"There are reporters here, aren't there?" says Arooj Aftab, mimicking a diva fit. "Is there nowhere I can go and sing in public in peace?" She sighs imperiously. "But do it.
Do it. Make me look cool." Making the Pakistani-American singer and composer look cool is perhaps the easiest assignment in journalism.
With her flamboyant black leather coat, heavy shades and crackling wit, Aftab's star power is almost too large for this tiny room. Omeara is an old railway arch near London Bridge with fashionably mottled walls and suboptimal sightlines. She explains that usually her band headlines the Barbican, "like douchebags", and this is by far the smallest venue she has ever played in London.
As it grows uncomfortably hot, she sheds her coat but then dons a leather jacket, which is scarcely less impractical. She is prepared to suffer for cool. To say that she combines jazz, folk, ambient and western and south Asian classical music is to undersell her achievement Aftab's mischievous humour contrasts with the solemn beauty of her music.
When she opens with an extended version of Suroor, with virtuosic solo showcases for guitarist Gyan Riley and upright-bass player Petros Klampanis, you would not guess that laughter was around the corner. Suroor comes from her Grammy-winning 2021 breakthrough album, Vulture Prince, a cycle of ghazals (Urdu songs of loss and longing) inspired by bereavement. At.
.. Dorian Lynskey.
