Tarik Rahim grew up drawing from a rich pool of cultures and finding expression through surf and music. In this episode, Kadambari Raghukumar talks to him about calling NZ home, for a short while.

Tarik Rahim's 26 and he's been in Mount Maunganui for about a year now - mainly going between the surf, studios, making the the odd surfboard once in a while thanks to learning tricks from his shaper father, and working the odd job around the place.

Tarik's music traverses a few different areas too - pscyh, surf, tropical, punk - but experimental is how he'd like to call his music.

In this episode of music we're talking about his journey so far from working beside his father shaping boards in Gijón, Spain, to making a life in Mount Maunganui.

For a small town, the Mount is saturated with people from around the world, and people like Tarik are here for it. And with good reason - you could say that moving across continents is in his DNA considering his grandfather arrived from Lebanon to Brazil on a ship in the 1940s and his father Huicif Rahim took the family over to Spain chasing waves and a career in making boards.

From around the late 1800s to early 1900s, thousands of Lebanese arrived in Brazil, driven by economic reasons and the Ottoman empire. In fact they spread across South America, trading as merchants mainly and becoming an integral part of the fabric of society there.

His father, Huicif Rahim is a master shaper, who made his name in Brazil starting out in 1975, a very different time for shaping. While Tariq was born after Huicif moved to Spain, the family's Brazilian and Lebanese roots also continued to hold strong and deep. Music, was naturally, part of that whole mix.

Listen to the whole conversation recorded at Skip James' studio in Mount Maunganui, a friend who Tarik has been making music with these days.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details