Toronto’s Regent Park singer-songwriter Mustafa wins alternative album of the year at Juno Awards 2022

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At last weekend Juno Awards 2022, Regent Park community singer-songwriter Mustafa de Poet won the award for alternative album of the year. Mustafa’s 2021 debut album When Smoke Rises is a meditation on the grief he experienced after losing several friends to gun violence. 


 At the event, Mustafa said backstage.

“I am because of Regent Park. I am nothing without my community,” he told media backstage after accepting the award on opening night. “Every experience, every death, every building that was buried, every argument. It shaped me and it shaped the way that I write, and it’s the reason that I write.”

At Sunday’s Juno Awards broadcast, he went a step further to bring visibility to Regent Park, pulling up to the red carpet with an entourage of friends from his area, including rapper Lil Berete. Later that evening, for his live rendition of “Stay Alive,” those close confidantes joined Mustafa on stage to sing the final chorus of the song with him, smiling and slinging their arms around one another. It was a touching, soul-stirring moment—a moment when Regent Park, and the many communities like it, could feel seen by the rest of Canada.

“For me, Regent Park was an island, and I wanted to beautify that island as best I could. And eventually that beauty became a bridge for me; it became a bridge to every other world. And I was starting to carry that universe with me whenever I went.” Mustafa said backstage.

Ironically, Mustafa was wearing some armour of his own on Sunday—a custom-made vest with the word “poet” stitched across the chest.

The singer-songwriter, who is Muslim, said he feels Islam is in a vulnerable place, with those who practise it seen and portrayed as perpetrators, rather than victims of violence.

As a producer, the Toronto-born artist has made a name for himself in Canada and beyond, working with internationally successful pop artists like the Weeknd, Camila Cabello and Usher.

Mustafa has described his debut album, When Smoke Rises, as "inner-city folk music”, inspired by Canada's singer-storyteller greats — Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell — he tried to meld their poetic sense for songwriting with his community's underexplored narrative.


Written by
Fred Alvarado

Journalist
FOCUS Media Arts Centre



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