Arooj Aftabs Mohabbat Gets Presidential Nod The singer-songwriters track was listed on former President Barack Obamas 2021 summer playlist.
By
Kimberly Ashton
July 14, 2021
Arooj Aftab B.M. 10
Image courtesy of the artist
When Arooj Aftab B.M. '10 woke up Saturday morning, she knew something big, something good, had happened, but she wasn't sure what it was.
My phone was completely blowing up and I was just getting a lot of text messages, and my Instagram was looking crazy, like hundreds of new followers and being tagged everywhere, and I was like What is going on?' Aftab, a singer and composer, said from her Brooklyn home.
Something like this had happened in May, when Pitchfork wrote about her, and again that month when Time magazine named her song Mohabbat as one of the seven best of 2021, and on Saturday, the song made another prominent list. President Barack Obama put it on his 38-track summer playlist. Its release has become an annual event, certifying the season's coolest tunes.
Mohabbat, a meditative song about love and letting go, is the fifth of seven tracks on Aftab's new album, Vulture Prince. The record is her third since graduating from Berklee in 2010 with a double major in jazz composition and music production and engineering.
We caught up with Aftab after the playlist's release to talk about that momentous morning, her music, and her Berklee years. Below is an edited version of that conversation.
Congratulations on making Obama's playlist. What was your reaction when you heard the news? Aftab: Just, you know, gratitude. Its quite a big cosign. The album has been out since March and its just been doing so well, its been being received so well. This felt like another kind of affirmation. I felt very grateful and very humbled by it.
[Obama] is iconic and getting that recognition from him really does mean a lot . The fact that he put it on that list, with all those other different artists, made me feel really good about the fact that...if you make something good you will be rewarded for it, or merit can get you far. It kind of reassured me that good music will still be recognized and heard whether its being super-represented or not.
I feel like that really broke that ceiling for me. Its similar when Time put out their favorite songs of this year and its like Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo, Cardi B, and me. It's like, what is this list, how is that? So it's nice. It feels really good. People are really loving this song. It's speaking to people on a really wide and surprising level, which feels great.
Obama's list is not just a collection of his favorite songs, but a playlist. What do you think about it being in between Joni Mitchell's Coyote and Erykah Badu's Didn't Cha Know ? I do think that they flow together. I think they did a good job with the placement of it. There was some musical intention there, even in the order, which feels like its not just some random hype list. Knowing Obamas style, that's kind of how he rolls. Theres more to it than just what meets the eye. Theres just this attention to detail when he puts out stuff about arts and culture.
It means a lot to me personally that he included me on there, because I think that often doesnt happen, because Im a Pakistani American, brown, queer, female artist, and in so many ways that kind of puts you aside from from the main story a lot of the time. I just feel like hes really cool to do that. Maybe Im reading too much into it, maybe he just likes the song or whatever, but I think that theres a lot of meaning there in putting me on that list.
Mohabbat means love in Urdu. What is this song about? The poetry was written in the 1920s by Hafeez Hoshiarpuri, and it's kind of like a jazz standard. A lot of different musicians have done iterations of this, let's say, standard.
Mohabbat
Seeing how you have ample lovers around you, I will not be one of them.
This is sad, as I love you the most. The sadness of this is equal to the sadness of all the world.
And were there not this one sadness, how much happiness would there be in this world.
And even if I do somehow get to be one of your lovers, the sadness of my time spent in separation from you will be all that consumes me.
I will not be one of those lovers to you.
-Translation by Arooj Aftab
The poetry itself is really beautiful and appeals to a lot of different circumstances. It says the world will continue to love you and you will have an endless amount of lovers, but I wont be one of them. It also says the sadness of not being able to love you is equivalent to all the sadness that exists in the world, so its kind of dramatic and kind of soulful. It's very sweet. Its not someone angry or annoyed. Its kind of like a passing on, a moving on, a closure song.
Why were you drawn to this poem? Because of the way that its written so simply and so beautifully so I really always found this poetry fitting into my life in different moments, so Ive always really loved this poem.
Theres recordings of me playing it live from like 2011, so like its been in my repertoire for many years, and Ive just kind of been slowly but surely figuring out how exactly I want it to be recorded.
You've said that part of what gave rise to the album this song is on, Vulture Prince, was the death of your brother (in 2018). His passing is now in everything that I do, in a subtle way, which is also good because thats kind of what you should be doing when something like this happens. You have to make it part of your day-to-day, as opposed to thinking of it as an isolated incident and trying to get over it. I think that the sentiment of his passing is in the entire album but, yeah, it's also very much in this song.
Listen to Mohabbat:
Did you write the music for this version of Mohabbat ?
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Arooj Aftabs Mohabbat Gets Presidential Nod The singer-songwriters track was listed on former President Barack Obamas 2021 summer playlist. 
