CQAF 2025

Declared “the coolest rock star in the world right now,” by UNCUT magazine, Arooj Aftab has earned her position at the vanguard of creative music for her embrace of risk and nonconformity.

In 2024, she released her fourth solo album, Night Reign (Verve), to universal acclaim, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Jazz Album, while the song “Raat Ki Rani” was tabbed for Best Global Music Performance. The album expands on the musical universe Aftab has created over the years. Night Reign features an all-star cast of musicians (Cautious Clay, Vijay Iyer, Elvis Costello, James Franceis, Moor Mother, Joel Ross), united beneath the steady, brilliant hand of the queen of the night.

As put by the Wall Street Journal, “[Night Reign’s] beauty is self-evident, and it stands on its own” which helps explain its inclusion across so many Best of 2024 album lists. Night Reign’s predecessor, Vulture Prince, ushered Aftab into the cultural zeitgeist, including a place on President Barack Obama’s Summer 2021 playlist. Recognition for the record propelled her to a Best New Artist Grammy nomination in 2022 and a win for the song “Mohabbat.”

The following year she collaborated with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily on a “masterclass in space,” the improvisational Love in Exile (Verve 2023), also Grammy nominated and winner of a 2023 Edison Jazz award.

Aftab spent her adolescent years in Lahore, Pakistan, the birthplace of her music-loving parents. Her viral cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at age 18 aided in her passage to study jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston, while Brooklyn, New York would be her next and most fertile workshop for creation of her genre-defying music.

Over the last few years, she has delivered “rapturous performances” at major venues and international festivals including Primavera, Glastonbury, Coachella, Le Guess Who? (which she curated), and both Newport and Montreal Jazz.

She has appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk, Later with Jools Holland, Brodie and Mahogany sessions. Aftab has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Financial Times, The Quietus, and Time, to name a few. She is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow and recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Music.

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