Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Juno Award Nominee, CBC Radio host, award-winning author and friend of the shop, Tariq Hussain. We discussed his introduction into music, family, homecomings and how a single song can impact us for the rest of our lives.
As we walked into Tariqs Mt. Pleasant apartment, he tells us about the autobiography he’s writing and the deadlines his editor has placed on his progress. He sat us down at his dining room table, water glasses already in hand.
As we prepare to begin our conversation, our gracious host ensures we're comfortoble and have everything we need.
Ricardo: Where should we even start? Your music is a big part of all this so let's start from the beginning.
It’s funny because this is exactly what I'm currently working on in my book. I guess my interest in music began with my mom, she really loved music. She came from Fiji as an immigrant and brought a bunch of albums when she came over and she would play those albums for me all the time while I was growing up.
I got interested in listening to music through that but my interest became more serious in high school when I crossed paths with some guys that were the stereotypical school musician types: long hair, they’d carry their guitars everywhere, you know the type. And well, I asked them if they would teach me how to play and they did. I would only do cover songs in the beginning y’know, and I’d imitate all my favorite people. I would sing Neil Young songs and things like that but then eventually I would start writing my own.
I didn’t actually study music in university, I was more of a theater kid. But after university I thought ‘I’m just going to try this music thing full time’ and went from there. I really loved writing songs. That’s the aspect that interested me the most at the time, writing the lyrics.
Ricardo: I’ve always found that, the older people get, the more they revert to their parent's taste in music. Whatever your parents listened to when you were a kid, that's the stuff you grow to love later into adulthood. Personally, I need to listen to old latin music when I clean my apartment on Sundays because that’s what my mom would do. I'm curious, what type of music would your mom play for you?
She had a vinyl record collection; mind you it’s not very big but it is mostly Indian records and one Fijian record of traditional music. I actually have it here, if you’d like to see it?
Ricardo: Yes, please! I would love to see it.
Tariq leaves the table momentarily and gathers the records from his office down the hall. He comes back with a stack of about ten vinyl records, carefully placed inside plastic slips.
Some of these she brought with her from Fiji and some of them her mother sent to her after she was already here. It’s a lot of Bollywood movie soundtracks. She really liked that type of music; but that one and only Fijian record is completely different from everything else. Fijian music is very choral. Similar to maybe Hawaiian or Polynesian music in its instrumentation.
What is really cool is that my sister and I just went to Fiji for the first time ever this past May and a lot of these songs that we grew up listening to in Canada, we would just hear them played at bars or restaurants. A lot of the songs on that album are traditional so naturally, people still sing them all the time. They are institutional to the canon of Fijian culture in a way. So the entire time while we were down there my sister and I would go ‘Oh my God, there’s that song!
Ricardo: Hearing those songs must have been a crazy feeling.
Yeah, really cool! Actually the first time it happened was when the plane landed in Fiji. You know how sometimes they turn music on in the cabin after you land? Well, this one song on the record that my mom used to love singing starts playing. I’m looking at my sister next to me and I really thought I was going to lose it at that moment.
It was weirdly emotional landing there. I didn’t think it was going to be but we got there and it just hits us like ‘oh my god’. My mom passed away in 2019, so one of the reasons for the trip was to go back and try to reconnect with her roots and all that. So between landing in Fiji, looking out the window of the airplane, the trees, the ocean and the music playing; it all brought my mom back in a really hard and fast way.
Ricardo: Oh my god, that’s really beautiful. It must have felt like a real homecoming for you and your sister. Almost like being welcomed home to Fiji by your mother herself.
That’s exactly how it felt while we were there. You know, I’m not too woo woo about things but it did sometimes feel like, ‘well that was an odd coincidence’ that made me wonder if my mothers spirit was around, listening.
Ricardo: It's crazy the emotions that music can evoke, especially when it's so closely tied with the memories of a loved one. It can bring them right back; as if they're there with you.
That’s the weird thing about music. It's fun to talk about that because this is partly what I'm trying to explore in my writing. What is the connection that music has, or what is the power that it has beyond, you know - career aspirations or wanting to be famous; the things that are more commonly associated with the music industry. It’s so much deeper than that. It is very cultural and personal. Those other things will fade away or rip you off but the true heart of it all lies within those deeper connections that we have to music. The things that will never fade away and the things that you couldn’t run away from even if you wanted to.
Ricardo: Is that a big topic in your book?
Yeah. I think it’s about that and about that type of connection. Like a discovery or search for the value of creativity and music in terms of that thing, that connection to someone that you care about.
