How DJ Ahadadream Set the Global Dance Floor on Fire

London-based multihyphenate Ahad Elley on coming to terms with his identity, why we need more South Asian representation on the global stage, and what happens after a track in your pile of discards becomes a viral hit.

- By SHAMANI JOSHI

Ahad Elley was 12 years old when he moved to the UK with his parents. As one of the only brown kids in his neighbourhood in Sandy, Bedfordshire, he didn’t exactly fit right in. “I had a thick accent, so kids in my class would just be doing the Apu [from The Simpsons] accent to me because the only brown characters they had seen in the media were the butt of all jokes,” he says. “And it still happens.”

But even as he struggled to find his place in a new social strata, Elley was sure of one thing: He wasn’t going to let his identity be someone else’s punchline. Instead, he decided to take control of his own narrative, starting with his name. “People would say my name in a way where Ahad sounded like ‘I had,’ so it just became this joke in school,” he explains. “Like, knock knock. Who's there? I had. I had a dream.”

And with that, the dream was born.