CBC Quebec is highlighting people from the province’s Black communities who are giving back, inspiring others and helping to shape our future. These are the 2024 Black Changemakers.
(DestaNation Creative Agency)
It can be hard to keep up with Malik Shaheed.
The Montrealer has worn a lot of different hats during his lifetime — too many to count.
At the age of 14, he ran a barbershop out of his home with people lining up for $5 haircuts. He’s worked as a DJ, a party promoter and a youth basketball coach.
For nearly a decade, he was the face of Hip Hop, a weekly show on the now-defunct MusiquePlus television channel that aired rap music videos, interviews and provided Quebecers with a window into the culture at a key moment in its history.
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As big of a deal as MusiquePlus was at the time, Shaheed says he never let the exposure get to his head.
“Working at MusiquePlus, which was really an all-francophone, predominantly white environment, I was able to still maintain my Blackness and my realness,” he said.
WATCH | Shaheed interviews Montreal rap artist Le Connaisseur in 2000:
For nearly two decades, Shaheed has been running the Youth Stars Foundation, a non-profit organization that organizes camps and activities for children.
He also serves as a commissioner for the Lester B. Pearson School Board (LBPSB), keeping the council aware of the effects that policies can have on students of different backgrounds, especially Black youth.
As a MusiquePlus host, Shaheed often introduced himself using a nickname that stuck to him well after his run at the station: Versatile.
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“I just felt that ‘versatile’ really embodied who I was and it still represents what I am today.”
Regardless of the challenges he takes on, Shaheed is driven by his desire to connect with people and his promise to stay true to himself — a byproduct of his upbringing in one of the city’s historic neighbourhoods.
Shaheed grew up near the corner of Saint-Martin and Saint-Antoine streets in Little Burgundy, a southwestern Montreal neighbourhood located near the city’s downtown core. (Antoni Nerestant/CBC)
‘Growing up in Burgundy’
Little Burgundy was one of the earliest Black settlements in Canada and was once known as “Harlem of the North,” due to its vibrant jazz scene.
As a child, if Shaheed wasn’t at the Negro Community Centre (NCC), he was at the Garvey Institute, which had been launched by the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and bore the name of Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey.
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Garvey was known for his Black nationalist and pan-Africanist ideology.
The poverty in Little Burgundy was obvious, but Shaheed also remembers a community that was tight and functioned like one big neighbourhood family.
“Those people were very, very strict, very West Indian,” he said with a grin, describing the tutors and other adult figures he encountered at different community organizations.
Historic photos of the Negro Community Centre are seen here as part of a display at Concordia University in 2017, to mark the 90th anniversary of the institution’s launch. (Ainslie MacLellan/CBC)
As examples, he pointed to the sister of Oliver Jones — a legendary Jazz musician who is also from Little Burgundy — being his ukulele teacher. He still respectfully refers to a Mr. Parrish who taught woodwork and “didn’t mess around.”
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“Everyone was like family. You had to be mannerly, you had to be respectful or if not, someone would call your house and say, ‘I saw your son today and he was rude,'” he said.
The NCC closed down in 1989 and the building was demolished in 2014.
“Growing up in Burgundy and really understanding your Blackness and the importance of working 10 times, 20 times harder than everyone else is really where I got that inspiration to work hard,” Shaheed said.
Hip-hop in a positive light
As a party promoter in the mid-to-late 1990s who partnered with Ricardo Daley, a fellow promoter, childhood friend and mentor known around Montreal as Rickey D, Shaheed was looking for unique ways to spread the word about their events.
He decided to go to MusiquePlus and distribute flyers during the taping of a show called Bouge de là, which loosely translates to English as “move away from there.” Each episode, the show transformed the MusiquePlus station into a dance party venue.
Shaheed had a group of dancers with him who’d launch into a routine whenever the party’s hostess would shoutout his upcoming party.
“They’d be dancing in a hip-hop style, a cool style so they’d know what type of party it is,” he recalled.
The energy he brought to the station caught the eye of one of its top decision makers, and he hired Shaheed as a dance co-ordinator. The gig paid $50 a week.
When MusiquePlus launched a show focused on hip-hop culture, Shaheed wasn’t an obvious fit for the hosting job because his French wasn’t good enough. But his organic interviewing style and synergy with hip-hop artists was undeniable.
