Though Ali Sethi started out as a writer, music is where he found his calling.
In 2022, his Punjabi banger “Pasoori” with the fellow Pakistani singer Shae Gill — an unlikely pastiche of qawwali, flamenco, bhangra, reggaeton and other global influences — had both India and Pakistan gyrating to its infectious beat. But by this spring, as Mr. Sethi prepared to release his first full-length solo studio album, “Love Language,” the neighboring nations were reeling from a brief military battle and his music had been blocked in India.
The album, he said, is “a diary of displacement, but it’s also a record of the hope that creative collaboration gives you.”
Mr. Sethi, 41, was born in Lahore, Pakistan, but these days he calls the East Village of Manhattan home. His apartment is filled with books, rugs from Lahore and family heirlooms, including a framed 18th-century miniature passed down from his grandmother. “New York dangled this promise of this artistic life, which was very attractive,” he said. “And there really was no other place like it.”
The singer spent a recent Saturday with The New York Times as he prepared for his album release and fall tour.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.
CAFFEINE FIX I wake up between 7 and 8, and the first thing I’ll do is make my coffee. I love the coffee-making ritual in the morning. I usually give myself a few hours before I eat. As the Sufis say, you should cultivate hunger. It’s a way of sharpening your mind. The first few hours are just coffee and air.
MUSICAL MORNINGS Riyaz is an Arabic word. It means garden. Riyaz in Hindustani music is the process of cultivating your voice and your timbre — the ritual of honing your voice, rousing it, nurturing it. It really is a meditative practice. I’m doing a virtual riyaz with my guitarist friend Ria Modak, who plays in my band. Ria is in India right now. She messaged me saying: “You’re invisible. I can’t access your Instagram; I can’t access your music on Spotify; your YouTube is blocked.” Music is our way of keeping a connection alive in a time of prohibitions.
DRESSED TO DAZZLE I’ll go uptown, where my friend, the Lahori couturier Kamiar Rokni, has brought with him a bunch of coats that he has made for my tour in the fall. His work is very inspired by Indo-Muslim embroidery. I started saying to him a few years ago, “Why don’t you make clothes for me that incorporate some of that diva glamour, but also the way princes dress in Mughal miniatures?” When I was last in Lahore I went to his studio and picked out some fabrics. It’s giving Prince by way of the dowager divas of Pakistan Television. It’s so old-fashioned that it’s almost futuristic. I was a bit nervous because if they don’t fit me, what am I going to do? But lo and behold, they fit perfectly.
SWEET TREAT Then I’ll go to my friend Somnath Bhatt’s apartment. Somnath has designed the album art, and he’s the creative director for my looks and my photography and my video for my album. He also makes the most amazing nouveau Gujarati vegetarian cuisine. He made a sweet dish called sukhdi, jaggery with wheat and ghee. I tasted it and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is just like the choori I ate in Punjab growing up.” It took me right back to my childhood, except it was happening in Midtown Manhattan. All of my worlds are colliding here.
READING RITUAL Now I’ll meet up with the artist Salman Toor, who’s my partner. One of the things we love doing, a ritual from our 20s, is going to the Strand. My father used to be a bookseller in Lahore. When I was a child he would make an annual trip to New York, where he would go to the Strand and get these amazing books at discounted rates and bring them back to Pakistan. Salman and I are a pair of nerds who have enabled each other’s most extreme nerdiness. Books have been central to our relationship and to our journey into the West. It was American writers who opened up the idea of New York to me.
JAM SESSION Then I’ll take the train to Brooklyn to my bandmate Eva Lawitts’ parents’ house. Eva plays the upright bass; she’s played with me at Coachella and she’ll be with me on the tour in the fall. We’ll be joined by Marta Sánchez, who plays piano. We will practice the acoustic part of my set together. My album is beat-heavy and I’m excited because a lot of my concert will be like a nightclub. But I know my O.G. fans love the ghazals and the ballads and they want to hear my voice. The rehearsal is also an occasion to create content; you need to make content as a musician to draw people to your shows.
CHAI TIME Saad Moosajee, an animator and visual artist, and I share a love of BK Jani in Williamsburg. We go once every two weeks. It’s a little bit of Lahore in New York. Sibte Hasan, the owner, often makes things for me that are not on the menu. There was dal gosht and chawal with achaar, and sweet potato masala fries. And there was karak chai — chai is like battery for singers of Indian classical music. Sometimes I run into fans there. Usually they let me eat in peace. I’m a messy eater; I’ll always have mayo and jalapeño all over my face.
SWANKY SAMOSAS Later I’ll gather with my crew of international people in New York. The tenor of our conversation, the pitch of our banter is very particular. Sometimes my friend Prabal Gurung, the fashion designer from Nepal, will break into “Umrao Jaan” songs. Normally we go to Zero Bond, but this time Prabal was like, “Let’s try Chez Margaux today.” We had chicken samosas, which they had, weirdly. They were incredible in this rouge, very Parisian, velvety environment.
DANCE ALL NIGHT I go to Brooklyn every Saturday night to participate in the raucous queer nightlife. Dragistan at 3 Dollar Bill is this extremely generative and generous space, where through the extremities of camp performance, everybody loses and then finds themselves. It’s the eternal Sufi principle of losing yourself in dance like the whirling dervishes.
There’s always a “Pasoori” moment at Dragistan, and I marvel at the weird ongoing resonance of that song. It’s being played in super-conservative weddings in South Asia, but it’s also being played at Dragistan, where it turns into this queer anthem of liberation. And of course we all danced and shrieked when all the ’90s Bollywood songs came on. Then LaWhore Vagistan called me onstage, and I sang “Lovely Bukhaar” from the new album. We danced till about 2:30 a.m.
BEDTIME I always turn in with a tall glass of water, a cozy memoir — these days it’s Edmund White’s “City Boy” — and a black silk eye mask that I got on a flight. Lights out, please!
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