Rufaro Faith Mazarura’s Skate It Till You Make It follows Ari Shumba, the captain of Great Britain’s women’s ice hockey team, and Drew Dlamini, a photographer trying to find his way back to a dream he had put on hold. They meet on New Year’s Eve, share an unexpectedly intimate night, and go their separate ways, only to find themselves reunited months later at the Winter Games in the Swiss Alps. With exes, family drama and the pressures of competition in the mix, they decide to fake-date their way through the Games, hoping to keep their feelings out of it.
For Mazarura, music offered another way of understanding the characters and the emotional world of the story. Some songs captured the particular ambitions and uncertainties of Ari and Drew, while others helped her find the atmosphere of the Swiss Alps or the feeling of falling in love when you have spent so much time trying not to.
In this edition of Sonic Pages, we sit with Mazarura to walk through the sonic world of Skate It Till You Make It, from Amber Mark’s “One” and Beyoncé’s “16 Carriages” to Stevie Wonder’s “As”. Along the way, the playlist moves through R&B, soul, country, indie pop and dream pop, offering a musical map of the novel’s ambitions, doubts, romance and all the messiness in between.
Brittle Paper
Was there a song that helped you unlock the world of Skate It Till You Make It when you first began writing it? What did that song make you see or feel about the story?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
Ambition is a major theme in my books, and One by Amber Mark perfectly captures the feeling of desperately wanting to make it, secretly believing you have the ability to do it, but still battling through the doubts that come with aspiring towards a big life-defining dream.
Brittle Paper
Ari and Drew meet on New Year’s Eve, have one unexpectedly intimate night together, and then go their separate ways. If you could put a song behind that night, what would be playing?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
The love story at the heart of Skate It Till You Make It is about two people who clearly like each other but have already armed themselves with a long list of reasons why it probably won’t work out. On New Year’s Eve, Ari and Drew are trying to protect themselves from the risk that comes with falling in love. Reckless Driving by Lizzy McAlpine perfectly captures the push and pull of knowing what you want but partaking in a little bit of self-sabotage to avoid the risk of getting hurt.
Brittle Paper
Ari finds herself suddenly carrying the responsibility of captaining Great Britain’s women’s ice hockey team while dealing with everything happening in her personal life. What song would you say understands Ari at that point in her life?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
16 Carriages by Beyoncé came out a few weeks after I finished writing the first draft of the book, and when I listened to it for the first time, I felt like I was watching a montage of Ari’s life and career in my mind. Ari and her teammates make so many sacrifices, and this song sounds like the feeling of relentlessly pushing forward to become the woman your childhood self dreamed of.
Brittle Paper
Drew is a photographer who has put his own dreams on hold while dealing with a family crisis. His journey is partly about giving himself permission to want something again. Is there a song that speaks to that part of his story for you?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
When we meet Drew, he’s in a deep state of uncertainty, and nothing captures that quite like Who Knows by Daniel Caesar. He’s reluctantly reaching for his dream and the chance to build something real with a woman he’s clearly falling for, but his own self-doubt keeps getting in the way. “Is it a crime to be unsure?” feels like a lyric plucked right out of his inner monologue.
Brittle Paper
There’s something about a romance unfolding in the middle of the Winter Games, surrounded by snow, ice and all that adrenaline. What song immediately takes you back to the atmosphere you wanted for Ari and Drew’s time in the Swiss Alps?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
There’s something deeply otherworldly about an unexpected snowfall. To me, it’s the closest thing to magic, and Snow on The Beach by Taylor Swift & Lana Del Rey sounds the way that seeing snowflakes falling under a lamppost makes me feel.
Brittle Paper
Between the exes, the families, the teammates and the decision to fake-date, Ari and Drew have quite a lot working against them. If this particular kind of romantic chaos had a soundtrack, what would you put on it?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
Ari and Drew are chronic overthinkers, but there’s a scene in the book where they hear As by Stevie Wonder in a context that forces them to throw caution to the wind, embrace their feelings for each other and decide that the risks that come with falling are deeply insignificant in comparison to the potential of experiencing the kind of love Stevie sings about.
Brittle Paper
Finally, if you had to build a three-song playlist for readers who’ve just finished Skate It Till You Make It, which tracks would you choose? What part of the novel or emotion does each song capture?
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
Pale Blue Light by Jessie Ware – I listened to this on repeat while writing and editing the final chapter of the book; it feels like the hope of wanting a love story to last forever while knowing that sometimes one glimpse of an all-consuming type of love can be enough.
November by Stormzy and Mahalia – Ari and Drew technically meet in December, but the nostalgia-laced melody and wistful lyrics of this song sound exactly how I imagine it would sound to hear them finishing each other’s sentences as they tell the story of how they met.
Somebody by Emeli Sande – The book is set at the Olympics, and after the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, there’s no musician who sounds more like the Games to me than Emeli Sande. In the book, Ari plays on a team with her lifelong best friends. There’s a moment at the start of the book when they drive to a party and a moment near the end (no spoilers) where for one night they experience what it’s like to be a ‘somebody’, an experience everyone deserves to have at least once in their life.
Brittle Paper
Thank you for speaking to me.
Rufaro Faith Mazarura
My pleasure.
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