CBC Quebec is highlighting individuals from the province’s Black communities who’re giving again, inspiring others and serving to to form our future. These are the 2024 Black Changemakers.
It may be exhausting to maintain up with Malik Shaheed.
The Montrealer has worn loads of totally different hats throughout his lifetime — too many to depend.
On the age of 14, he ran a barbershop out of his house with individuals lining up for $5 haircuts. He is labored as a DJ, a celebration promoter and a youth basketball coach.
For almost a decade, he was the face of Hip Hop, a weekly present on the now-defunct MusiquePlus tv channel that aired rap music movies, interviews and offered Quebecers with a window into the tradition at a key second in its historical past.
As huge of a deal as MusiquePlus was on the time, Shaheed says he by no means let the publicity get to his head.
“Working at MusiquePlus, which was actually an all-francophone, predominantly white atmosphere, I used to be capable of nonetheless keep my Blackness and my realness,” he stated.
WATCH | Shaheed interviews Montreal rap artist Le Connaisseur in 2000:
For almost twenty years, Shaheed has been operating the Youth Stars Basis, a non-profit group that organizes camps and actions for kids.
He additionally serves as a commissioner for the Lester B. Pearson Faculty Board (LBPSB), maintaining the council conscious of the results that insurance policies can have on college students of various backgrounds, particularly Black youth.
As a MusiquePlus host, Shaheed typically launched himself utilizing a nickname that caught to him properly after his run on the station: Versatile.
“I simply felt that ‘versatile’ actually embodied who I used to be and it nonetheless represents what I’m at present.”
Whatever the challenges he takes on, Shaheed is pushed by his need to attach with individuals and his promise to remain true to himself — a byproduct of his upbringing in one of many metropolis’s historic neighbourhoods.
‘Rising up in Burgundy’
Little Burgundy was one of many earliest Black settlements in Canada and was as soon as generally known as “Harlem of the North,” as a result of its vibrant jazz scene.
As a baby, if Shaheed wasn’t on the Negro Group Centre (NCC), he was on the Garvey Institute, which had been launched by the Common Negro Enchancment Affiliation (UNIA) and bore the title of Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey.
Garvey was identified for his Black nationalist and pan-Africanist ideology.
The poverty in Little Burgundy was apparent, however Shaheed additionally remembers a group that was tight and functioned like one huge neighbourhood household.
“These individuals have been very, very strict, very West Indian,” he stated with a smile, describing the tutors and different grownup figures he encountered at totally different group organizations.
As examples, he pointed to the sister of Oliver Jones — a legendary Jazz musician who can also be from Little Burgundy — being his ukulele trainer. He nonetheless respectfully refers to a Mr. Parrish who taught woodwork and “did not fiddle.”
“Everybody was like household. You needed to be mannerly, you needed to be respectful or if not, somebody would name your home and say, ‘I noticed your son at present and he was impolite,'” he stated.
The NCC closed down in 1989 and the constructing was demolished in 2014.
“Rising up in Burgundy and actually understanding your Blackness and the significance of working 10 occasions, 20 occasions tougher than everybody else is actually the place I received that inspiration to work exhausting,” Shaheed stated.
Hip-hop in a optimistic gentle
As a celebration promoter within the mid-to-late Nineteen Nineties who partnered with Ricardo Daley, a fellow promoter, childhood good friend and mentor identified round Montreal as Rickey D, Shaheed was on the lookout for distinctive methods to unfold the phrase about their occasions.
He determined to go to MusiquePlus and distribute flyers in the course of the taping of a present known as Bouge de là, which loosely interprets to English as “transfer away from there.” Every episode, the present remodeled the MusiquePlus station right into a dance occasion venue.
Shaheed had a gaggle of dancers with him who’d launch right into a routine at any time when the occasion’s hostess would shoutout his upcoming occasion.
“They’d be dancing in a hip-hop model, a cool model in order that they’d know what kind of occasion it’s,” he recalled.
The power he dropped at the station caught the attention of one in every of its prime choice makers, and he employed Shaheed as a dance co-ordinator. The gig paid $50 per week.
When MusiquePlus launched a present targeted on hip-hop tradition, Shaheed wasn’t an apparent match for the internet hosting job as a result of his French wasn’t adequate. However his natural interviewing model and synergy with hip-hop artists was plain.
“They requested me, ‘Do you need to interview Wyclef?’ I used to be working on the YMCA so I met him on the YMCA… and it was simply chaos. It was simply loopy power,” Shaheed stated laughing, recalling his interview with Haitian-born rapper and producer Wyclef Jean.
