Arooj Aftab, a Pakistani singer, received her first Grammy on Sunday for Best Global Music Performance for her song Mohabbat, making her the first Pakistani woman to get one of the coveted golden gramophones.

She edged out Yo-Yo Ma, Wizkid, and Burna Boy to win in a category Aftab characterised as “crazy.”

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When winning the honour, the 36-year-old exclaimed, “I think I’m going to faint. Wow, thank you so much. I feel like this category in and of itself has been so insane. Burna Boy, Wizkid, Femi Kuti, Angelique Kidjo — should this be called Best World Music Performance? I feel like it should be called ‘yacht party category’. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me make this record, ” she continued. “All my incredible collaborators, for following me and making this music I made about everything that broke me and put me back together. Thank you for listening to it and making it yours.”

At the 64th Grammy Awards, Aftab was nominated for Best New Artist but lost to Olivia Rodrigo.

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Aftab, who was born in Pakistan‘s second-biggest city of Lahore, travelled to the United States in 2005 to study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. She now resides in Brooklyn and self-released her debut album, Bird Under Water, in 2015, to tremendous acclaim.

She described her style as “neo-Sufi,” a blend of jazz and Sufi music performed to Urdu lyrics, and she followed up that success with her second album, Siren Islands, in 2018. The album was listed in the New York Times’ list of the 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2018, with writer Seth Colter Walls describing it as “certainly one of my favourite albums from the first half of this year.”

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Mohabbat is from Aftab’s third album, Vulture Prince, which was released in April and was included on former US President Barack Obama‘s summer playlist for 2021. The album, which was dedicated to her late younger brother, Maher, has been hailed for its passion and simplicity.

Pitchfork called it a “heartbreaking, magnificent account of the path from bereavement to acceptance.”

According to the magazine, Aftab “transforms it into a slow-burn exploration of the pain of separation” on Mohabbat, the album’s “centrepiece.”

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“Aftab sings, her voice afloat in grief so expansive that it seems to encompass the world, and whatever realms lie beyond.”

In an interview with NPR, Aftab described her latest album as “extremely pertinent” for the times.

“The way things have been unfolding, it’s just madness. It’s crazy, and it almost sometimes feels like it’s too much,” she said. 

“And I think that’s really the direction I threw myself in when we pivoted on Vulture Prince – and how it’s come out now and the time that it’s coming out. I think there’s a way for artists to say something with their work that is not always very direct. It’s not always like social activism, but it is, you know, in its subtlety and its grace. It can just be there very unimposingly. And I think, Vulture Prince, by design, I intended for it to have a lot of those elements in it.”