Revealed in 2021 thanks to Vulture Prince which she presented on stage the following year at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (FIJM), singer-songwriter Arooj Aftab offers us a sumptuous suite, Night Reign, on the theme of the night, fertile in sensations. “We sleep there or we party, but for me who spent the last three years of my life on the road giving concerts every evening, it is a source of very different emotions,” says the musician, in the voice silky and with an abundant musical vision.
“You don’t mind if I don’t turn on the video camera?” » asks Arooj. It’s still early at home in Brooklyn, where The duty joins it. Maybe she also had a rough night? “My dreams have been anxious lately since the album is coming out soon,” she tells us. The last one was rather hectic, I don’t think I can sleep well these days…”
In any case, the nights that the musician, born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents, sings on Night Reign are clearly peaceful, woven with jazz and folk dreams, joined by the influence of chamber music, experimental pop and the music of its roots. “But are they really peaceful? » says the musician of Pakistani origin, smirking.
“ Your head gets heavy and rests on my shoulder / ’cause you drink to much whiskey when you’re with me “, sings Arooj on Whiskey, the penultimate song of the album, the voice bathed in the sound of his collaborator Maeve Gilchrist’s harp and a shower of synthesizer notes. The groove that is established has a shape, but no clear identity; it could be a ballad by Joni Mitchell or even the translation, into English, of a romantic and alcoholic ghazal: “ We’ll fade into the night / On waves of your perfume / I’m drunk and you’re insane / Tell me how we will get home », she sings again.
“The music as well as the theme of the album are not all based on my experience of New York nights”, which one easily imagines to be more lively, Arooj nuance. “In recent years, I was constantly on tour, so rarely at home; so when I return to Brooklyn, I spend my evenings decompressing and resting. I imagine you can hear that in some songs. »
Indeed, but even better: there is, in these evanescent melodies, a light piercing his nights, chasing away above all the mourning of his brother, a theme at the heart of Vulture Prince. “Yeah… Well, everything seems sad to me these days,” she says without naming the wars that are raging. “But, at the same time, this album is the sequel. Life after mourning, the realization that sadness is part of the celebrations of our lives. »
Fantasy
Arooj Aftab went from shadow to light thanks to Vulture Prince and his song Mohabbat, which earned her the Grammy in the new Best Global Music Performance category — she became the first musician of Pakistani origin to win such an honor. Since then, his diary has been blackened with commitment dates; solo, she has performed on the biggest stages in the world, from the Coachella festival to the Glastonbury festival, where she will return again on June 29 — which practically makes her a pop star, we suggest. . “There, I guess I’m making popular music now!” » she retorts, happy to see that her music reaches a large audience.
His last visit to Montreal, last summer at the FIJM, was to present the project Love in Exile, the trio she forms with composer and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. Both participated in the recording of Night Reignbut there ends the influence that this project had on the musical style of this new album, “which builds on what I built with Vulture Prince », underlines its creator.
Thus, the piano is clearly more present on this album, not only on the minimalist Saaqi, on which Iyer runs. Another innovation in Arooj Aftab’s sound: the presence of percussive instruments. They stretch his recovery of Dead leaves by Prévert and Kosma, a song that has become a jazz standard in its translation (Autumn Leaves) signed Johnny Mercer and popularized by giants such as Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley.
Later on the album, the percussion provides rigid support for the sinuous vocal melody of Raat Ki Rani, on which, oh sacrilege! Arooj Aftab makes use of the infamous studio effect autotune. She joked on the subject in the interviews she gave in the wake of this new album, but frankly, the usage is subtle — and makes her voice sound like Sade’s!
“It’s funny, several people have said that to me too,” says Arooj. I take it as a compliment, since Sade influenced almost all the pop music released after her. […] As for theautotuneit adds a little more modernity, and that’s the fun. It breaks the serious image of my music, you see? I sometimes have the impression that people who listen to me say that I make serious music, so theautotune adds a little fantasy. »
Poet and warrior
All the charm of her work comes from her voice, soft and calm, even when anger keeps her on the dark side. Bolo Na, duo with African-American poet, musician and activist Moor Mother. “I don’t know if it’s me who sounds angry on this song, but the feeling is there,” she comments. The frustration, the feeling of being abandoned by those who had promised to be there for us and to fix things that are going wrong. »
The world is lacking leaders, upright and inspiring people, like Mah Laqa Bai, “a figure that I am still discovering, although I have been interested in his story and his writings for eight years already,” says Arooj, who cherishes the dream of devoting a complete album to the texts of the 18th century Urdu poete century, who was also a warrior and politician. Two of his texts, Na Gul And Saaqiwere put to music on this album.
“Mah Laqa Bai exists in the forgotten corners of history, but in truth, little is still known about her. She was the first woman to publish a collection of poems in Urdu, so she is very important, for our culture, but also for the feminist movement. Even if we only know the surface of her own story, we know that she was a guardian of culture, coming from a world where painting, dance and music were important. Plus, she was a warrior and a political advisor, amazing, right? Her name, Mah Laqa Bai, could be translated as “queen of the moon”. »