It sounds like the irrational confidence has served you well. The stakes are so high, you can't afford to be mediocre at the thing that you want to do. You have to do some- thing really incredible. You have to be very serious. What are the lessons from Berklee that still stick with you? Berklee unlocked the language that I needed to communicate with myself, my own ideas, and the world of music inside of my head. It allowed me to put my hands on physical things and put my voice in the right places to really get it out of my body. And just incredible moments, also. That's where I met Jamey Haddad [’73]. That's where I met espe- ranza spalding [BM ’05 ’18H]. That's where I ran into Meshell Ndegeocello in a hallway. Our [opening] concert was Lalah Hathaway [’90 ’22H]. That's where I shook Zakir Hussain's [’19H] hand, because I knew the back door of the BPC. There's so many of these moments that happened at Berklee that unlocked this musicianship and this excitement for music. All these moments and all these people that I met—these were also teaching/mentorship moments, to be like, "Oh my God, I can do this." This is a thing, this is a lifestyle, this is a community. How did you know you wanted to produce as well as perform? I wanted to have the power, and the control, and the knowledge, because the worst thing ever is to just be the female singer in the room, and it's just, like, dude-broing all over the place, and you don't really know how to articulate what you want. That for me is the biggest heart-sinking anxiety moment. And it would happen a lot, because the patriarchy is alive and well, especially in music, even today. And I am a nerd. I like to plug things in, and I like to fiddle with knobs, and I like to play video games. . . . So that interest was already there. At some point I was just like, "Can you please get out of my way so that I can just set this up the way I want to and be able to hear the things the way I want to hear them?" You also worked on an Emmy-winning documen- tary. How did you get into film editing work, and what did you learn from that part of your career? If you know audio software, switching to a video software is very easy, 'cause it's all kind of the same thing. . . . So if you, on top of that, have a good sense of rhythm, because you come from a music background, then you can become a really great video editor. . . . That's what happened to me. When I moved to New York, all the recording studios were closing. . . . All the video content was moving online, so there was so much work in these post-production houses to edit these videos, edit documentary films.
"I make the music that I want to hear that I can't find anywhere."
AROOJ AFTAB PERFORMS AT ROUNDHOUSE IN LONDON. Photo by Patrick Gunning
Can you talk about your journey from Berklee Online to Berklee's campus in Boston? I finished high school, and then really wanted to study music . . . [but] there was a bit of confusion around: What is an education in music? What does it mean? What does a contemporary education look like? I was really into production and engi- neering as well. I had not studied music theory. I didn't even have piano lessons. And then I saw the Berklee curriculum and I was like, well this is definitely the place. They have all the things that I want to learn. But . . . I couldn't pay the tuition. It's mirac- ulous when I think about it. I said, "Let me apply to this." And simultaneously, [Berklee Online] had just put out this small scholarship program. I applied to it and I got that. Then I was able to take five courses—that gave me a year to study music theory and Keyboard 101 and just gain a little bit of a base, and to understand what this even is—organized music education, and a bachelor's degree, and this opportunity to meet musicians from all over the world, and to study jazz [and] the history of music. To pursue music in a place that has the infrastructure for it.
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