SAMAA is curated, produced, and shaped by people who have built cultural IPs before. Here is who they are, what they believe, and how this festival came to be.
We believe a festival is not a programme of events. It is a deliberate space - a few days where a city slows down, listens deeply, and remembers what it values. SAMAA is built on that belief.
Between them, fifteen years of building festivals, growing literary institutions, and shaping cultural IPs in India, UAE, UK and the North America. They share a single conviction - that the original, made with depth, deserves to be seen at full scale.
Co-Founder & Festival Director
An IP strategist and festival builder who has spent over a decade growing a major Urdu literary festival into a internationally recognised cultural institution. His work sits at the intersection of brand, culture, and community - building original IPs and helping existing ones find their full worth. SAMAA is the first festival he has curated and produced under his own name.
Co-Founder & Producer
Based in Dubai, Pushkin brings deep ground knowledge of the city's cultural calendar, its venues, its partners, and its appetite for something it has not yet had. He leads partnerships, on-ground production, and the building of SAMAA's UAE-side community. The bridge between idea and execution.
Dubai today is home to more than three and a half million people who carry the music and memory of South Asia in their hearts. It hosts world-class concerts, comedy nights, stadium tours. What it does not yet have - what no one had quite built for it - is a soulful, multi-discipline cultural festival of its own. A place to listen. A place to belong.
The idea for SAMAA began with a single conversation about what was missing. Not louder. Not bigger. Deeper. A two-day gathering where qawwali, classical music, ghazal, poetry, storytelling, theatre, food, and craft could come together inside a festival park designed to slow you down the moment you entered.
SAMAA - Arabic for to listen, to hear, to receive - became the name almost on its own. It carries the meaning of being present, of right atmosphere, of sky. Of the way one feels at the end of a great mehfil, when the last note has faded and no one yet wants to leave.
The inaugural edition is built around six curated programmes across two days. The festival will return each year. We are taking conversations now - with artists, with partners, with the city - to make sure the first edition is worthy of all the editions to follow.
- The Curators of SAMAA
We do not write rules for the festival. We write principles. These are the ones SAMAA returns to, year after year, decision after decision.
Every artist is chosen for the quality of attention they bring. We do not chase popularity. We do not fill slots. We curate.
We honour the silence between notes as much as the notes themselves. SAMAA is built to make a courtyard, not a stadium.
We do not chase viral moments. We make moments worth remembering. A festival is judged by what stays with the audience the morning after.
A festival is a kind of hospitality. The audience are guests, not customers. Every part of the experience - from the email to the entry to the exit - is written with that in mind.
We build new IPs while honouring the traditions they grow from. SAMAA holds qawwali with the same care a dargah does, and offers it with the imagination of a contemporary festival.
SAMAA is not a one-off. It is a flagship designed to come back every year, deepen, and earn its place in the cultural calendar of Dubai.
The festival belongs to the South Asian diaspora, and to anyone who arrives ready to listen. Languages, faiths, generations - all welcome inside the garden.
Beyond the curators, SAMAA is brought to life by a small, deliberate team of specialists across production, design, programming, hospitality, and community. We are taking on partnerships with select agencies and experts for the inaugural edition. Names will be added as the team settles.
Leave us your name. We will write to you when the lamps are lit - with the lineup, the early-bird passes, and a few quiet surprises along the way.