Known for her rapturous performances, Pakistani singer Abida Parveen is one of the most revered musicians in South Asian history. The 67-year-old is often referred to as the Queen of Sufi Music, a form of devotional Muslim poetry and song that pursues enlightenment via a deep, mystical relationship with God. So it takes a lot of guts to knock on Parveen’s door uninvited and proceed to partake in an impromptu singing session with her. In 2010, Arooj Aftab did just that.
Both musicians were scheduled to play the Sufi Music Festival in New York when Aftab tracked down Parveen’s hotel room number and made her move. Parveen recognized the then-25-year-old musician from a festival audition, welcomed her by grabbing her hand and giving her cookies, and eventually pulled out a harmonium so they could sing together. At one point, Aftab, who had just moved to New York City and was trying to find her footing, asked her hero, “What should I do with my life?” Parveen responded, “Listen to my albums.”
This story of fearlessness fits into Aftab’s description of herself as a rowdy rule-breaker who curses and drinks whiskey. As she sits in the hushed backyard of Brooklyn bar Lovers Rock on a blustery April afternoon, she is as likely to drop an errant F-bomb as she is to finely consider how her music redefines the cultural connotations of certain instruments. We start talking an hour before the bar opens—she lives close by and is a regular—and the sunlit haven is quiet enough to hear hanging plants rustle in the breeze. Aftab is wearing a green pinstripe blazer, T-shirt, and thick eyeliner. A beige, potentially dead, vine sprawls across the black fence behind her.
She’s quick to laugh heartily when sharing thoughts on contemporary Bollywood music or joking about how much South Asians love Kylie Minogue, but she’s also comfortable with silence, giving concise responses rather than filling the space with the personal minutiae or mundane half-formed observations that often dot conversations between strangers. When asked what she was like as a teenager, Aftab, now 36, quickly responds “the same” before pausing and then elaborating ever so slightly. “I was a little bit different from the rest. Being queer was a thing—everybody else was just so straight by default. But I was popular, I was very much in the hang, just making jokes and being a little sensitive.” She is especially careful to avoid imprecise or overgeneralized descriptions of her work and intentions, bristling at memories of being defined by anyone but herself. “I don’t want things to be too obvious” is a phrase she says often.
Aftab’s new album Vulture Prince honors and remagines centuries-old ghazals, a form of South Asian poetry and music that she grew up listening to with her family. The artform meditates on the intense longing caused by separation from God, and Aftab either sets this poetry to original music or entirely transforms existing songs, eschewing the frenetic South Asian instrumentation typical of the originals for minimalist orchestral arrangements. She is insistent that people not oversimplify or misunderstand her practice: “People ask, ‘Is this an interpolation? Is this song a cover?’ No, it’s not. It’s very difficult to do this, it has taken a lot of time and energy as a musician, so it’s not a fucking cover. I’m taking something that’s really old and pulling it into the now.”