You're listening to song-explanter where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

One of the songs I keep coming back to is Mahabath by Aruja Fab.

It's really special to me. I listen to it all the time.

I've been listening to it so often that I wanted to revisit her episode about it.

In the time since the episodes come out, that I wanted to revisit her episode about it.

In the time since the episodes come out,

she released a collaborative album with Vije Ayer and Shazad Is Smiley

called Love in Exile, which got two Grammy nominations.

And she has a new album that's about to come out on May 31st called Night Rain.

Here's her episode.

Aru Jaff Thob is a singer and composer based in Brooklyn.

She grew up in Saudi Arabia, but her family is from Pakistan,

and earlier this year she made history by becoming the first Pakistani artist to win a Grammy.

Her song, Mahabath, won the best global music performance Grammy,

and she was nominated for Best New Artist.

Mahabath was first released on her 2021 album, Vulture Prince, but it's been a part of Aruj's life for a long time.

In this episode, she tells a story of how the song was first born, and how it lived with her and evolved over the years before she finally recorded it. My name is Aru Jaffa.

Mohabbat Karnivalae is this poem written by this guy Hafiz Hushayarpuri.

He was born in 1912 and he wrote this beautiful poem, of which I've taken some lines and adapted them into my song, Mohabbat.

Many, many different singers from South Asia have rendered this poem to song

over the course of time.

...