“Wyclef is already animated, I am animated they usually had by no means seen nothing prefer it.”
Shaheed hosted Hip Hop from about 1999 to 2007 — a time the place the style was turning into the worldwide cultural power it’s at present — and interviewed heavy hitters like 50 Cent, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. The present additionally served as a serious platform for artists from throughout Quebec, the remainder of Canada and France.
Shaheed took French lessons on the facet, however his mix of French and English, identified in Quebec as franglais, helped give him a novel model.
Though hip-hop’s business energy on the time was plain, Shaheed says the media’s portrayal of the tradition was largely adverse, and he tried to counter that.
“I did not need to be a buffoon. I needed to be a proud Black particular person,” he stated. “For me, it was essential to point out the optimistic facet of hip-hop.”
Even throughout his run as a VJ on MusiquePlus, Shaheed remained lively in the neighborhood, working part-time at a number of YMCAs and occurring talking excursions to speak to college students in regards to the significance of staying in class.
“It is simply his perspective in direction of life. Having enjoyable and taking over new challenges and responding to them,” stated Rickey D, Shaheed’s lifelong good friend.
“He is all the time up for brand spanking new experiences, to work on new issues — something to make him a greater particular person.”
His non-profit group, the Youth Stars Basis, which organizes summer season camps in Montreal’s West Island, has been going robust for nearly 20 years, with its providing having change into more and more accessible for kids with disabilities.
The group has additionally organized anti-bullying and Black Historical past Month excursions.
“There are loads of similarities between a camp and producing a celebration,” Shaheed stated. “We’re one of many hottest camps within the West Island, and even in Montreal.”
Along with his Black Historical past Month tour of Montreal-area faculties, DJ Malik Shaheed, a youth advocate with The Youth Star Basis, says he hopes to encourage children and break stereotypes. His talks transcend slavery to the pre-colonial African kingdoms and empires, to highlighting the contributions of Black individuals, and even delve into using the N-word. CBC Montreal’s Debra Arbec caught up with him at Gardenview Faculty in Montreal’s Saint-Laurent borough.
Serving to the youth, in and out of doors of faculties
By 2020, Judith Kelley, the chair of the Lester B. Pearson Faculty Board (LBPSB), had already seen Shaheed in motion, impressed by his skill to get a crowd going throughout a Youth Stars occasion.
“It was very clear that he had the potential to attach with younger individuals and actually promote them within the sense of ‘you are able to do this, you’ll be able to get up in your group, you may be leaders,'” she stated, whereas playfully noting that Shaheed, away from public occasions, can really be fairly shy.
That 12 months, the LBPSB was coping with a disaster. George Floyd was murdered. And with the highlight on racism having intensified, a racist incident involving two college students at a LBPSB highschool prompted the college board to try to do extra to root out racism from its faculties.
The board recruited Shaheed to change into a co-opted member of the college board, which means he sat in on council conferences however didn’t have a proper to vote.
Throughout the next college board elections, Shaheed turned an elected commissioner and he was re-elected final 12 months.
“He’ll state in a really matter-of-fact approach: ‘What are we doing for our Black youth at Lester B. Pearson?'” Kelley stated.
“It raises the extent of dialogue and reminds us all of what we have to proceed to do.”
So far as Shaheed is anxious, “should you’re not a part of the desk, you’ll be able to’t make change.”
Generally, he says, it is only a matter of giving his colleagues totally different concepts and referring them to totally different assets.
“The Quebec Board of Black Educators has been round because the 70s, however the majority of the individuals within the college board do not know it exists,” he stated.
“I am a group man, so I’ve ears to the road and I do know what is going on on.”
Rickey D, who sees Shaheed like just a little brother, says he is not shocked by every little thing he is achieved.
“All the pieces that you simply see there includes, to a sure diploma, the Black group and past and he is all the time been an individual on the forefront of attempting to make a change,” he stated.
“He is all the time been a man who liked and appreciated what his group has given to him.”
The Black Changemakers is a particular sequence recognizing people who, no matter background or trade, are pushed to create a optimistic affect of their group. From tackling issues to exhibiting small gestures of kindness every day, these Changemakers are making a distinction and provoking others. Meet all the Changemakers here.
For extra tales in regards to the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success tales throughout the Black group — try Being Black in Canada, a CBC mission Black Canadians may be pleased with. You can read more stories here.
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