“They asked me, ‘Do you want to interview Wyclef?’ I was working at the YMCA so I met him at the YMCA… and it was just chaos. It was just crazy energy,” Shaheed said laughing, recalling his interview with Haitian-born rapper and producer Wyclef Jean.
“Wyclef is already animated, I’m animated and they had never seen nothing like it.”
Shaheed hosted Hip Hop from about 1999 to 2007 — a time where the genre was becoming the global cultural force it is today — and interviewed heavy hitters like 50 Cent, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. The show also served as a major platform for artists from across Quebec, the rest of Canada and France.
Shaheed took French classes on the side, but his blend of French and English, known in Quebec as franglais, helped give him a unique style.
Although hip-hop’s commercial power at the time was undeniable, Shaheed says the media’s portrayal of the culture was mostly negative, and he tried to counter that.
“I didn’t want to be a buffoon. I wanted to be a proud Black person,” he said. “For me, it was important to show the positive side of hip-hop.”
Ricardo Daley, a legend in Montreal’s nightlife widely known as Rickey D, has been partners with Shaheed for decades and friends for even longer. Both of them grew up in Little Burgundy. (Instagram/Malik Shaheed)
Even during his run as a VJ on MusiquePlus, Shaheed remained active in the community, working part-time at several YMCAs and going on speaking tours to talk to students about the importance of staying in school.
“It’s just his attitude towards life. Having fun and taking on new challenges and responding to them,” said Rickey D, Shaheed’s lifelong friend.
“He’s always up for new experiences, to work on new things — anything to make him a better person.”
His non-profit organization, the Youth Stars Foundation, which organizes summer camps in Montreal’s West Island, has been going strong for almost 20 years, with its offering having become increasingly accessible for children with disabilities.
The group has also organized anti-bullying and Black History Month tours.
“There are a lot of similarities between a camp and producing a party,” Shaheed said. “We’re one of the hottest camps in the West Island, or even in Montreal.”
WATCH | Malik Shaheed speaks with CBC’s Debra Arbec during Black History Month tour:
Helping the youth, in and outside of schools
By 2020, Judith Kelley, the chair of the Lester B. Pearson School Board (LBPSB), had already seen Shaheed in action, impressed by his ability to get a crowd going during a Youth Stars event.
“It was very clear that he had the potential to connect with young people and really promote them in the sense of ‘you can do this, you can stand up for your community, you can be leaders,'” she said, while playfully noting that Shaheed, away from public events, can actually be quite shy.
That year, the LBPSB was dealing with a crisis. George Floyd was murdered. And with the spotlight on racism having intensified, a racist incident involving two students at a LBPSB high school prompted the school board to try and do more to root out racism from its schools.
The board recruited Shaheed to become a co-opted member of the school board, meaning he sat in on council meetings but did not have a right to vote.
During the following school board elections, Shaheed became an elected commissioner and he was re-elected last year.
Malik Shaheed has embraced his time as a commissioner with the LBPSB, saying it’s important to be sitting at the right tables to help bring about change. (Jesse Ostroff)
“He’ll state in a very matter-of-fact way: ‘What are we doing for our Black youth at Lester B. Pearson?'” Kelley said.
“It raises the level of discussion and reminds us all of what we need to continue to do.”
As far as Shaheed is concerned, “if you’re not part of the table, you can’t make change.”
Sometimes, he says, it’s just a matter of giving his colleagues different ideas and referring them to different resources.
“The Quebec Board of Black Educators has been around since the 70s, but the majority of the people in the school board don’t know it exists,” he said.
“I’m a community guy, so I have ears to the street and I know what’s going on.”
Rickey D, who sees Shaheed like a little brother, says he’s not surprised by everything he’s accomplished.
“Everything that you see there involves, to a certain degree, the Black community and beyond and he’s always been a person at the forefront of trying to make a change,” he said.
“He’s always been a guy who loved and appreciated what his community has given to him.”
The Black Changemakers is a special series recognizing individuals who, regardless of background or industry, are driven to create a positive impact in their community. From tackling problems to showing small gestures of kindness on a daily basis, these Changemakers are making a difference and inspiring others. Meet all the Changemakers here.
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
(CBC)
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