Adnan Sami Khan (born 15 August 1971) is an Indian singer, musician, composer, actor and pianist. He performs Indian and Western music in many languages, such as Hindi, Urdu, English, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. He has been awarded with Padma Shri (India's fourth highest civilian award) for his remarkable contribution to music. His most notable instrument is the piano. He has been credited as "the first musician to have played the santoor and Indian classical music on the piano". A review in the US-based Keyboard magazine described him as the fastest keyboard player in the world and called him the keyboard discovery of the nineties.
He was raised and educated in the United Kingdom. He was previously a Canadian citizen, but became a naturalised Indian citizen in 2016. He was born to Arshad Sami Khan, a Pakistani Air Force veteran and diplomat of Pashtun origin, and Naureen, who was originally from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Times of India has called him the "Sultan of Music". He was awarded the Padma Shri on 26 January 2020.
Sami was born in London, England on 15 August 1971. He was raised and educated in the United Kingdom. His father, Arshad Sami Khan, was a Pakistani Pashtun with roots in Afghanistan while his mother Naureen Khan was an Indian from Jammu. Actor Dilip Kumar (born Yusuf Khan) was his father's first cousin. Adnan's father served as a Pakistan Air Force pilot, before becoming a senior bureaucrat and serving as Pakistan's ambassador to 14 countries. His paternal great-great-grandfather, General Ahmed Jan, was from Afghanistan and a military advisor to king Abdur Rahman Khan. His paternal great-grandfather Agha Mehfooz Jan was the governor of four Afghan provinces under King Amanullah Khan's reign and was also the King's first cousin, while his paternal grandfather Abdul Sami Khan served as the Deputy Inspector General of Police. Agha Mehfooz Jan was assassinated by Habibullah Kalakani and therefore Sami's father's family migrated to Peshawar, then in British India.
Sami attended Rugby School in Rugby, West Midlands, UK. Adnan followed his bachelor's degree with a law degree (LLB) from King's College London. He went on to qualify as a barrister from Lincoln's Inn, England.
He had played the piano since the age of five and composed his first piece of music when he was nine years old. Sami began taking lessons in Indian classical music from the santoor maestro Pandit Shivkumar Sharma when visiting India during his school vacations. Indian singer Asha Bhosle saw him at age ten at an R. D. Burman concert in London, and encouraged him to take up music as a career. He is an accomplished concert pianist, music composer and singer with a command of Indian and Western classical/semi-classical music, jazz, rock and pop music. As a teenager, Adnan, when performing on the piano on a TV program in Stockholm, was described by the US-based Keyboard magazine as the fastest man on keyboard in the world and the keyboard discovery of the nineties. Sami went on to learn Indian classical music from Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, the Santoor maestro in India. At the age of sixteen, Sami was approached to write a song for famine-hit Ethiopia, for which he won a special award from UNICEF.
In his career of 32 years, Sami has won many international awards including the Nigar Award, Bolan Academy Award and Graduate Award. Adnan is the youngest recipient of the Naushad Music Award for Excellence in Music. Previous recipients of this award include Lata Mangeshkar and Music Maestro Khayam. Sami was invited as a member of the jury of the music festival Voice of Asia competition held annually at Almaty, Kazakhstan.
His first single, "Run for His Life", was released in 1986. It was in English, and recorded for UNICEF. It went to No. 1 in the music charts in the Middle East. This was followed by three more No. 1s: "Talk to Me", "Hot Summer Day" and "You're My Best Kept Secret".
His first formal album, The One & Only (1989), was a classical album on the piano accompanied by tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. He released his first vocal solo album Raag Time in 1991.
In 2000, Asha Bhosle collaborated with Sami on a collection of love songs named Kabhi to Nazar Milao in India. The music was also composed by Adnan. The album became an instant success and topped the Indipop charts for most of 2001 and 2002. According to Business Week magazine, the album sold 4 million copies in India alone.
His second studio album, Tera Chehra, was released in October 2002 to critical acclaim. The music videos for this album were shot by Binod Pradhan, who had shot the popular 2002 Hindi film Devdas. The album features Bollywood stars Rani Mukerji in the title track and Amitabh Bachchan in the track "Kabhi Nahi", who also sang the duet with Sami. Actress Mahima Chaudhry was also seen in another song. The title track was written by well-known Hindi movie lyricist Sameer. According to Screen Magazine, it was the only successful pop album of the year. Sami's Tera Chehra broke sales records by becoming India's best-selling album of 2002 (including film soundtracks), continuing its No. 1 position in 2003, and by becoming the best-selling Indian album of all time (including film soundtracks) in the US and Canada. The album stayed in the No. 1 position in all the music charts of India from the time of its release in September 2002 for over a year, beating his debut album's No. 1 record. His most successful albums have been Kabhi To Nazar Milao (with Asha Bhosle) and Tera Chehra, and his music videos usually have had Bollywood stars in them, including Namrata Shirodkar ("Bheegi Bheegi Raat"), Mahima Chaudhry, Raveena Tandon, Rani Mukerji ("Tera Chehra"), Govinda, Fardeen Khan, Amisha Patel ("O Meri Jaan"), Bhumika Chawla ("Maahiya"), Dia Mirza ("Pal Do Pal") and Amitabh Bachchan (Kabhi Nahi). He has composed film music for several other Hindi films, including Lucky: No Time for Love, Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke, Dhamaal, 1920, Chance Pe Dance, Mumbai Salsa, Khubsoorat, Sadiyaan, Shaurya and several others.
In 1994, he composed music for a film for the first time. The 1995 Pakistani film Sargam, in which he was the lead actor and Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle did the playback Sargam, was a box office success. It was also the first time that an Indian playback singer was featured in an album in Pakistan. To date Sargam is the only film Sami has acted in, and the score is the best-selling album of all time in Pakistan.
He soon became popular, which led Hindi filmmaker Boney Kapoor to invite him to provide music for his film. This was the beginning for him to compose and sing for Hindi films and for the top Hindi film producers of the time like Yash Chopra and Subhash Ghai. Due to the popularity of his music videos and live performances, he started getting acting offers at the same time.
The song "Tu Sirf Mera Mehboob" from the Hindi film Ajnabee, sung by Adnan, became popular and was declared a "superhit" by Screen Magazine, who called him the pop personality of the year in 2001.
Saathiya (2002) brought him the opportunity to work with A. R. Rahman in the form of "Aye Udi Udi". According to Screen Magazine, the song was "the highlight of the album". Rediff.com called him the "Reigning King of Indipop" in early 2003 based on the sales of his albums in the previous two years.
In 2015, he sung the qawwali song "Bhar Do Jholi Meri", composed by Pritam for Salman Khan starred film Bajrangi Bhaijaain, he appeared in the movie as well.
In 2005, he suffered from lymphoedema and developed an abscess in the knee, which interrupted his career.
In 2006, he took a sabbatical and reportedly lost 130 kg.
As a classical concert pianist, Sami has given solo performances before royalty such as the King of Sweden and King Hussein of Jordan. He has performed before heads of state and governments such as President Mitterrand of France, the President of the United Arab Emirates, the President and Prime Minister of India, the President and Prime Minister of Pakistan, the President and Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan, the Prime Minister of Sweden and Princess Christina of Sweden. Adnan has performed for music festivals to sold-out stadiums of his solo concert tours all over the world in over forty countries.