Arooj Aftab, the Grammy-winning Pakistani singer serenading Coachella

Arooj Aftab, the Grammy-winning Pakistani singer serenading Coachella at the much-touted Coachella music festival.

She graced the California desert with a set that centered her melodious Urdu lyricism, a barrier-breaking move as she became the first Pakistani to play the prestigious festival.

For Aftab, the language barrier no longer exists: “This is a door that´s opened.

The 37-year-old — who just released a cover of Spanish flamenco revisionist Rosalia´s “Di mi nombre” — sees a revolution in popular music, with artists sailing freely past genre and borders.

There´s a movement happening in the music industry at large,” she told AFP on the grounds of Coachella, where she delivered a moving performance of her work that fuses ancient Sufi traditions with inflections of folk, jazz and minimalism.

The audience and the musicians are creating music and the audiences are listening to music with a lot of freedom in their minds. Less genre-genre, less border-border,” she said.

It´s so free, and open, and really, really beautiful.

She credits the Latinx community for making huge inroads in this respect, citing Rosalia along with Becky G, Karol G, J. Balvin and Bad Bunny as influential in the transformation.

The trap movement definitely changed the way listeners listen,” Aftab said, referring to the explosion of Southern US hip hop that later made it´s way into Latin America and fused with reggaeton.