Ahmad Haffar is aiming for the movies.
Haffar, best known as the Voice of Dubai – whose voice and music permeate the emirate’s airports, metro system, opera house and government entities – has confirmed that film scoring is the next chapter of a career that has, by his own reckoning, only just begun.
Speaking exclusively to Lana, Haffar – composer, entrepreneur and the founder of Mind Loop Studios, Dubai’s audio production house – said he has already sat down with two Hollywood producers, with his work on the Imagine Show fountain score at Festival City Malls serving as his calling card.
“Movies are the next step. That is naturally where this goes,” he said. “I have sat down with a few Hollywood producers – two, to be exact.”
The voice that shaped a global city
Haffar’s credentials in Dubai are, by any measure, formidable. He is the governmental voice dedicated to the Dubai Government and the Dubai Media Office, the voice heard at Dubai International Airport (DXB), the Dubai Metro, the Dubai Opera, Dubai Police and – by his own count – virtually every remaining government entity in the emirate.
He describes the title of ‘Voice of Dubai’ not only as a personal accolade but as a responsibility with generational implications. “It is a massive responsibility,” he said. “I don’t see it, nor do the entities in the government that I work with, as a voice thing. It is more of a generational thing – taking care of the talent that is up and coming, getting Dubai to be part of the global scope of what it deserves.”
He also disclosed that two new government voices are in the pipeline, though he declined to reveal further details. “Think about it, and you will come to the resolution yourself,” he said. “What is left? Where have you not heard my voice?”
Sonic Branding: The science behind the sound
Beyond lending a voice to multiple brands in the emirate and beyond, it is sonic branding that Haffar describes as his real occupation. He is currently working simultaneously on 14 music identities – a number he calls unheard of in the industry – for clients across hospitality, healthcare, retail, insurance and aviation.
His portfolio spans over 130 brands and includes Taj Hotels, where his music plays in over 190 properties worldwide, Air Arabia, Kellogg’s, Festival City Malls, Dubai Police, Barakat, Shoe Mart and the Apparel Group, among a growing list.
He also holds a partnership with what he describes as the number one sonic branding agency in the world, based in France, with whom a collaboration is currently underway – details of which he did not disclose.
“I create science-driven, data-driven, emotion-driven, strategy-driven, branding-driven sets of sounds and music that are deployed across different types of brands, no matter what industry you are in,” he said. “I don’t create something catchy and nice. I create sounds that enter the bottom of your brain.”
He also noted that his work has begun to serve as a reference point for new clients. “The biggest honour I have ever had is that in a good chunk of new brand identities I have been working on in the past three to four years, my own work has been the reference,” he said. “The client will say, ‘We are aiming for something similar to Air Arabia,’ and I will say, ‘that is me.’”
The Fountain Show: A score built on 247 layers
The project Haffar cites as his most memorable – and most challenging – is the score he composed for the Imagine Show fountain display at the Dubai Festival City Mall.
The piece, he explained, is a 247-layer orchestral and electronic work merging Chinese, Japanese, Emirati, Arabian and global influences, built around a four-note motif and layered with more than 80 vocal tracks recorded by Loire Cotler, the vocalist known as the Voice of Dune from the film series.
“I just sent her the track and the details behind it and the story. She came back and said, ‘Leave this to me.’ And then she delivered, and I was amazed.”
He credits the project with opening the door to conversations about film. “That project with Dubai Festival City Malls really did open up that door for me. So there it is.”
The Entrepreneur: Mind Loop Studios and the Field Academy
Alongside his composing and voice work, Haffar runs Mind Loop Studios, which he describes as the largest audio production house in Dubai, home to some 620 voice-over talents and responsible for approximately 90 per cent of the advertising voice-over output heard across the GCC.
He also founded the On The Field Academy, a voice-over school from which 83 students have so far graduated, each on a bespoke one-to-one programme. “I opened the school for the people who said, ‘I would love to hear myself on an ad one day,’” he said. “And I built the programme with my own hands.”
Aside from this, Haffar also recently delivered a TED talk, for which he revised his entire approach three to four minutes before taking the stage. He said the decision was guided by something he has spent 11 years learning to trust.
“I developed it over the past 11 years – a gut feeling that I trust deeply,” he said. “I trust that gut feeling more than I trust the part of my brain that tells me to worry. I trust it more than the part that tells me what others think matters. It took me 11 years to know that my gut feeling is the one I should have been listening to the whole time.”
And his message to young creatives was direct: “Listen to your gut feeling today. Not when you have something to show, but when you have something to prove to yourself more than anybody.”
Haffar’s career so far is only just the beginning
At 32, Ahmad Haffar says he has completed every goal he set for himself – retiring his parents, acquiring his much-loved cars, building his businesses, contributing to charitable causes – and considers his career to be, in his own words, only at its start.
“I am happy with the start of my career,” he said. “Because that is what this is – the start. I am just getting started, but it took me 11 years to figure out who I am, for me to get started on something bigger.”
For all the scale of his ambitions, Haffar is measured in how he frames the Hollywood conversation. He acknowledges the constraints of time – noting that running two companies and managing 14 music identities simultaneously leaves little room for the commitment a film score demands. But he is unequivocal about the direction of travel.
“Hollywood is not this place far beyond that only a few special people can enter,” he said. “The people who can only think about life from a different perspective, who are a little bit unusual but not too unusual, who follow the rules but are rule-breakers. No, it is not just that it is magical – it is hard work. And when I have the responsibility of knowing that 100 million people are going to hear this, I know what I need to do.”
He adds that what motivates him is not the industry itself but the stories behind it. “Hollywood is not as much of a word to me as what are the stories I might be working on? Will I find my comfort in sci-fi? In drama? In action and adventure? Or will I have a little bit of everything – the same way I have made music for hospitals, for FMCG brands, for airlines, for malls?”
He is also building a website where his full catalogue will be documented and credited, with an IMDB page to follow.
“Every single thing I have done will be perfectly shown,” Haffar concluded, adding “and one after another, you will see what 130+ sonic identities actually looks like.”
