Arooj Aftab, Shahzad Ismaily, and Vijay Iyer on Love in Exile
When musicians as singularly virtuosic and acclaimed as Arooj Aftab, Shahzad Ismaily, and Vijay Iyer are come together to merge their talents, it can often be a challenge to produce something whose sum is greater than its already enormous parts. Yet the group’s transcendent, self-titled debut, Love in Exile, accomplishes exactly that.
Recorded live, the album is a practiced study in deep, patient listening and its profound effects. Aftab’s characteristically hypnotic vocals thoughtfully apply a series of Urdu couplets throughout Ismaily and Iyer’s carefully paced piano, synthesizer, and bass instrumentations. Preferring the phrase “live composition” to “improvisation,” Aftab, Ismaily, and Iyer masterfully craft an ever-evolving sonic world of tension and space; in many ways, Love in Exile is a maximal group of minimalists.
Steeped in the musical traditions of South Asia, West Africa, and Black American jazz, as a pianist and composer, Iyer has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award to name just a small few of his many accolades. He has been called “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by Pitchfork. Meanwhile, the New York Times recently deemed multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, “one of music’s most coveted collaborators,” having played on or produced almost 400 records in the last 20 years. Among his long list of collaborators are Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Beth Orton, Colin Stetson, Ben Frost, Bonnie Prince Billy, Damien Rice, and Jolie Holland (again, to name a very small few).
Finally, completing the cypher is Arooj Aftab whose most recent solo record, Vulture Prince made her the first-ever Pakistani artist to win a Grammy (she was nominated for Best New Artist and won for Best Global Music Performance). The youngest among the trio, Aftab’s distinctly powerful, clear voice and musical vision has made her one of the most exciting and groundbreaking artists in the past decade.
This past June, the three took time out of their busy touring schedule to speak with The Amp’s editor, Shannon Lee to share their thoughts on collaboration, working with fellow South Asian artists, and what has made this particular project so special. Love in Exile will be performing at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY on July 29th and at the Town Hall on September 14th.
VI: It was mainly that I knew that I could entrust that moment to each of them. I knew that they both had great listening sensibility, a real refined musicality, and a sense of foresight so that when they make contributions to whatever is happening, they’re thinking ahead. They’re thinking about the overview of everything; not just about whether they sound good by themselves.
We all have an intuitive sense of who we can trust in those specific ways as musicians. I just had a sense that this could work but I didn’t really know… In New York, you get thrown together in a lot of different contexts as musicians. Sometimes things stick, and sometimes they’re one-offs. But almost from the first sound we made together, it felt significant. That was a discovery for us; it wasn’t just compatible but it kept giving back to us something substantial. We really wanted to hold onto and cherish that.
SI: To Arooj’s last point—Who isn’t exiled?—there’s this one book that I read at an important point in my life called Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles. She’s one of the most exquisite writers when it comes to describing that moment when you’re in the world and perhaps you’re surrounded by sensible things—like a partner that cares for you and a child, and feeling so much beauty—yet for some reason, deep within yourself, you feel ill at ease. In that way, everyone has the potential to feel exiled; not just the literal, political dissident or migrant which is a heavier form of exiling.
It also reminds me of José Denoso’s Obscene Bird of Night which is another interesting book. In it, there’s a young boy that’s born mute and also deformed. His parents decide that they would buy an old convent and fill it with other people like him and allow him to grow up within those walls. Otherwise, his life will be filled with the feeling of outsiderness and otherness.
When we landed on this title for the record and band, especially with each interview we’ve done, it just hit me further and further to the core and I’m so grateful. A lot of times, with bands, it goes something like: “We’re playing a show on Friday so let’s call ourselves Strawberry Focus!” and suddenly that’s the band name forever. But this is one of those moments where the band name is so profound.
SL: To your points, I think “Love in Exile” works so well because it’s profound both politically and personally. It resonates on so many levels even though, when you first encounter it, it seems like a very simple phrase but it’s one of those things that gets stuck in your head and keeps iterating and offers so much.
I also wanted to ask about what it’s like collaborating with fellow South Asian American artists. Something that’s come up in a lot of my conversations within the AAPI artist community is this feeling of mutual trust and a foundation of understanding; that there are certain nuances of experience that you don’t have to over-explain. I wonder if that’s also something that’s been part of Love in Exile.
VI: The short answer is yes! * Laughs * For me, certainly when I first convened us in that particular ensemble five years ago—I think it was almost exactly five years ago—that was definitely an element. The overall context for it was that Claudia Rankine was holding this series at The Kitchen. Its theme was “On Whiteness.” I was asked to do a week as part of that. My way of inhabiting that space under that umbrella was to explicitly not engage with whiteness whatsoever and to have it be this unnamed haze that surrounded us. I made it about collaborations with other artists of color.
With that in mind, intuitively, I felt like we could roll together. I didn’t know what would come of it, but at the very least, I would feel okay on stage with them. That was the initial impulse. Now having toured quite a bit with these guys, I can say that our ways of being in the world with one another… it’s kind of like hanging out with cousins or something. We can laugh at stupid racist shit at some airport in Switzerland or can detect when a whole bunch of white people are mad at us for existing. We have common ways of neutralizing and processing tension together; working through our experiences in the van or train or plane. We can pinpoint things really openly and that analysis is very healing. Arooj has said this before but being able to be very vulnerable about life story kind of stuff is really special. I remember when we were in Zurich, Arooj was like, “You guys have to protect me! My high school bully is coming to the show!”
SI: I want to say a couple things. First, I’m beginning to feel with the interviews, performances, and hearing people’s responses to the record, increasingly lucky to have been there on that first night we played together. It was such a roll-of-the-dice. By chance, a musician that Vijay was going to work with that day happened to not be available. He happened to call me and I happened to be free and zipped over.
The second thing I wanted to say is that I think it’s no small thing to remark on mutual understanding and chemistry and it’s not always clear what the source is. But one source may be the recognition of the self in the other—when the sun speaks to the sun, when the moon speaks to the moon. One thing that I’ve appreciated is that we did a few shows and then a bunch of interviews, then a bunch more shows. In that moment during the interviews, there was quite a lot of speaking about chemistry and connection and how the record unfolded so beautifully. So much so that I started to get nervous about the second run of shows because what happens when the unspoken is spoken about? And we have so many exquisite words, particularly in Daoism, about the inability to describe the indescribable and if you attempt to, you might squish it or it may disappear into the darkness as you shine the light towards it. It was so wonderful that for that second, longer run of shows after all of those interviews, it was still there every night. I think that speaks to the similar origin points the three of us share.