The audience and the musicians are creating music and the audiences are listening to music with a lot of freedom in their minds. Less genre-genre, less border-border,” she said. “It’s so free, and open, and really, really beautiful.”
She credits the Latinx community for making huge inroads in this respect, citing Rosalia along with Becky G, Karol G, J Balvin and Bad Bunny as influential in the transformation.
“The trap movement definitely changed the way listeners listen,” Aftab said, referring to the explosion of southern US hip-hop that later made its way into Latin America and fused with reggaeton.
The surge of Latin music on US airwaves and especially on streaming platforms “created a big opening in the minds of listeners in America,” she said. “They now listen to music that they don’t understand, and it’s fine. They love it. That’s a big step.”
Aftab said that opening has allowed her to feel more liberated with her own creations, putting out music based on emotions, without limitation.
“It’s a personal music,” she said. “It’s not ‘my country, my country’ — it’s global music. It’s everything that we feel, it’s all the people that we meet.
“Whatever makes my heart sing is in the music.”
With three studio albums, Aftab mere weeks ago made history in becoming the first Pakistani solo vocalist to nab a Grammy, winning for her song Mohabbat in the Best Global Performance category.
She was also nominated in the prestigious Best New Artist field — although that award went, as expected, to pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo.
However, Aftab is basking in the moment of recognition, savoring her career accolades as well as her two performance dates at the premier Coachella festival.
“It feels really amazing, it’s a high — it’s a high moment in my career,” the singer said. “I’ve been working towards this moment and imagining that this moment would come, or not.”
“And it did, which is miraculous,” she added.
She is also stoked to be back in front of live audiences, with Coachella returning after a three-year, COVID-19 pandemic-induced hiatus.
Featuring artists from all over the world, this year’s Coachella poster is a reflection of music’s’ globalization and genre fluidity.
For Aftab, that’s a big win: “This is a door that’s opened, for sure and I’m going to leave the door open, for sure.”
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
Young Chinese, many who fear age discrimination in their workplace after turning 35, are increasingly starting “one-person companies” that have artificial intelligence (AI) do most of the work. Smaller start-ups are already in vogue in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, with rapidly advancing AI tools seen as a welcome teammate even as they threaten layoffs at existing firms. More young people in China are subscribing to the model, as cities pledge millions of dollars in funding and rent subsidies for such ventures, in alignment with Beijing’s political goal of “technological self-reliance.” “The one-person company is a product of the AI era,” said Karen Dai
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS