I might have an active imagination or just have spent too many hours watching CSI. But it's not long before Dubai's Cavalli Club became the new setting for my very own episode of the show.

Patiently waiting the arrival of CSI stalwart Gary Dourdan, the cleaners around me are suddenly forensic officers searching for vital clues while criminologists (bar staff stocking the fridges) study DNA samples behind.

The fashionably late arrival of top analyst Warrick Brown only fuelled my little game.

With his trademark afro hair, Dourdan nabbed the part on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation when the show was conceived in 2000 and only left last year to pursue other avenues.

The 42-year-old tells tabloid! why music is his new love, his plans to rival National Geographic and living in what he can only describe as "Hollyweird".

"It's like a battle ground for people with insecurities," he said leaning forward trying to emphasise his point. "That many egos and issues in such a small area, it's not surprising, but still, it's a difficult place to be sometimes."

Born in Philadelphia, it was music which first captured Dourdan's creative side. The son of a agent for jazz musicians, one of his first jobs was as a doorman at a recording studio where he started to mix with artists in the music world.

"I had some hard decisions to make," he said. "I played in a band in New York City, but I left to take the acting roles. My love was music, but the acting paid. I could earn in a week what I could take home as a musician and I went for it."

Giving up eating from tuna cans, his first break came when Debbie Allen snapped him up for a role on A Different World and it wasn't long before he was filming for Alien Resurrection along side Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder.

"I learnt a lot from acting, but as an actor you are powerless," he said. "The director, writer and producer have the final say and you obey. In many ways it put me in a bad place as my creative energy had no where to go."

Something Dourdan says is the main reason he went off the rails, eventually culminating in his arrest in LA last year for possession of drugs. In the same year Dourdan did not renew his contract with CSI bosses.

"Music is a better outlet," he went on. "I express myself and feel more complete."

A good job then it's a career in music, with a spot of documentary filmmaking on the side that Dourdan is now pursuing.

"I am working on a documentary which features real people around the world," he said. "National Geographic films animals in the wild — why can't we do it for humans too? There are plenty of stories out there which should be told."

As my mind wanders from my lab set to the open spaces of a savannah, I blame the animal skin-themed décor of the club.

It couldn't possibly be that I watch too much television.

We’re confused, though. Is Dourdan an actor or a musician? ‘Well, it’s not really a choice between the two. Where I come from you have to do everything that you have any talent in, just to survive as an artist,’ he explains. And looking at all the crossover artists in Hollywood, it seems like an idea that many others share – it’s hard to tell now who started where. ‘LL Cool J is doing a series and Will Smith continues to come out with hip-hop jams every now and then, as well as doing blockbuster movies, so there’s no division in the arts.’

But surely he faces some flak from people who don’t know he used to be a musician? Judging by his reaction, we seem to have touched a nerve. ‘Yeah, I do sometimes in the States,’ he admits. ‘People try to put you in a box because they’re threatened by your talent. I remember when Lenny [Kravitz] first came out, people used to talk a lot of trash about him. And kids now don’t remember, but people used to trash Prince. They’d say the worst s*** about him as an artist, and now he’s revered.’

But it’s not all bad. ‘In Europe they’ve been very supportive of me as a musician and a DJ, and I’m hoping to keep on getting in stride here [in the Middle East] because of the strong support system that I have.’ Which brings us to Bell Café Band’s pre-Halloween performance in Dubai. When asked what we can expect from the gig, he answers cryptically. ‘Some good music, definitely, and some high-jinx and adventures. I love Halloween and I’m a bit of a clown, so I might do a little dressing up.’

Doula by day

Here’s something that most don’t know about Gary Dourdan: he is a vocal supporter of natural births. We won’t go into too much detail, but Gary and his sister are doulas, aka ‘birthing assistants’ – they travel around the US speaking to people about natural births and breastfeeding. ‘You know, women have always been helping women get those kids out into the world, but for the past 60 years or so men have also been birthing babies and offering support,’ he says.

The Bell Café Band play The Cavalli Club, Oct 30, free.