Life of sami youssef

British composer Sami Yusuf is known as one of the most influential musicians of our time in the field of world music traditions. Dubbed ‘a megastar’ by the BBC, the numbers bear this out: over 45 million albums sold, over a billion downloads, sold out concerts at venues such as Wembley Arena, Royal Albert Hall, and the Paris Philharmonic, and an audience of 250,000 in an open-air performance in Istanbul. His recent major events include the ‘When Paths Meet’ concert series at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music (Vol. 3 2024), the Paris Philharmonic (Vol. 2 2023) and the Holland Festival (Vol. 1 2022), and his concerts ‘Beyond the Stars’ at the Dubai EXPO (2021), and ‘A Timeless Presence’ at the UNESCO World Congress (2019). Teaming up with legends such as A.R. Rahman, Homayoun Shajarian, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Antonio Rey, Abida Parveen, Ballaké Sissoko, Nabyla Maan, and China’s ‘national treasure’ Guo Gan, Sami has performed on six continents and his tracks have topped world music charts.

Born in Tehran, Iran (1980) to Azerbaijani parents and raised in London, he was trained from an early age in both Western and Middle Eastern classical music. As a result, his impressive body of work reflects his deep mastery of multiple musical languages. As a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist, at festivals and anchor events worldwide his large-scale works shine with beauty and depth. What astounds his listeners is his ability to move fluidly and authentically among genres as diverse as qawwali, Persian classical, Middle Eastern Sufi music, flamenco, and Western classical styles.

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A passion for the power of music to express the subtleties of the human spirit has guided Sami Yusuf’s career from its start. He always knew music was his calling. He began developing his craft as a child growing up in London, learning to play several traditional Middle Eastern instruments from his renowned father, and exploring the tones and modes of the music they conveyed. To his ability to express himself musically within the classical Arabic / Central Asian maqam system of his Azerbaijani heritage, in his teens he added a fluency with piano and violin as he interiorised and immersed himself in Western classical music.

Over the course of his career Sami Yusuf has released nine studio albums, nine live albums, and two compilation albums. Sami’s first album, ‘Al-Mu’allim’ (2003), incorporated the Western and Eastern elements that exist within him, and with its release he quickly gained international recognition and celebrity. He composed and produced this work and others when he was in his early twenties, and although they created an entirely new musical genre that other artists to this day continue to follow, Sami soon realized that these did not represent the artistic path he wished to follow.

And so, he withdrew from the touring and producing scene for a number of years, releasing very few new pieces. During that time, he deepened his knowledge of music and of philosophy; he traveled to sacred places; he worked on his craft. He created his own record label. He resolved to create music only when his heart is fully in it, only when its creation would fulfill a clear sense of purpose. And since that time, he gives few concerts and his releases follow his own internal schedule, not the demands of a label.

When he returned to the world stage with the release of ‘Barakah’ in 2015, Sami Yusuf’s passion for expressing the music and poetry of world traditions reimagined in a contemporary language came fully into focus. With his performances at the Dubai EXPO and the UNESCO World Congress, and the launch of his ‘When Paths Meet’ initiative, his live concerts and resulting albums bring together master musicians from China to Central Asia to Arabia and from North and West Africa to Europe. Each concert is a unique experience at which he launches new compositions and arrangements. His global listening audience grows ever larger as lovers of world music traditions find more and more to appreciate through his intentional ecstatic dialogues across cultures.