The musical discovery of my year so far has been Arooj Aftab, the sublime Pakistani singer whose new album Vulture Prince has been commanding a lot of attention everywhere. As soon as I heard it in early June, I got busy online trying to learn more about her and spied a concert by her scheduled for September 3 at Pioneer Works, a community arts center in Red Hook. Checking out the concert seemed like an excellent way to view her up close and personal, learn something about Pioneer Works, and get some exposure to Red Hook, a neighborhood I’ve heard about but like most Manhattanites primarily associate with the IKEA store.
It was a beautiful, post-Hurricane Ida Friday night, perfect for toodling around a new location on Citibikes. Even more than Maspeth, where a bunch of music venues and dance clubs have opened in recent years, far from complaining residential neighbors, Red Hook is partly urban industrial landscape and part very local neighborhood. Even the subway stations don’t look like the ones you see elsewhere.
The golden hour before sunset always lends a special glow to otherwise unromantic vistas.
And then there is the occasional shrine to Betty Boop in someone’s window.
Pioneer Works turns how to be a groovy multipurpose arts center that hosts artists’ residencies, galleries, a bookstore, a performance space, and a lovely garden with a full bar and a viewing deck. (I’m keen to see a Moses Sumney installation that just opened and will be viewable through the month of September.) The announced showtime for Arooj Aftab was 7pm, which seemed early, but who knows? There were only three people in front of us when we arrived, which signaled that the show wouldn’t be starting until after 8. There was an opening act, a 24-year-old guitar whiz named Yasmin Williams who finger-picks in an American folk style that makes you think of Doc Watson or John Fahey, but then she’s likely to lie the guitar flat and work on it as a percussion instrument. There are occasionally pedals, and she wears tap shoes to provide her own rhythm section on a wooden footrest. A bit chatty between songs — she will learn soon enough that the audience doesn’t need to know the mundane details of how she wrote each and every song — but I’m glad I got to glimpse her budding virtuosity.
Arooj Aftab and her Vulture Prince Ensemble are the real deal — they create a dreamy cloud of sound on harp (Maeve Gilchrist), guitar (mainly Gyan Riley, son of composer Terry Riley, with a guest appearance by the excellent Kenji Herbert), bass (Shahaad Ismaily), spare synths (also Ismaily), violin (Darian Donovan Thomas), and drums (Greg Fox). Aftab works in the tradition of ghazal, a spare pensive style of poetry that takes a small amount of material and works many changes on it. Abida Parveen is one of the great performers in this style and one of Aftab’s musical influences. But she has her own exquisite style, beautiful mid-range vocal tone, very understated, very interior, never showing off high notes or held notes. She mostly performed songs from the album, including an adaptation of a Rumi poem that she sings in English, “Last Night.” I usually skip over that track on the record, but it turned into a totally different experience live — NOT about the words, slowed down and stretched out and indeed beautiful.
Late night in that corner of Red Hook, not a lot of dining options. But the San Pedro Inn, the tacqueria down the street from Pioneer Works was hopping. Clearly it serves as its own form of community center.
another eye opens 