Budding Talent: Arooj Aftab

Born in Ryadh, Saudi Arabia, Arooj Aftab was gifted with a captivating voice, that was nurtured in the arms of her music-loving parents. The family moved to Lahore, Pakistan for her education. At school she marveled the audience by showing her skills at the traditional Tabla. After completing her O-level from Convent of Jesus and Mary, Lahore, she decided to make the Guitar her signature style. She chose accounting and finance as her professional interests, but the love for music was never to die. During her A-level years at Lahore Grammar School, Arooj simultaneously took on line music classes offered by Berklee School of Music. Her song “Walking”, that she wrote at the age of fourteen, won the hearts of the jury of the college, and she won the first Steve Vai scholarships distributed by the college to a total of five candidates in year 2004.

Hence started her beautiful journey of music making, experimenting and engineering. Instead of her bedroom, boom-box, a couple of editing programs and home pc, she moved on to a real time studio with professional audio equipment. Along the way, she found perfect band members that shared the same dream: Brighu Sahni, Jorn Bielfeldt, Mario Carrillo, Stelios Michas and other friendly collaborators.

She wrote and composed melodious tracks that suited her soft personality. Her vision became clearer when merciless waters flooded her homeland in 2010, and sorrow-struck people were drowning in depths of despair. The patriotic voice inside her spoke out loud and she came up with a dutiful cause. For the purpose, she struck nostalgic cords for the people of the Green Land, to wind the clocks and take them back to an old chapter of their history. They had fought bravely against dark times, struggled out of chains of hopelessness and embraced enlightenment. They had built a country that earned the name “The Land of the Pure”. Thus her cause “Rebuild Pakistan” emerged as the voice of the Green Land in the US, and was devotedly supported by her band members. Now she is an internationally acclaimed Sufi singer, based in New York. Recently, Arooj Aftab has been mentioned in the top hundred composers under forty by NPR Music.

Arooj continues to enliven her heritage, re-singing old Pakistani numbers in her smooth, low voice, peppered with an air of acoustic instrumentation. She is indeed, by God's grace, on her way pursuing big dreams.

Her official website: www.aroojaftabmusic.com

Her youtube channel: www.youtube.com/rebuildpakistan

Her facebook page: www.facebook.com/aroojaftabmusic

(Images courtesy of www.aroojaftabmusic.com)