Awards and accolades aren’t new to Akbar Sami, one of the most prolific DJs of Asia and an influential architect of the continent’s night-time stories, Sami, who has earlier won the All Asian DJ Championship, The DJ Awards and Channel V’s Best Indian Club DJ et al, has been recently honoured with the DJ OF The Decade Award at the INCA 2018 [India Nightlife Convention And Awards] at a glittering function in New Delhi.
A self-taught DJ, Sami’s career begun as early as 13 when he was pushed to the console to save the night at a club where the DJ had gone missing! And since then, there has been no looking back for the ace DJ who draws his inspiration from musicians like Ray Charles, Prince, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Ghulam Ali, Pandit Hari Prasad, Nusrat Fateh Ali, Mehdi Hassan & Quincy Jones among others.
Choreographer turned disc jockey, Akbar Sami, best known for remix albums like Jalwa, Jalwa II, Jadoo among others, quips ” Well, I feel great. I feel fantastic and yet emotional at the same time. This award takes me back in time when I had started struggling… the time when there was no Facebook, not much media either and no downloads. It was a very difficult phase for your existence in the entertainment business. I receive this award on behalf of all of my colleagues, music producers and the DJs who are still struggling to get there. I thank INCA for recognizing my talent and I believe that this will go a long way in encouraging my little industry, I also thank the Almighty and my mother for her prayers without which this wouldn’t have been possible.”
Sami’s histrionics also include acting and singing. He debuted as a singer in 2018 with the remake of the evergreen song, “Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein…” and he is the only DJ to have been featured on Indian Idol and has represented India in Japan for the Emporium Beach Festival.
Talking about his current endeavours, Sami divulges, “I’m just back from my performance in Spain and I’m planning on a USA tour in 2019. I’ve also started a film company called Running Water Films that happened to produce my first song as a singer, Kabhi Kabhi. And now, we have two films in the pipeline, ‘Patangbaaz’ and an untitled sports film. Besides this, I am still doing my good old remixes and working on my next songs, ‘Dard-E-Dil and Naach Meri Jaan’ as singer.”
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