#269 Irish Heritage Month Through A South Asian Lens

We connect Irish Heritage Month to a bigger story about diaspora, resilience, and how communities build belonging across borders. We travel from South Asians in Ireland to Delhi To Dublin’s genre-blending sound, then land in Canada’s music scene with a practical primer on the Junos and who to watch.

• Irish Heritage Month as celebration and reflection on diaspora
• Irish migration to Canada and the racism Irish communities faced
• Early South Asian presence in Ireland through sailors and medical schools
• Anti-colonial solidarity between Ireland and South Asia
• Yeats and Tagore as a cultural bridge across empires
• Modern South Asian life in Ireland including community growth and anti-racism needs
• Leo Varadkar and what representation signals about belonging
• Delhi To Dublin as proof you can hold multiple cultures at once
• Why the Junos exist through CanCon and Canadian music policy
• South Asian Music Recording Of The Year nominees and why it matters
• Alberta shout-outs including Noella Charles and other local nominees

Thank you for listening, you can hear Ravia every Thursday on 97.9 FM or through our live-stream at www.theuniversalradio.com

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, welcome to the Universal Radio Network Podcast. This is Ravia, and in today's episode, I'm talking about Irish Heritage Month and the Junos. Two days ago was St. Patrick's Day, the 17th of March, and we got to see a lot of Irish traditions, Irish vibes go through our city. There was green beer, shamrock labels, little pins, and suddenly 4.5 million Canadians were like, Yeah, we're Irish too. Um, so there's a huge Irish diaspora in Canada. So I'm gonna be talking about Irish Heritage Month. This is Canada's official designation for the entire month of March. Excitingly, it was declared in 2022 by the House of Commons. So this is new. So today we get to talk about the celebration, but also about reflection. And we get to see what the Irish have brought to Canada, but also for culture, South Asia. What are where are those threads and how do they how can we weave them? How do they all get together and what what are we gonna get? So today I'm with you. We are listening to the Universal Radio Network. And before you think, like, oh no, why is she talking about Ireland? This is the wrong station. You're not on the wrong station. I'm gonna be talking about South Asians because Irish Heritage Month isn't just about Irish people, and this, you know, segment this evening, I'm gonna prove it. So Irish Heritage Month at its core is about diaspora. And I love talking about diaspora. That's my thing. It's about people who left a country they loved, sometimes by choice, often by necessity. And in the case of the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, uh, it was a desperate survival instinct that caused people to move to new places and build new lives in a nation that was at first uncertain whether they wanted them. So there was a lot of racism that Irish folks faced in Canada as well. Uh-oh, this cold weather is really getting to my throat. Like this rain is ooh, messing with me. But that's what I'm gonna be talking about today is how so many people moved here and built their lives here, and then you know, helped us understand this like place of being Canadian. There's Irish people, there's people from South Asian descent. So, what are some South Asian and Irish tracks come to mind? Are or do you have any that come to mind? There is one that I always think about, and it is Delhi to Dublin. We have three interlocking threads that I'm gonna be weaving throughout today's show. They're not random, but first we're gonna talk about South Asians in Ireland, a community's roots that go back further than most people know, from Victorian-era sailors from this uh term they have Celtic Tiger Engineers, from Yates, one of those famous Irish poets, to De Gore, a famous Indian poet. These stories of South Asian community in Ireland have influenced each other in very interesting and fun ways. So, this thread, the number one thread, is gonna let us know what happens when two post-colonial peoples find each other and decide to stay and decide to figure out what like what can they share with each other that makes sense. And the second thing, we just listened to some Deli to Dublin. They are a Canadian band from Vancouver who have spent 20 years making the case from their festival stage, from their dole beats, with their fiddle, that you don't have to choose between your sounds or your culture to feel like you are one person. They mix bangra and Celtic music together, not because someone said, like, hey, this is a good idea, but it was literally a happenstance moment that created the the Delhi to Dublin band. So I'll be talking a little bit more about that later. But they are right now on their 20th anniversary Canadian tour this month, and they actually played in St. Albert six days ago and Cameros a couple days ago. Like they were right here, which is really cool. And I am really sorry that I didn't get to go to those concerts. But the next thing I'm gonna talk about today is the 2026 Juno Awards. I'm just gonna give you a small primer of what to look out for. And this