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Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, Taha is the New Music Monday highlight!
Taha Qureshi is a Victoria-based musician who moved here from Dubai, UAE, to pursue an education at UVic, but also to really discover himself and his identity as a queer man.
This January, he released his very first single, “Something We Laugh About.”
Taha says that Victoria is the place he found his community, and playing music was a huge part of that.
He describes himself as “gayer than a handpicked fruit basket” and that Dubai is not a safe place for people like him.
“The way I started songwriting was basically a way of processing my feelings,” Taha told Victoria Buzz.
“I started writing when I was 18 and that was back in Dubai… I lived there and I was in the closet, writing about being stuck in the closet and trying to figure out a way out.”
He moved to Victoria in 2019 and continued writing music about his experiences as a queer man, but here he was able to come out.
“The only way I was able to process was with my guitar,” he added.
Taha kept playing and writing through the pandemic, but mostly just for himself and his friends until some of the people who heard his music started to push him to pursue music more seriously.
Shortly after shutdowns were over, Taha started playing more open mic nights and putting himself out there.
It was also around this time that Taha knew he wanted to stay in Canada rather than return to Dubai because it is safer here for him as a gay man.
He began the arduous and nuanced process of seeking asylum because of his identity as a queer man and was told by a lawyer that the best chance he had was to be loud and proud about who he is.
Taha put on a one-man show at Felicitas on the UVic campus as a way to put himself out there and play his music for as many people as possible.
“I just needed my story to be heard,” Taha explained.
“I got up on stage to an entirely packed Felicitas and just told my story and that kind of got the ball rolling for me with people knowing who I was and that I played music.”
Soon after the one-man show, Taha met local producer Daniel Sar through a work colleague and the two of them decided to collaborate on bringing his songs to life.
“I went in [with Daniel] not knowing anything about how you turn a voice recording on a phone from a song written in my bedroom into a fully produced dance-pop anthem,” he said.
Sar helped Taha navigate the process and helped guide the song into the direction that Taha had envisioned. Through their collaboration, the song “Something We Laugh About” was born.
He says this song in particular was written near the beginning of 2024 and was prompted by the bittersweet ending of a romantic relationship.
“It came from it being sort of, like a very healthy breakup,” Taha explained.
“Me and the person met up three days after we broke up and debriefed our breakup in a Tim Hortons with each other.”
“[I] made a Snap and I texted it to my friend with the caption ‘When you meet up three days after a breakup to debrief the breakup and laugh about it.’”
Taha says that this healthy, amicable breakup inspired him to write about the short-lived relationship and also to reflect on some of the other relationships in his life.
The song turned out dancey and fun, and is certainly a song that makes one want to dance along with their friends, which is exactly what Taha wanted from it.
Preview “Something We Laugh About” below:
You can also find “Something We Laugh About” on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Taha says there is more music to come as he and Sar continue to collaborate and hopes to put out a full EP later this year.
For the time being, he is focussed on recording but says he is really hoping to be able to perform at Victoria’s Pride celebration.
To stay up-to-date with everything Taha, follow him on Instagram.
Related:
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
Taha says he has been in and out of the CFUV headquarters through his time at UVic and has gotten to participate in a few programs they run.
“They are all so kind and caring and I love the camaraderie,” he explained.
“As an artist it feels like every time I walk in there, I have walked out feeling uplifted.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Taha in the comments below.
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