It's human nature to think your relationship with someone is special. Like, no one else could replicate what the exact thing, the energy, that two entities create between themselves. While I'm sure that Tanika Charles and her music has made many connections with many cities, I like to think that the relationship between the powerhouse vocalist and my hometown Victoria is something truly special, as she returns to Victoria this summer to hit the Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest stage. “I just feel like the vibes are so special,” Charles reflects on her connection to the city I love and call home. “It's like I've known everybody and I'm friends with everyone. And I always just feel so welcome there. I feel like I wanna move there sometimes. It's just such a vibe and everybody's so willing to listen to new artists and enjoy their music. I can't describe it.” I know this relationship started for a lot of people in our city when she first graced the Ska & Reggae Fest stage, playing for the Wailers, in 2022. She returns to the festival on June 26, now armed with songs from her unbelievably powerful album released last year, Reasons To Stay.

Soul is a music seeped in emotion and feeling, but it feels like there's something heavier here. Something heavier than anything Charles has put on album before. Heavier than your average good soul record. It's feeling is heavy like a great soul album. Reasons To Stay is a soul album alive with the weight of a deeply examined heart, balancing the need to get everything out, while simultaneously never giving out too much. It's a goal Charles took at aim at while putting this album together, and you can feel all over this record. “Normally the content I write about is love, heartache, heartbreak – we've all experienced that. I wanted to approach this record, I wanted to speak about love but on a deeper level, on a different level. Loving myself through trauma, through being a child. Having to take care of my younger brother and still having to regulate who I am, during a very dark time in our lives. It took me a really long time to even want to talk about those subjects.

“My fear was possibly exposing my family and putting them in a negative light and that is not the case. This is just the relationships that I've had, and have, with my siblings, the people that I love around me and how that's made me who I am today,” Charles has an understanding of where her inspiration for this album came from in a way that I'm honestly kind of jealous of, as a person who constantly struggles to self-examine through artistic output. Like many great accomplishments in a human life, it was the encouragement of someone close who helped give her the courage to even start out on this public musical journey. “It was my partner who kind of encouraged this album. He's like 'You know, Tanika, you have a lot that's happened in your life and you should probably write about it.' It was a really scary place to be in, to be so vulnerable and to have to speak about my life. When you are involved in situations that are kind of toxic - I don't know how others navigate their lives. I just know how I did it for myself and maybe it wasn't the best way because I still haven't sought therapy. I know I need to. But I had a lot of really good friends who I could speak to and who would help me work out whatever feelings I was dealing with and it seemed to help me survive.”

And then Tanika Charles dropped the thing that I think should be at the forefront of almost all of human interaction: “Community really is family.” Let's all take a moment to let that sit in our minds' eyes. “Community really is family.”

Tanika filling a sea of hearts at Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest 2022. Photo by the powerful Kelli Rothwell.

I'm so grateful to have received some of Tanika's time for this interview, and more grateful that she's out there in the world, making music to keep hearts strong and feet moving. I'm also grateful for how absolutely GAME she was in taking on a round of the 5 Questions. Tap in and enjoy our discussion about ghosts, giving out your phone number to a stranger and wrestling with a question that has plagued humanity for seemingly all of recorded history – what's your favourite thing to eat and drink?

And if you're reading this before June 27, 2026 (And you're on Vancouver Island), you should see Tanika Charles and her powerful band join the Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest stage with New Zealand reggae-rock royalty, the Black Seeds. It's going to be top-to-bottom one of the best shows the Island sees this summer. Get involved.

1. What's the first album you remember buying with your own money?
Paula Abdul – Straight Up.

Do you still listen to it?
I don't. But I remember I rinsed that album. So much so that I dragged my younger brother and my best friend at the time to perform Straight Up at a talent show at school. I just thought Paula Abdul was the shit. (Editor's note: This is a correct opinion.)

2. When's the last time you did something for the first time?
I was at the salon and this woman came in. She wasn't particularly warm. She needed her nails done immediately and she was calling the aesthetician like, “I need to get my nails done. I've got things to do. This and that, yadda yadda yadda, I'm going to Cozumel for scuba diving,” or something to that effect. And I happened to be going to Cozumel. I spoke to her even though her energy was really off and off-putting, but I wanted to know about Cozumel. She ended up being a really sweet person. The issue that she had was – She's also a therapist. She had a client that was threatening to take his life and so she was really frantic and concerned and needed to do something to relax. We started speaking and she was telling me about her trip to Cozumel and needing a break and her life and divorce and all of this information. And I just gave her my number, which I don't normally do. “Take my number. Let's hang out.” And I ran into her again yesterday after not seeing her for months. I think, just giving out my number to somebody I absolutely didn't want to know and ended up wanting to know everything about.

Tanika Charles filling a see of hearts in Tallinn, Estonia. Photo by Michael Warren.

3. What's the last thing that made you cry happy or sad tears?
I cry every day. (Editor's note: Hey, me too!) And the Bad Bunny half-time performance made me cry. It really, really, really touched me. And I started crying because there's so much hate online because of a half-time show. Because people couldn't understand his language. Then learn a new language, it's really simple. You don't have to be online spewing hatred because you can't figure what that person is saying. It's so minor in this life that we have and that's the hill you're going to die on?! That's what made me cry, happy and sad tears.

4. What's a good memory of a mentor or teacher you have growing up?
There is a singer by the name of Shakura S'Aida. She's a blues, jazz singer. What I love and appreciate about her is that she's always willing to provide advice, sound advice, on how to navigate this music industry as a woman of colour. And she has a lot of knowledge. She doesn't gatekeep. She's more than willing to help anyone who asks for help. She's also a fantastic spokesperson. When she is speaking to people, she commands, and you're just so engaged. She is engaging. She's just somebody that you want to listen to because she's eloquent and she's beautiful. I feel like I just want to be like her – I want to be able to speak to people comfortably and offer wisdom and really wonderful words of advice. I just think that she is a phenomenal woman.

5. Have you ever seen or felt a ghost?
All the time. That's my thing. I'm so glad you asked. Often when I'm on the road, I like to do ghost-hunting. I've managed to grab a couple of my bandmates on that kind of trek. I was in Scotland, visiting family with my partner, my partner's family. We went to this very old inn. You have to drive, felt like we were on the road for an hour and we got to this inn at the end of this river. When you go inside it just smells like smoke and everything is filled with soot. It's just ancient. There is taxidermy all over the place. It's just insane. The food – incredible. So this inn has this story about this young girl who died at the river that the inn is surrounded by. If you go into the room she was in, it's very cold. Of course I'm like, “Can we go and see the room?” They took us up to the floor but they didn't let us into the suite. We leave and as we're getting into the car, my partner's aunt and I looked up at the window, and we both saw a little girl in the window. But they didn't see the little girl in the window. We both looked at each other, like, “We both saw that, right?” and it was so great to just have that shared recognition. That was my first real sighting but I've also experienced some really strange activity in Belgium. But that's a whole other story.

6. Your Guest Question comes from wrestlers Sawyer Stein and Johnny Rostyn aka the Moment of Truth – What's your favourite drink and what's your favourite meal?

Okay – my favourite drink is...I think it's a Dark & Stormy. Well, maybe that's not my favourite drink because I said “I think.” I drink a lot of water these days, but if I had to really think about it...maybe sorrell. Which is hibiscus. Nope, that's not it. Ignore. I like the taste of it but it's not my favourite drink. Well, my favourite food is roti for sure. Being of Trini background, anything Trinidadian food. Roti for sure. My favourite drink – goodness. My favourite drink is actually a mocha. I think that's what it is. I love mochas – I love coffee, I love chocolate.