year, for the third time, there is a dedicated South Asian music recording of the year category, which is so exciting. And there are a few Punjabi Canadian artists on the fan choice conversation. Uh, obviously, with like the Justin Bieber and Tay McCray's of the world, there are a lot of like Albertans, I'll also talk about, and another um uh Edmontonian artist that I'm really excited to talk about. So these three things are like, you know, kind of seeming random, like random, but I am talking about diaspora. I'm not talking about like, you know, I'm I want to talk about diaspora without the hyphens. We're not we're not gonna talk about this is Irish, this is South Asian. We're talking about an inheritance of resilience, of creativity, and cultural richness that when you give it like space to be creative and grow, it creates really interesting things like Delhi to Dublin or Epi Delon that started in a garage in BC, or Leo Vredgar in Taoisich's office and produces music. Okay, I messed up. I need to tell you guys something. It is the second year that there's a dedicated South Asian music recording of the year category at the Juno's, which I'll be talking about later today. Not the third year, the second year. But you know, we'll keep this category going, and in the third year, I'll talk be talking about it still. So let's get into what I want to talk about is Ireland, somewhere unexpected. Not just because it's Irish Heritage Month, but well, the timing's no accident. I did plan this, but because the story of South Asians in Ireland is a story our community could really, it's really interesting, and we really need to know. It's a story of recognition. It's finding your experience reflected in someone else's history, what happens when two people, both shaped very severely by British colonialism and imperialism, encounter each other on a small green island on the edge of the Atlantic and discover, hey, we have a lot in common, actually. And not even just on Ireland, but also in other places like Canada. So the South Asian community in Ireland is pretty big, 130,000 people in a country of 5 million. I think that's like pretty significant. It's visible, it's there. They have like the volley parades, they do all of the you know cultural stuff. They're one of their cricket teams is majority Pakistani. Like there's like they have like local cricket teams. And I was reading somewhere that there is like a huge South Asian presence, obviously. Well, in cricket, a fun favorite sport of South Asians, and again, influenced by colonialism. So great. Anyways, the first South Asians. Let's talk about who were the first South Asians to set foot in Ireland. So they didn't arrive as immigrants that had like suitcases and job offers, they were sailors. So South Asian seamen working on British merchant vessels were in the 18th and 19th centuries were called Lascars. I don't know if that's how it's said. I did look it up, but Lascars is what we're gonna go with. So they were ships carrying goods between the British Empire's possessions. So, like they were like, hey, let's take our stuff from Delhi to Cork to Dublin to Waterford to Belfast. And the men who crewed these ships were overwhelmingly South Asian from Bengal, Gadrath, and the coasts of what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh. They were paid much less than European soldiers, but they were rarely allowed shore leave. But when they were, some of them did actually end up living there. So Ireland saw South Asian faces before it saw a car, before it saw an airplay, before it saw a radio broadcast, which is kind of interesting. In the Victorian era, a more visible but small wave of people arrived. So the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland became one of the most internationally diverse medical schools in the world. It was founded in 1784, and students came from India, from Pakistan, all over the world, from across the subcontinent in particular, seeking qualifications that would maybe take them back. Some of those students stayed, some married Irish partners, they built Irish South Asian families, and often an interesting thing that I read in one of these things was that they would bring an Irish accent back home. So they would speak English with an Irish accent, like in India. That like I thought that was like a really interesting visual. Like, I wonder if there's people speaking like Punjabi or like Telugu with an Irish accent. I would love to hear it. This little segment I'm gonna give you is a nice juicy understanding of poets and people that were revolutionaries that worked against British colonialism to find similarities. And there was this, you know, you've probably heard of the Irish independence movement. It is proof that British colonialism could be beaten. So people that were trying to free South Asia, pardon me, oh my gosh, that were trying to free South Asia from the British colonial rule were finding solidarities in Ireland. So Eamon de Valera was a man who became Ireland's first Tayshaw. Irish words are really hard to pronounce. I had to look up how to pronounce this. It is written as Tao Siege, but it's pronounced Tayshaw. This is something we learn every day. So this means kind of like a boss, a chief who had survived