Zameer Rizvi, a musician that bonded with disabled athletes in Vancouver Olympics 2010
For usual reasons, Zameer Rizvi’s parents weren’t too excited about his interest in music making. He has an electrical engineering degree with specialty in musical mathematics and auditory scene analysis.
Zameer Rizvi, a musician and a performer, describes himself as “I make music. I may suck. I may be great. Either way, I don’t give a f***. I’ve dedicated my life to this. Hopefully you take a minute to hear me out.”
Many young South Asian performers pursue a university degree but perform as artists. Many of these young performers have academic qualifications as something to fall back on if the career as a performer doesn’t work. Zameer Rizvi has a different take to all of this. “University and college are simply designed to teach people a pragmatic approach to pursuing their interests. It’s a methodology that one can apply to any field of interest. I learned how be analytical through the art of math. I applied that analytical thinking to my music. For a performer, I feel that attaining a degree in the arts is as important as attaining a degree in sciences. They both teach the same principles in vastly differing ways,” he tells Generation Next.
With so many young artists releasing their records on youtube and other social media, their music loses any touch with the audience within a very short span of time. Zameer opines “most of today’s hip hop artists are just maintenance staff enslaved in the trends of a strong industry. That’s why most of their songs live a short lifespan and die after a few weeks..people love hip-hop like sliced bread, and will consume it even if it’s bad.”
For Zameer, his experiences are his inspirations for producing music. “I like my compositions to come purely from my feelings from within.”
When it comes to his personal identity, Zameer is as much a Canadian as he is a South Asian.
“My parents are Pakistani. But I have lived in Canada, spoken North American tongue, had Canadian friends and co-workers, and studied/worked in North American institutions more than South Asian..Canada is home for me, but my home within Canada is South Asian. It’s all messed up, but I love it.”
“The need to fit in is a pretty big issue that youth face pretty ubiquitously. This need to fit in has a severe effect on that person’s outlook on life,” Zameer tells us in response to a question about what the issues of today’s generation are?
As far as marriage is concerned, “I will have a love marriage, but I don’t see anything wrong with an arranged marriage for some people. I actually think it’s kind of romantic and hot to marry someone you’ve only met once!” Zameer tells us.
In today’s youth, the passion to give back to community is intensely ingrained. For some music is fun and for some it can be used to pursue some serious change in the society. Zameer believes “the moment you recognize that your music can influence another human’s feelings; you immediately are burdened with a responsibility. I like to take this responsibility seriously, an example of which is my partnership with athletes with disabilities during the 2010 Olympic Games. I also make sure I connect with various charities and perform at fundraising events for causes that I believe in.”
Zameer Rizvi is a musician whose music, in the words of 5-time Grammy winning producer Steve Thompson, is “honest, sincere and believable”. Zameer is best known for his debut single ‘Win or Defeat’ that was selected as a theme song by the 2010 Paralympics and performed at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Zameer can be reached at http://zameermusic.com/.
