DJ Akhtar Exclusive Interview for EDMDroid Asia

1. Please tell us and our readers more about the nightlife in India right now in times of Covid, specially in your home town of Mumbai.

The nightlife in India now stands at a complete standstill as the country is going thru the 2nd wave of the COVID crisis and is in a lockdown phase.

The end of last year saw most of our cities and their nightlife running at the optimum - from November 2020 until the end of March 2021. But right now everything in Mumbai as well as the entire India is on a halt. In fact, Mumbai got it worst as we just experienced a very severe cyclone which has done considerable damage to infrastructure and property in my city. In fact, some personal damage has been caused as my brand new car got hit by a tree.

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2. How long have you been DJing/Producing and what can we expect next from DJ Akhtar?

Gosh, it’s been ages, Been doing this for more than 3 decades now since 1989 I guess. Right now All I do is watch Netflix and connect with my friends. But yes I do keep reinventing myself from time to time. Here’s what you can expect from me.

I'm very unpredictable, I play multiple genres and I never plan my sets so you can always expect an element of surprise whenever I’m performing. I try and keep innovating during my performance and I definitely get inspired from my team members, my friends, and colleagues here in India and across the world. I never stop learning and I’m super proud to learn a lot from the 1000’s talented DJs here in India.

3. What has been your best and your worst gig experience so far. Be honest please.

So many great experiences come to my mind. Some of them would be:
1.Performing long sets ( of 8 to 9 hours ) in nightclubs.
2.Sometimes Performing 2 or sometimes 3 gigs in a day for weddings at times ( quite exciting ).
3. Performing alongside my Dj friends ( some of them are young and the new Gen DJs and some are my friends from over 20 years ).
4.Performing in different countries all across the world always excites me and I look forward to traveling.
5. To the time when I won my National award ( for outstanding achievement in the Music and Nightlife industry ) . Was an emotional moment to get a standing ovation from the entire room of people I look up to.
6.To the times When I cater to large crowds like for example we have the “Dahi Handi or Janmashthmi Festival” ( which happens to be the celebration of the birth of Lord Krishna ) and is celebrated annually with me performing from a console elevated 30 feet up in the air belting out tunes to a turn out of over anything between 25k to on a couple of occasions almost 80k people - the adrenaline the rush the excitement is so very heartwarming.

And there have been tons of bad experiences too when I get booed by the crowd or it hurts when I don't get paid ( and it still continues- there are clubs that haven’t yet paid me my dues from the past 2 years ).

Then sometimes there are moments where the gig is a flop show as the turnout is not as expected ( people assume that all my gigs are running packed houses but that’s not true ).

Just remembered a funny incident - Once I was performing at a water park near Delhi and I was jumping across the console and somehow managed to stretch way too much, thus tearing my shorts right in front of 8000 people which was pretty embarrassing.

Another low moment I recollect was when I had to perform on the day my grandma expired. It was difficult and I did it cos my word and commitment are all that mattered and I didn’t want the organisers to endure any losses on my account of not showing up for their event.

I mean many such moments and a lot of unaccounted personal sacrifice & compromise that most of us have probably made to reach where we are today.

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4. If you had to choose, which profession would you be going with? DJ or something else?

Don’t know - I would probably be selling Street food on a cart.
But It’s Djing for sure. I don’t know anything else except djing.
It’s the only thing I know and more importantly, at least I think I’m doing it right.

5. Top 3 tracks at the moment?

I got 5 for you , been listening to a lot of different music apart from Bollywood these days.
Mele - Groove la afrika
No diggity - Lucas & Steve
Friday - Riton & Nightcrawlers
Wasted love - Ofenbach
Baarish ki Jaaye - B Praak