um one of the major like uprisings and he spent years in British prisons. He spoke repeatedly about the solidarity of colonized peoples. And in 1936, Joarald Al Nehru, who was a freedom fighter and later became a leader of India, the man who would become the first of India's first prime minister, he traveled to Dublin specifically to meet de Valera. He was studying models of resistance, of governance, and what a post-colonial state could look like. Ireland, 14 years free of British rule, was a living laboratory for Duwarl al Neuru to look at. And what he said in 1936 was was interesting. He said, I have always admired the Irish people's struggle for freedom and felt a kinship with it. The Irish did what we in India are trying to do. And he said this when he was in Dublin. De Valera, in turn, was a vocal supporter of Indian independence. Ireland was among the first nations to congratulate India when it became independent in 1947. In the 50s and 60s, both countries voted together repeatedly at the UN. So there's all of this, like, you know, international law, uh, foreign policy that was in line uh at the very, very same time. And I think while this like political story is interesting, I want to talk about poetry. In 1912, so this is pre pre like you know both countries getting freedom uh from the British, at a dinner party in London, William Butler Yates, one of the greatest living poets, no longer living, rest in peace, but one of the greatest poets of Ireland gave a speech called The Second Coming and wrote about the Lake of Isle of Innes Free, and he said, Oh, sorry, and more. So he read, pardon me, he basically wrote a lot of poet po poetry in the English language, and he was introduced to Rabindranath Tagore. So if you're not familiar with Rabindranath Tagore, he's a famed Bengali poet, composer, and artist from Calcutta. He I believe he also wrote the Indian National Anthem. He's like a very influential figure. And William Butler Yates and Rabindranath Tagore were reading each other. So they were figuring out what happened, what was what the other person is reading. But basically, in a series of events, they ended up like kind of competing each other, uh, but like trying to like introduce each other in their like manuscripts. So when people were writing at the time, they'd be like, Hey, can you uh can you like give me a shout out in the beginning of your book? So in 1913, Rabindranath Dagore apparently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and it was apparently saying that Yates' introduction had carried the work into the English-speaking world. So Yates gave an introduction to Rabindranath Tagore's like book, and that gave it this like you know, this oom for people who were like, Oh, I want to read this guy. And then he won a Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the first non-Europeans to receive this honor, which is really cool. And what do we want to see? What does Yates see in Tagore's work? He saw a poet from the other side of the world writing about humanity, about being like how a human is being bypassed by modernity. He saw Tagore's India, a spiritual richness. He saw about how there was like this stark difference between industrialization in the West, but like also this deep love for the place that you're in while you feel like you're being left behind. Both men were engaged in a very similar project where they were recovering something ancient and irreplaceable from the noise of the modern world. They were doing work in different languages, but when they met, they knew it uh like immediately. So there's also like one fun fact I want to give uh about language is the structural language fact of Irish language, Gaelic, and Sanskrit, which is what like the a lot of South Asian languages are based from. They're both men members of an Indo-European language family that descended from proto-langu-European languages. So thousands of years ago, these languages were inherited in these different ways, and as they traveled through continents, they became Gaelic and Sanskrit. So that's my fun fact about these like two poets that were friends, gave each other shout-outs, and and one ended up winning, you know, uh a Nobel Peace Prize. And there's these Irish South Asian like friendships that exist throughout history, and we'll keep talking about these. So I'm gonna dive right into talking about the modern community in Ireland today. 130,000 South Asians making up uh their population, and there's a huge like you know, you look at like population demographics, they give you these like crazy graphs and you don't really understand them. But this one is pretty straightforward. You're like, okay, there was not a lot of immigration, and then in 1990s, there was this thing the economists called the Celtic Tiger, which was when Ireland's Celtic uh economy started opening up, started welcoming more immigrants. And in that time, in the 1990s, the first major wave of South Asian professionals, software engineers, doctors, la la la ended up moving and choosing Ireland as their European base. And the healthcare sector drew Indian and Pakistani doctors and nurses on a large scale, and then students were pipelined in uh and they had been getting into like these uh medical schools that also