When Charles Akujobi plugged up to a speaker and a CD player at a friend’s party in the early 2000s, he didn’t know what he was doing. But on that day, he discovered he wanted to learn how to mix music.
Just 22 years later, Akujobi now owns and operates Mississippi DJ Events, a professional DJ service with wholesome and fun music to play at weddings, birthday and company parties and everything in between.
“Someone asked me to play music, and back then, we had CDs,” Akujobi said. “So I just brought a CD for the event and played it. Since then, people have been like, ‘Hey, you’re the music guy? Can you play this play?’ And so that became my passion, just spreading love through music.”
Akujobi said he didn’t expect to find a path toward music when he signed up for the Air Force in Arlington, Texas, back in 2000. His goals at the time were to go back to school and learn discipline and work skills in the military, but as time went on and he moved on through several stateside deployments, music became a focus for the skills he learned in the service.
“DJing was nowhere on my radar before I joined the Air Force,” he said. “When I joined the Air Force, that’s when my love for music really excelled. I figured that I could use my passion for helping people and at the same time, still serve my country. Because you can DJ anywhere; if you are in Afghanistan or Iraq, all you need is a speaker and a turntable.”
Akujobi would later deploy to San Antonio, where he and his wife Rachel began DJing professionally in 2016. They started playing larger events and developing their skills, like adjusting the style of music based on the audience and hyping up the crowd. He also obtained a master’s degree in business administration from Wayland Baptist University in 2016 and applied those skills to his DJ business. Rachel is vice president at the company, planning events and corresponding with clients.
“You know, we learned a lot from that time,” he said. “We did our first wedding there, first 5k (race) there, a lot of firsts there. And that’s when we really grew the confidence of ‘hey, we can actually do this.'”
Charles and Rachel moved on to Columbus in 2020 as his last assignment in the Air Force and to be closer to family. The couple saw it as a place to grow their business in a new place with the core loving and Christian values they believed in. But as they arrived, so did the COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with the challenge of quarantine, the Akujobis held online DJ services for online ZOOM parties and kept going through the crisis and were even able to grow the business and its footprint in the Golden Triangle.
“Nobody was doing weddings or events or anything like that, so we used that time to sort of rebrand our business,” he said. “We got our DBA for Mississippi DJ Events; we wanted to focus strictly on our love for the state because we have so much love for this state. And we want something that people can recognize and automatically associate our brand with quality, integrity, love, all of our core values within our business. So that’s why we rebranded. And we took a lot of time working, doing virtual DJ events and stuff like that.”
After Akujobi retired from the service in October 2022, he decided it was time to focus more on growing the business, to which he now dedicated all his attention. Within the next year, he hopes to advance the company by doubling his team of five DJs and scheduling more events. In 2022, he and his crew played 57 events and 37 in 2021. By the end of 2023, he projects to hit nearly 70.
But more importantly, he wants to keep the business close to home. He currently works with Rachel and their children Kylee and Charles Jr, who help with event scheduling, phone calls and setting up equipment. He believes he even does the job better with them around.
“When they go to DJ events with me, I perform better,” he said. “I don’t know what it is. If I go by myself, I’m performing well, but the dashboard never ends if they go because I have that confidence now.”
And while he doesn’t expect his children to follow his path, he hopes the working opportunities he gives them will help them develop their own dreams down the road.
“I understand that this is my passion, it’s not their passion,” he said. It’s not what they want to do in life. As long as I understand that, then there’s a healthy boundary there.”
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 42 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
