Nine Songs: Arooj Aftab

More than that, it’s a word she often uses herself for the after-hours drama of her music, and the deep, “punch-you-in-the-gut” emotions that rumble through her songs. These are pieces, after all, that tend to move through mysterious landscapes of memory and longing, often with a dreamlike quality that brings to mind the melancholic, sensual cinema of auteurs like Wong Kar-wai and Céline Sciamma, and even Mati Diop, in the way she layers atmospheres of absence to form a sticky emotional residue.

Across her four solo albums to date, Aftab’s music has been the kind where silence and space carry almost as much meaning as the melodies, the kind of music where setting the songs to orchestra could feel like tipping the balance and risking it all. But, as the Pakistani American singer tells Best Fit over video call, the dare has paid off beautifully – at first with the Netherlands-based Metropole Orkest, led by conductor Jules Buckley, and now again with the London Contemporary Orchestra and conductor Robert Ames, with whom she is about to embark on a seven-date UK tour as part of venue collective Music Beyond Mainstream’s 25th anniversary celebrations.

“Playing with the orchestra is definitely leaning into the drama of the songs, and I love to stand in front of that,” she says. “It’s such a powerful feeling with the expansive sound and hearing all the little micro parts that exist in my music being played and being emphasised.”

What began as a collaboration at the 2023 edition of the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam developed into a Proms debut last year, with Buckley conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and then a six-date tour of The Netherlands in November debuting a full set with the Metropole Orkest. “Of course, it is really challenging to play with an orchestra,” she says. “There are a lot of cues, and you really have to stay on your toes for the whole 90 minutes or whatever, but it’s been really great.”

In terms of working up the orchestral arrangements, Aftab reports that the process has been surprisingly smooth, which she puts down to the nature of the writing lending itself to an orchestral score: “‘Bolo Na’ sounds great. ‘Raat Ki Rani’ sounds great. The songs have all just fit right in.”

For her performances with the LCO, which run from June 15–24, she’s excited to have worked up new arrangements for songs she hasn’t played in this way before. And if you’ve seen Aftab live in recent years, you’ll know it’s not a question of whether she can hold her own against a fuller sound. This is, after all, an artist who grew up on a diet of powerhouse singers, from iconic Sufi musician Abida Parveen to Chaka Khan and Whitney Houston, all of whom shaped her in one way or another.

Fittingly, her picks for Nine Songs are almost universally fronted by singers with otherworldly technical skills, capable of filling vast spaces without losing the intimacy at the core of their music. In that sense, what the list suggests is something already embedded in her artistic instincts, where larger and louder doesn’t have to feel less essential or revealing.

“I’m kind of over the whole minimalism and creating space thing,” she says, laughing. “I want to see what it would be like if I was more maximalist. Louder and more brazen, you know? That feels like it could be cool.”