give you international training opportunities. So they gave gave up all of their like you know livelihoods in South Asia, moved to Ireland for many reasons, maybe many of the reasons why many of us or our families moved to Canada for quality of life, opportunity, making a name, and then they chose to stay. But sometimes they also chose to move again, again and again, as we see in many phases of the Indian South Asian diaspora. So these networks that we see, they are happening through word of mouth. There's like Indian families in Corks that are like connected to like, you know, let's sorry, in the city of Cork. They could be connected to someone in Karachi, they could be connected to someone in Dublin. They are all very similar. So I'm just with this like building of networks, I'm just trying to set the scene of how it is similar in the way that immigrant communities are in Canada, in the way that there is a lot more intermiggling, a lot more like friendship, at least at the beginning phases of communities moving to a place, because they do see themselves as a minority. And I don't think it was easy for a lot of these communities because for much of the histories, uh, Ireland was one of the most homo ethnically homogenous societies in Europe. And when South Asians began arriving in larger numbers, there were actually a lot of racist incidents. So there was workplace discrimination, children in schoolyards had were made fun of. So this is what happens when we move. This this is like, you know, one of those stories that we hear in Canada, in the US, and many other places. So it became unfortunately, Ireland has like in recent times and across the world, has seen a rise in activity targeting immigrant communities, including South Asians. So there were protests outside of hotels that were housing asylum seekers in 2023 and 2024, some of them which turned violent. Uh so they were a jarring reminder that like the warm congratulatory vibe of Irish multiculturalism hasn't, you know, found a way to live with like all of the people there. There's still a lot of stuff stuff going on that we're unpacking. So South Asian community leaders in Ireland have become vocal about the need for more structural integration, more anti-racism education, and state commitment to making a second generation feel wholly Irish just as anyone. But like it overall, the arc of like, you know, all this stuff goes towards belonging, and we see a lot of like intermixing. So in 2017, Leo Vardegar became the Tayshe, so the person who is like the uh the leader of Ireland. He is a son of an Indian father from Maharashtra and an Irish mother, the youngest person to hold that office in Irish history, the first person of South Asian heritage. And for a country that had been, you know, within living memory, been like homogeneously white, uh, and honestly, a lot of Catholic, you know, rural Irish men were the ones that were ruling. Having Leo Vredgar becoming the Tayshe was a big deal. So if this was like uh, you know, in 2017, there's a you know, still a lot of work to be done. But the fact that there is a person of mixed ancestry being accepted as Irish is is a big deal, I would say. And there are South Asian people today uh in Ireland that have never lived anywhere else. You know, they have the Irish accents and they be like they don't they don't see themselves anything else but Irish. They see, and I see that a lot of Canadians that I see um living in Canada, we feel that too. I'm gonna dive into Delhi to Dublin and how the Tabla and the Dole come together and become all of these sounds that we get to listen to. In 2006, a bunch of people got together, put on a one-night performance, and ended up having a 20-year career as musicians. Imagine that. Imagine you and your friends are just hanging out one day and you're like, I want to start doing something, and it just like ends up going well and becomes like a like a career for you. So in 2006, a group of musicians that I'm talking about, right, right, right, uh got together for a performance at Celtic Fest. The combination was not expected, it was kind of strange. A thubla, a dole, uh Celtic fiddle with Punjabi vocals, banger rhythms, and Irish beats. They called themselves Delhi to Dublin. Two cities, one band, and none and not based in either of those cities. They were in Vancouver, they performed. So they performed in Vancouver, but the audience loved them. The audience went crazy. And 20 years later, they are on their 20th anniversary Canadian tour. And as I said earlier, they played in Sound Albert a few days ago, and they played in Camrose two days ago, and they are at this moment on the road in Canada, um, playing the music that they invented, kind of like just like a bunch of friends hanging out came up with this thing. They they are like living that moment. They are going across Canada, playing this music, so fun. And what they are doing with their music is like a subcontinental pot moment, right? Like they are moving across continents, and I do think it's one of the most interesting, fun, like Canadian genres that we see because it refuses to be one thing. It refuses to be, I mean, it refuses to be like split open and become multitudes of things. It's like, hey, I am one thing, this is