Although Vancouver’s music scene is diverse, Ricardo Pequenino hopes to see more featured BIPOC creators.
Ricardo Pequenino is a local musician who’s worked everywhere from small coffee venues to large festivals. During February, he said he usually sees an uptick in gigs, as businesses and festivals celebrate Black History Month. Pequenino said, although he’s happy for the chance to celebrate his Mozambique background, he can feel a difference when he’s hired for his talent and skill, rather than to fill a diversity quota.
When he’s hired based off merit alone, “You can really feel the appreciation of the musician appreciating you for your skills and not for how you look,” he said.
When it comes to a specific festivals for BIPOC artists, he said, “you’re declaring those things and then it feels more of like a you’re filling a quota, or you’re filling a thing that they’re looking for just right now. But I want them to be looking for that every day and not just for me, for everybody else.”
“I feel like the especially for Black History [Month], there’s like a lot of like really great options for Black people then we kind of just forget that like we’re Black people every day. It’s not just this month, right?” – Ricardo Pequenino, local musician
“Diversity is a Power”: Local art house
Zameen Art House is a local venue which hosts everything from theatre to music, with one main goal in mind, diverse programming.
Yasaman Rafiei, one of four co-founders of the space, said she has always loved different cultures, and she finds, “Diversity is power.”
“I love to know people, different cultures, learn more,” she said. “Knowing better people and knowing, their background, all the ups and downs with the situations that they have, the cultural politics, everything makes me excited.”
Rafiei said they try to schedule local and international artists alike because some international artists, although big in their own countries or regions, don’t have the same chances when they come to Canada.
“It’s important to empower emerging artists who are here in Canada but they don’t have the power that they had in their own in their own country.” She says, adding it’s “really nice to give them the opportunity to be very small venue.”
This kind of diversity is what Pequenino hopes to see in Vancouver’s music scene one day.
“We have so many music and music adjacent scenes here in Vancouver that’s unique to Vancouver,” he says, “I really appreciate as someone who’s lived here the last eight years, so I’m looking forward to seeing how not only that the whole music scene gets more diverse but how we grow.”