With a background in cultural anthropology, Wajiha has pursued exploring a cultural and historical understanding of music. Deeply involved in music from a young age, Wajiha spent a lot of her time in college and university exploring the music space; sometimes in the form of performing gigs and concerts, and other times by studying music through its accompanying components including literature, poetry and history. Being one of the first recipients to secure a space with the very selective Falak Sufi Scholarship, Wajiha went on to study anthropology at NYU, where she took up Persian and did her research on sacred sound and sufi music in Muslim majority countries.

Upon her return to Pakistan, Wajiha has worked extensively in the social development sector and has been involved with many cultural projects and programs over the years. Having recently acquired her formal training in Eastern Classical music from Ustaad Rauf Saami – the son of Naseeruddin Saami– she credits a lot of her learning to her teacher. She believes he didn’t just teach her about raags, surr and taal, but about life, philosophy and what being a human actually means.  She was featured as a backing vocalist on Coke Studio, Season 11 as part of the house band.

She is currently not only performing her debut as a lead artist but is also one of the backing vocalists as well as a creative strategy team member of the Coke Studio 2020 project.

“Life has a lot of things that are interesting to explore; it is not all about these straight-forward, traditional paths; I like to explore why the sky is blue, why flowers blossom in spring, what is the meaning of life and what is the source behind all of these creations. And while you won’t ever find a concrete answer – for me the exploration of it, in the arts and music sphere, is very exciting.” – Wajiha Naqvi