me, I am Delhi to Dublin, I'm gonna be doing my thing. So in 2006, they had their like first concert, it was a hit, people love them, and in 2007, they had their debut album that came out that reached number three on Canadian world music charts, which is pretty cool. Number three is pretty high. They remixed follow-up and reached, so they their remixed follow-up reached number one, which is a big deal, and they have they've done over a hundred shows a year. And when I was looking on um, like I was doing a little bit of research and people were like commenting on videos and stuff, they were like, Oh, MG, I saw them perform at my elementary school, and I've been their like biggest fan. So they've been like, you know, a grassroots like band, and they've been hanging out and really mixing cultures and showing what happens when you bring beautiful sounds together into a room and just like try to create like a sound and like have fun with like your differences, but also make it feel kind of the same. So here's why I'm gonna tell you why Delia Dublin are the right band for us, and I think they're very significant of like, you know, like March, all of this stuff, and not just because they're like, you know, traveling around Alberta this week and because they're short, like your name is like a shorthand for basically what I'm talking about, but I think they are musical proof of the argument that I try to make every single week. So, um, in Bangra, the pe the musical tradition that is at the heart of Delhi de Dublin's Down comes from harvest festivals of Punjab, as many of us know. And it was like brought first to the UK by South Asian immigrants. And a lot of like you know, Canadians get into it, and in the GTA, there's a lot, and now we know that there's like across Canada, there's a huge baggage music community, like that's making it, that's dancing to it. And then on the other hand, we have Celtic music, so that is has its own diaspora story. So we have migrants that came from Ireland and Scotland to the Maritimes, where there's you know Cape Breton fiddle music, Irish and Scottish traditions that like have that built in, and then to the Irish Valley, like sorry, Ottawa Valley, where Irish Irish immigrants built communities around music. And when we see Delhi to Dublin, we see both of those like legacies being put into the same room, and it creates recognition of like how people are experiencing all of these inheritances of culture, which is so exciting. 10 days from now, we have the 55th annual Juno Award. That's 10 days, right? March 29th. Yep, March 29th in Hamilton, also known as Hammertown, if you didn't know. Uh, I learned this when I visited there a few years ago. Uh, the Juno Awards will be held, which is really exciting, on Sunday, March 29th. And you can watch it on CBC, on television, or you can stream on CBC Gem. You can also watch Sobreath is probably gonna be doing some content live, which will be really exciting. But there's like a lot of places you can find it, so keep posted on the Universal Radio Network like socials. So follow at the Universal Radio Network to keep track with that. We'll be on the ground, which is really exciting. But before we get to the Junos in 10 days, I want to give us a little bit of a primer about why the Juno's are so cool and why they matter. Because they started out of like trying to make Canada's music scene a scene because there was some risks involved. Now I'll I'll dive into the story right now. So it's the year after Woodstock, you know, that like huge life-changing music festival. Uh, it's 1970. Uh the Beatles break up uh in that year, uh, and Canadian music was being drowned out of its own radio stations by the sounds coming from the Sounds of the Border, but also from the UK. So these this like this background is what started this Canadian content regulations that happened. So Pierre Junot, who gave his name to the Juneau Awards, introduced Canadian content regulations in 1971, and that's why we have to play a certain percentage of Canadian music on this radio station. Uh, but he believed if Canadian music wasn't protected, it would be drowned out. And Canadian radio had to play Canadian music for that. So he built it in onto that infrastructure. And it's funny how these like rules that were made in the 70s still kind of like control your life in a way. But um, you know, he was the first chairman, uh Pierre Janot was a first chairman of the CRTC, and he brought in CanCon in 1971, and the name stuck. And Juno, as uh I mentioned earlier, maybe no, I didn't, uh, is also the Roman goddess, the queen of the gods, protector of the state. So interesting name choice for you know for the Juno Awards. The first ceremony happened in 1975, and in 1978, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame was established. And in 1995, the ceremony moved from a closed industry gala to a public arena event, which is really exciting. And the first public arena event happened in Hapleton, which it will be this year. So full circle moment there. And 55 years after it started, now this awards show has over 47, no, 47 categories, and this year has 248 nominations, with 65 artists making their first ever appearance on the nominees list, and it is the most expansive like