Raat Ki Rani — Arooj Aftab
#365Songs: April 30th
My 365 Songs counterparts, Jay and Chris, didn’t just demand a Theme Week, they attempted to strong-arm me into writing about ’60s novelty songs — think “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah” and “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight.” Wrong writer, wrong time, absolutely not happening. But I will honor the Theme Week request and only write about songs released in 2024. To celebrate new music with hopes of introducing you fabulous readers to a new artist, fresh songs, or an unhinged, meandering take on modern culture. So let’s get this started.
I love Sade. A LOT. A few years ago I wrote about how she’s the great uniter, a musician whose music seems to bridge all our differences as a sexy, breezy place to land together — out of breath, alive, feeling things. There are imitations, but only one Sade. I’ll leave that there, and come back to her another day with a different song and a moodier theme. But I do, as always, have a point.
I first discovered Arooj Aftab a few years ago, probably late at night during a melancholic sad songs binge. I recall loving her immediately, finding her sound so fresh but with elements that call to other admirable artists. Born and raised in Pakistan, you can’t mistake her South Asian roots, but she fuses other parts of her lived experiences and influences into beautifully composed songs.
There’s something soothing to her music, a late-night companion whispering in your ear while you’re processing a long day, a long life. It’s light, yet dark, uplifting yet haunting. That feeling of wandering into a new place, alone, hints of a language you don’t speak off in the distance. You’re not home, but you’re also not not home. It feels familiar yet disorienting, as if you’ve landed in someone else’s interpretation of your life.
Raat ki raani aatay hi chhaa gayi
Pata tha yeh ho ga lekin phir bhi…
Raat ki raani aatay hi chhaa gayi
Pata tha yeh ho ga lekin phir bhi
Chamakti nigaaho’n ka hua kaafi saamnaa
Behel jaau’n isee may’n, itnaa hai kaafi
Raat ki raani aatay hi chhaa gayi
Pata tha yeh ho ga lekin phir bhi…
This is the music that moves me, that tucks me in, awakens me with a yearning for past lives I can’t quite grasp. Aftab’s new song, Raat Ki Rani, feels like saudade, my favorite word in any language — ”a melancholic nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened, that can perhaps never happen again.” The writer Manuel de Melo defined saudade as, “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”
Damn. Yes. That the one. It’s me! In a word! Isn’t that life, though: a pleasure I suffer, an ailment I enjoy?
Raat Ki Rani also feels like a Pakistani’s interpretation of Portuguese Fado, a sound crafted with deep melancholy and existential yearning, the saddest music in the world filtered through a dream. This song makes me miss travel, the feeling of being out of myself, somewhere I don’t quite belong that calls me to explore, an innate nomadic desire to search with no destination in mind. The true beauty of travel is not comfort, but discomfort, the feeling of growth through new experience, a fresh perspective only an outsider can understand.
The brilliant philosopher Alain de Botton wrote in The Art of Travel, “What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.”
This feeling resides in Aftab’s Sade-infused breathy vocals, in a language I feel but can’t understand, through the piano, harp, and syncopated drums that hypnotize me.
My favorite art transports me to places and feelings, introduces me to characters I can’t be, conjures meaning to experiences I couldn’t otherwise comprehend, sends me to parts of my mind as foreign and faraway as long-gone cultures.
The Queen of The Night beguiled as she arrived
It was anticipated, but still…
The Queen of The Night beguiled as she arrived
It was anticipated, but still
The shining gazes were encountered abundantly
It is enough that I become inflicted in this
~
Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!
