Ali Gatie could have never dreamed of this. 20 years ago, he was a 5-year-old kid living in Abu Dhabi, singing along to Arabic songs on the radio, playing Lionel Richie on his dad’s cassette player. Now, he’s one of the main acts at the inaugural Wireless Festival Middle East, taking the stage with Travis Scott, M.I.A. and Wegz.
This never seemed possible for him, growing up. He was always told that someone with his background could never be the one on that stage–an Arab Muslim kid who immigrated to Canada. His parents would ask him, who else like you is succeeding?
“They would literally say, ‘this is not for our people,” Gatie tells Esquire Middle East.
“But I do remember thinking, they’re right. There’s isn’t anyone who looks like me, who comes from the same place as me, who’s doing this in the Western world.”
Gatie had been making music as a hobby since he was a senior in high school, booking out studio time with his McDonald’s money, but it was when he was in university when he realized that all the things he could study, all the paths his parents had laid out for him, be it doctor, lawyer, or engineer, just weren’t him. The real passion was the passion he found singing in the studio, writing melodies, telling stories. That was what he cared about, and that is what, he decided, he would fight for.
“I said to myself, OK, I’m going to be that guy. That way, the next kid can go to his parents and see me on the stage, and say ‘he did it. So can I.'”
His parents didn’t understand at first.
“My dad was like, there’s absolutely no way this will work. You’re insane. My mom said she believed in me, but I think she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. My dad kept saying, there’s a 0% chance you will ever suceed as an artist. You should quit now,” says Gatie.
“this sounds harsh, but i think this was his way of trying to save me. He said we have no money to help you, you have no musical talent–you don’t play an instrument.”
Gatie looked hard in the mirror, and decided there was no way he could go back on his dreams now.
“I decided that a short-term feud with my parents would be better than me doing what they want and then hating them for the rest of my life. I’ll take two or three years of us clashing, then showing them that I was right and fixing the relationship rather than hating them forever because I’m a doctor and I’m miserable, because I always wanted to be an artist,” says Gatie.
“Thankfully, I was right,” he says with a smile. “Now they claim they always believed in me, and I’m like, OK, I’ll let them have that.”
Though it’s been four years since Gatie broke through with his hit single “It’s You”, which he’s followed up with hit after hit, including earworms like “What If I Told You That I Loved You”, and “Moonlight”, Wireless Festival Middle East marks the biggest stage he’s taken so far, a sign that at 25, he’s finally reached the heights he once bet his life on.
“It’s surreal. It’s crazy that I’m on the other side, that I made it to the place where the grace is actually greener. It’s awesome,” says Gatie.
“The thing I’m happiest and proudest of is that I can get on that stage and tell people the one thing I want them to take away from my shows, that your dreams are possible. I was always the kid going to people’s shows and thinking maybe I could be the guy on that stage. Now I am. And they need to know to keep going, because they could be next.”