thing. Uh, it is the most expansive field in the history of the ceremony that they've had. So, including what we were talking about the second year ever having a South Asian um award. So the South Asian music recording of the year. So, before which is what I want to talk about, I want to talk about the South Asian music recording of the year, but before we get into that, I'm gonna talk about the full picture of this year's ceremony because I like I feel like you know, you watch it for a reason, but you want to know what else is happening too. So there are six nominations each for the big Canadian pop stars, Tate McRae and Justin Bieber. And most of them, like they usually receive Juno's every year, and they're competing for the same categories album of the year, pop album, single of the year, fan choice. So Tate McCrae, I think a lot of you know this, is from Calgary, Alberta. She's 22, and she is a most nominated artist this year. So this is that's pretty impressive for an Albert girl. Um, but I know there were uh those uh those memes going on, but like, you know, I'm down, Canada down, you know, bad. So I wonder if that like that I am, you know, I'm Canada down bad. I do you remember that? Do you remember that thing that was happening? But I wonder if that'll impact her fan choice stuff. Like I I'm curious. But Justin Bieber, oh Jay Bebs, he is, you know, 32. He's a he's like in in like his second phase, third phase of his career. He's like changing up who he is, and he's still very much a factor in the Juno Awards. And the weekend has the weekend. So we're switching genres. He has five nominations this year with 22 career wins, and he is, I think if he wins all five nominations, he will like get uh a record. I was reading that somewhere, which was really exciting. Um, and then there's someone, there's another artist that's like a discovery stories of the year. So Camin Whitcomb is the Discovery Story of the Year, really exciting, a country artist. Um, and he's in the fan choice album of the year. So these are really exciting, uh, you know, like fan choices, but there's some special honors things that they special honors awards they give as well. So Joni Mitchell, who is 80 years old, uh is up for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Sarah McLachlan and Alison Russell will perform her tribute. So Joni Mitchell is one of the greatest songwriters in any language uh of the of history of recorded music and not just Canadian music, a lot of music. And Nellie Furtado enters the Canadian Music Hall of Fame with 11 albums, 10 Juno wins, and 22 career nominations. And one of my favorites, Daniel Caesar, receives an international achievement award. So this will be really exciting. And now the category that I am most interested in, the South Asian Music Recording of the Year. The second year in its existence, it was introduced a few years ago as a long overdue recognition that South Asian, you know, Canadian artists have their own kind of like space in the in in the Canadian music scene. And there's a lot of notable Canadians that were, you know, let like get to recognize finally. And the first award, I believe, did it go to Api Delon, the first award ever in 2024? Yeah. Uh and this year it is gonna like it is a more competitive field with five nominees. But I'm gonna give you who are the nominees. We have five nominees in the South Asian music recording of the year in the Juno's. And first up, we have Api Delon and Anuve Jain with their song of So. So he's like a two-time defending champion. AP Delon, ready to win. And then we have Garn Odila for Peepop Culture. I recently did a whole like segment on Garn Odila, it was so fun to look into him. He's also one of the fan choice nominees, and he moved to Canada around 17, so really exciting. Um, and then the third one we have is the song Supreme by Shub, also a fan choice nominee. I love Shub's music. I think it's so fun. I feel like every time I need to feel a little bit better, I'll just be like, I'll play Shub, I'll feel better. And my okay, you guys know I love Raf Zapera. And somehow Raph Zapera has not been recognized by like UK music where he's from, but one of his first nominations has been at the Juno's in the South Asian music recording of the year because the song Renaissance was made by Raph Zapera and Iki, who is a Canadian producer. How how exciting! I love this. Maybe he'll become Canadian for me, who knows? And last but absolutely not least is the Juno Awards nominee Suka, who is up for the song by any means. And he also is being, you know, seen as the next generation Punjabi Canadian voice. What how fun is that? So these are the five nominees that we have to look forward through to for the South Asian music, you know, category. Do you have any things that you're thinking about for like the fan choice award that's gonna be up? Like a lot of the South Asians are up for the South Asian, uh, sorry, for the fan choice award. But fan choice is also competing along uh like Justin Bieber, Tate McRae, The Weekend, Sean Mendez. But I think it's really cool that there's names like Garnagula that are up there with those names. So this, like, I feel like this list tells you everything about how far like the South Asian and specifically Punjabi language