‘Emerging rapper’ is the man behind a new anthem for Mississauga

Mississauga has a new original anthem to mark its 50th anniversary and the musical talent behind it will be introduced to the public on Tuesday morning.

That’s when Sauga’s 50th Anthem Anniversary Contest winner Mikey Bloom, described as “an emerging rapper from Ethiopia who grew up in Mississauga,” will be officially unveiled as the top-place finisher in the musical competition.

Also at the press conference to be held at Mississauga’s world famous Metalworks Studios, the winning song/anthem will be heard for the first time in public. Bloom will be introduced shortly after 11:30 a.m., when the event gets underway.

The brainchild of Ward 1 Coun. Stephen Dasko, the contest challenged participants to pay musical tribute to their city as it celebrates its 50th anniversary throughout 2024.

“How do you capture a city in a song? Especially a modern multicultural city like Mississauga at 50 years young,” organizers said this afternoon in announcing details of tomorrow’s gathering.

Mikey Bloom is the winner of the Mississauga 50th anniversary anthem contest. (Photo: Mikey Bloom Instagram)

The competition was run by the Mississauga Arts Council, Metalworks Studios and SoundsUnite, an online vehicle through which people can create music.

Mississauga-based musicians and songwriters were invited at the contest’s launch last fall to try to leave their mark on music history in Canada’s seventh-largest city by creating an original anthem about Mississauga.

The contest sought to find “the best anthem incorporating the word Mississauga and reflecting the spirit and diversity of our dynamic city and its promising future,” organizers said.

The winner, as chosen by a jury comprised of those with ties to the Mississauga music community, receives a recording and mixing session at Metalworks Studios and will have his song forever named “Mississauga’s 50th Anthem.”

Bloom may also be invited to perform the song at an official public celebration of Mississauga’s 50th anniversary, officials say.

Metalworks founder and CEO Gil Moore, part of the iconic Canadian rock band Triumph that debuted to much success in the 1970s and carried its popularity into the ’80s and beyond, said earlier that he’s proud to be involved in the creation of an anthem for the city.

“Mississauga’s 50th anniversary is a milestone that should be celebrated and what better way than recording a new city anthem,” he said last fall on Dasko’s website.

A half century ago, popular Canadian country singer Tommy Hunter, now 86, wrote and performed a song to mark Mississauga’s birth as a city (see link below).

Hunter was living in the Lorne Park area of the city at the time and the song he penned is called, simply enough, Mississauga.

“In 1974, the year of City of Mississauga’s incorporation, the great country singer-songwriter and Mississauga resident Tommy Hunter wrote and recorded Mississauga, a song to celebrate and uplift the newly formed city,” Mississauga Arts Council officials said last October in announcing the anthem contest online. “Fifty years later, the time has come to create an iconic anthem for a new era to celebrate community pride.”

In 1974, the townships of Streetsville, Port Credit and Mississauga amalgamated to form Mississauga.