“If you like Calamari, you’ll like my music,” jokes singer-songwriter Zara Ahmed. “No, but seriously – if you like Josh Ritter or a girl with a guitar who is not just your average, angst-filled girl with guitar, then you’ll like my music.”

Zara Ahmed has been writing music since she was seventeen years old. She started out at her parents’ house in Oakville, Ontario and has wound up in Montreal, Quebec. Zara describes her sound as “garage-folk with lusty undertones.” This is true about her first EP, Reasons for Seasons, which also had a melancholic and eerie vibe to it. However, Zara feels like those vibes have been replaced with an overall hopeful feeling on her new EP (still unnamed), set for release this spring. It’s the perfect tone for an EP released in a season associated with change, renewal and rebirth.

Zara is no stranger to metaphors. I first met her, over five years ago, in a beginner’s poetry class at Concordia University. Her writing struck me immediately. It was clear she had immense talent and I’m convinced that her love for poetry enriches every one of her songs.  She credits Concordia’s Creative Writing program for her ability to edit and her commitment to releasing the best version of her work. “The workshops helped me understand that the first version of something isn’t always the best one. By being forced to draft things five or six times I was given a greater appreciation for the entire writing process.”

According to Zara, “all songs are love songs.” But in my opinion, hers are much more. They are vast and mysterious, they are philosophical and they are truly concerned with the bigger picture. She swears that on her new EP, the songs are more accessible and straightforward. Her head was in a different place while writing these new songs and she has lots more figured out.

She describes her new EP as “a little bit more mature, as so much of it has to do with picking yourself up after tough times when the last album was a way for me to grieve over some things that had happened. It was the only language I had to do that with and I poured a lot into it. This EP isn’t coming from such a place of catharsis”.

Zara imagines her audience as “people who love telling stories and who love hearing stories”.  Her intricate, lyric driven music is best listened to in a setting as intimate as a house party amongst friends. During shows, she is always very aware of her audience and talks to them between songs. She once went as far as admitting that she forgot the words and her honesty won her some laughter as well as a round of applause. Not too long ago, one of Zara’s songs was performed in a different forum, still intimate in it’s own way.

She was approached by an old friend, now an accomplished choreographer, who was interested in using the song Millenarian in a ballet.  The dance was choreographed for a group of girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen for a youth festival in Vancouver, BC. Zara was in awe. She boasts, “they just did such an amazing job of bringing it to life. I couldn’t even believe it was my song.  It became their song. It was such a fantastic gift to be able to see something you’ve worked on in your room take shape in that way. Especially because Millenarian is a very personal song for me. It’s hard for me to even play it at shows.”

What Zara loves to play at shows is an old favourite, Spiders, that gets tons of requests. She also loves to cover Josh Ritter, Cat power and Neil Diamond. According to Zara, the most memorable show she has ever played was “probably the Montreal release party for Reasons for Seasons. People had come out from Toronto, from Kingston and all over the place. It was a pretty long set. At the end of the show everyone gave me a standing ovation. I spotted my sister who had traveled quite a long way to see me and I just started happily weeping. In my embarrassment at weeping I turned around abruptly which caused my guitar to smack me in the face and cut my lip.”

Zara is an independent artist and she takes pride in it. She tells me that, “there is something very humbling about having to book your own shows and book your own gear and having to take the greyhound to shows because you don’t have a van.” That being said, she admits it can be a real energy drain and definitely sees the allure in having an agent, manager or distributor.

Zara will be touring parts of Canada after the release of her EP and is excited to play some of her newest creations. Her favourite song off of the new EP is Pabna, named after a place in Bangladesh where her mother is from. She tells me she’s very proud of this particular song because, “it publicly acknowledges that my family has stories that are not just from here. They’re Canadian and they’re happy to be Canadian, but they are also other things. I think it’s really important to recognize that because I’ve not recognized it for so long.”

Zara is also excited to play a reworked version of a song she has been playing for awhile. Afterparty, in its newest reincarnation is “quite the rock anthem.” Zara explains, “I love rocking out and I don’t often. But I dream of owning leather trousers when I play Afterparty.”

When asked where she sees herself in ten years, Zara says she’d love to be “teaching in some sort of liberal arts college, but still touring and hopefully writing music for alternative performances, whether dance or the theatre.” She is currently directing a version of Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and it’s reminded her of how much she loves theatre and would really love to write music for theatre at some point.

It’s clear that Zara Ahmed is much more than just another girl with a guitar. She is a real lover of the written word, translating that passion into some very powerful music. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already. You can give her a listen at www.myspace.com/zarazara and keep checking back for news on her new EP and Canadian tour.

Image property of WOMAN.ca 

Hayley Brehl
		About the author:
		Hayley Brehl obtained her BA in English and Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal. Living there she met designer, Andy The-Anh and assisted him on her days off from poetry class.  That’s when everything changed. She moved back to Toronto and began pursuing a career in fashion. Her favorite things are wedge heels, Indian take-out and her Persian kitten, Moe.
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