community like uh music scene has traveled in the last five years or even three years. Like, I think that's incredible. Are you voting for anyone at the Juno's? Do you think the Juno's is like, you know, it's like one of those awards that like you're like, oh, they won that. Is that a big deal? I don't know. I think it should be a really big deal, okay? It is a fun Canadian, you know, music award that we get to enjoy. And I think we get to like find artists that are so niche, so fun, and like through these awards, like they make me, anyways, open my mind to being like, oh, there's these artists in Quebec I should be listening to, which is fun. So I also want to give a little, you know, local shout-out to Noella Charles, who is an artist I want to tell you about. So she was has a very transnational diaspora vibe, like life story to her. So she was born in Kenya, raised in Switzerland, the Bahamas, and then eventually Canada. And she settled in Edmonton and has been building one of the most distinctive voices that I've heard um in Canadian RB and soul for over a decade. Her single called uh Crumbling Down topped CBC Radio's uh top 20 for seven weeks, which is really exciting and really cool. And her music has been featured on Jane the Virgin. Do you remember that show? Oh, what a trip. But like these, like these artists that are like based in Edmonton, I really want to support them. I'm like really excited for her because she's nominated in the Adult Contemporary Album of the Year for her album, New to You. So you've probably heard her, like, you know those artists where you're like, I've heard your shows or your music in shows, which is really exciting. And she has been in this city doing work for years, and this nomination is like the industry kind of like being like, Hey, Edmonton is great. I love this. So that is one of the fun Edmonton dominations that I want you to know. But let's look at Alberta's 2026 Juno nominees. So, you know, we have Noella Charles from here, and then we have um Tate McRae, you know, our our our Calgary girl, uh, with six nominations for album, single, artist, fan toy, songwriter, pop album of the year. And she is the most nominated artist of this year, tied with Justin Bieber. And then we have Brett Kessel, who or Brett Kissle is a country album of the year, and this album is called Let Your Horses Run, and he's from Flat Lake, Alberta, but built his career career in Edmonton, which is really exciting. And we have Jan Liseki, classical album of the year, and this is a solo artist that was based in Calgary. So we have all of these genres, which really shows how rich the music culture in Edmonton and I mean across Alberta is. And then we have Noella Charles, who I just talked about, and then we have Nolene Hoffman, breakthrough artist of the year from Red Deer, Alberta. How exciting! And then we have we also have a hip hop and RB nomination. Obviously, we do. I feel like we are the city that's a little bit edgier than Calgary, and we would have a fun hip hop and RB nomination from Arden. So the fan choice voting is open, I believe. It's open right now. It closes in the first hour of the March 29th like broadcast. So if you're gonna vote, go to uh tdjuno fanchoice.ca and the Juno Gala, where the South Asian music recording, you know, award of the year, you'll be like seeing all those rewards, sorry, awards and who you can vote for. And Saturday, March 28th at the Hamilton Convention Center is where the beautiful Juno Awards will take. So it's actually not um like the the like direct results aren't like televised, but the results are everywhere within minutes, and you'll see the televised broadcast really nice, really good on your TV, wherever you watch these things. Are you gonna stream it? Let me know what you do. I'm Rabia, and I got to talk to you about all things diaspora today, and I got to travel with you to Ireland of all places. I really want to go to Ireland ever since I watched that movie uh Leap Day, Leap Year. Oh, I just like those scenes. I want to go lay with some sheep in a field and hang out. I find it an idyllic place to be. That is one of those things that I'm I just like love Ireland, and I got to take you there, and I got to talk about South Asian diaspora. And you know, it's not obvious to talk about Irish Heritage Month on a South Asian radio station, but I think it would be an interesting maybe series to do like different diasporas across the world. So if you're interested in that, please let me know. I would love to dive into that. Um, and because Irish Heritage Month was happening this month, it was good to talk about that. It was nice to like, you know, understand what it means to like have all these different like cultures and places. Come join us, uh, like come and become one. So thanks for listening to that with me. And I gave you a little primer on the Juno's, which was really fun for me because I got to find all these like local artists and see who was who and what are they nominated for. And now I'm gonna go and vote for my favorite artist. Who are you gonna vote for? Let us know at the Universal Radio Network. And I'm signing off for tonight. This is Ravia. Thank you for tuning in. Stay connected with us across socials at the Universal Radio.