you know, let's do it. >> reporter: accepted to boston's prestigious berklee college of music, aftabher goal of becoming a professional musician, but got her degree in music production and engineering. >> i felt that i needed some sort of, like, concrete industry skill. i came out of berklee in like 2008 or '09, moved to new york, super recession times, all the music studios were kind of closing. people were making all these products that you could record at home. so it was just like, oh great. no, we don't -- they don't need audio engineers anymore. >> reporter: audio engineering's loss was composing's gain. where else would we get a song like “last night,” with lyrics adapted from 13th century sufi mystic and poet rumi put to a beat like this one? ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i really liked the idea of juxtaposing rumi with a reggae groove, t also kind of jazz, upright bass vibes, and then, like, adding this sort of urdu meter in the middle-- >> reporter: there's just a whole world of things you just talked about in half a sentence. let's just go back for a minute. >> i was reading a lot of rumi