Brought up in the all white environment of Canterbury, Omar speculates on how his life might have been had he stayed.

At 22, he is described as one of the most important young artists on the current music scene. Omar has already made a significant impression on the music industry. Classically trained from the age of ten, he writes, produces and plays all his music. Omar has found, overnight, a national audience with his latest album There’s Nothing Like This.
In spite of this dramatic success Omar emphasises his commitment to retaining the strong grass roots following which he’d begun to develop with his jingles on pirate radio.
Omar is already a veteran performer having toured with The Style Council in Japan and the National Youth Orchestra in Brazil. As if that were not enough, he has been working on a major release with Mica Paris and is due to make his solo debut at the Hammersmith Odeon in December this year.
Artrage chats to this young artist whose future success seems assured.

ARTRAGE One thing that struck us is that you are still quite young
OMAR Well, funnily enough, I didn’t start off that young. I was a late starter compared to others who studied instruments. I started at about ten or eleven, at the end of my primary school. While everybody else had started near enough when they started or soon after they started primary school. So I was pretty much a late starter. Though if you talk about the music, the recording industry, well I started pretty early, because I had all that background.

ARTRAGE You don’t sound like a novice, what accounts for the sophistication?
OMAR I think that my music training has helped my ear a lot. There’s certain things that my formal training has helped me to utilise now. I’m just trying to be different and trying to sort out how the classics are made – what attracts people to them. Everything that everybody else is doing, I go away from that. If somebody says, ‘well this is the way we are doing it now’, or if there is an idea and I realise someone else is doing it, I’ll drop it. I’d rather do something that no one else is doing.

ARTRAGE You talk about being different. It is not very usual to find young black kids going to music school and doing classical music.
OMAR I didn't live in London when I was a youth. I lived in Canterbury. Now at the secondary school I went to there were six black kids in a school of 1200, so I was brought up in that environment rather than in a black community. That hadn’t struck me so much until I was around eighteen to nineteen years old. I started coming to London more often and I just preferred it within the black community. When I was younger, there were certain things that made me think I should have been in London, doing this and doing that. But when I look back on it, I see the reasons for staying in Canterbury – like the orchestras and brass bands and choirs and that. It’s all part of me now.

ARTRAGE How did that happen?
OMAR I started music when I was at primary school. I used to walk around the house humming and banging things on my dad’s kit. I didn’t just show an interest in drums, I showed an interest in music in general. I was just hungry to play things. When I was in primary school, I was learning things like the guitar, the cornet, percussion and piano. That’s pretty good for a ten year old. I was just eager to do it all. Even when I was learning the trumpet I didn’t know what the notes were, I was just looking at the kid next to me and copying his fingers.

It was only when I learnt the piano that I understood more about music and then I just went on to do my own thing. It was pretty strange. Practically everything I did was as the only black kid. In the orchestra I was the only black kids, in the brass band I was the only black kid, the jazz thing…but in a sense I had an identity which was a clear one. Everybody knew who I was. It wasn’t just a case of ‘he’s the black guy there,’ I just stood out.

ARTRAGE Were you made to feel different?
OMAR No I didn’t feel different in the sense that I was black. Obviously there were comments – racism. That’s when you’re made to feel different. But I made myself an individual. At school, everybody would be going ‘Omar, Omar’ and I’d be saying ‘Yeah, nice nice’. That’s something that I’ve always gone for, from an early age.

ARTRAGE How old are you now?
OMAR Twenty two

ARTRAGE You composed a piano concerto at the age of 18. you played with the Jazz ensemble and went to Brazil with a youth orchestra. If you had to look at all these experiences which one would you say was the most important influence?
OMAR You must have named about five or six different things and everything has a bearing on what I’m doing now. The orchestra taught me discipline, because I was a principal. I suppose I could deal with a band now, the same way I dealt with my section of the orchestra. The jazz things taught me the powers of expression through music. It was brilliant for me, on the drums you can just lick out anything. One has to get across exactly what one is saying but there’s a definite form of expression that I like in jazz which I sometimes try to fit into my music. People always say they can hear the jazz influence in my music with the tracks of the album. Although when I wrote the tracks I wasn’t thinking jazz…jazz…jazz…they were the things that I heard when I put them down.

Brazil! It was brilliant there – with all the rhythms and the instruments and stuff. It was perfect timing as well because around that time is was getting into fast Latin stuff – percussion and that sort of thing So it was a great experience to go there and see the Rio School of Samba.

Even then I was still pushing out this personality bit. We played in a concert which was on a TV show in Brazil and a week later we did another concert and a guy came backstage and gave me a record and said I was the best on TV, which was brilliant for me. Anything I was performing I made sure somehow I stood out. At the Royal Albert Hall, I don’t know if you know that the audience sit round the back. When we did concerts there, I wasn’t performing to those out front, I was performing to these people at the back! It wasn’t just a matter of what they are hearing, its what they are seeing as well. Style Council – same thing. Anything I do I want my stamp on it. The other thing is I must have a good time at what I’m doing. Whatever it is I make sure I enjoy it. You can’t go further unless you start enjoying something.

ARTRAGE What would you feel is important to black music now?
OMAR Education for a start. If more black kids could get what I had you’d see such a wealth of music coming out of the black music industry, not that it doesn’t already, but most of the acts don’t have any longevity. The white artists and black American artists have got longevity. Here, so far, we haven’t got that.

I played percussion in the King musical at Piccadilly and when we went for the auditions one of the guys that was recruiting people for the musical was saying that he didn’t know of any black string players and black wind players or anything to do basically with classical music. All he knew were the black brass players, drummers and percussionists. There’s always this stereotype of what we have to do. I’d like to see a lot more kids involved in the classical music. When I was at Manchester School of Music there was only one other black person there – Pam Crawford. She’s in the Reggae Philharmonic now. I think everybody needs to be aware of the musicians around. We need to get more black kids in that area. Maybe learn a bit more about the craft of music: not just computers where you just press a button.

ARTRAGE Do you thin there are significant differences between American and British black music?
OMAR For me the best American music at the moment is Hip Hop. That’s the only music which is doing anything different. Everybody is exploring what’s gone on before, and I’m into that – utilizing the prime elements of all the classics and such and putting them into my music. I’m not in America but what I’ve heard just sounds all the same. Though Toni, Tony Tone and Blaze are good. They don’t sound same-ish.

ARTRAGE How do you feel about being compared to a host of other artists by reviewers?
OMAR I expect that, but it’s nice that there are so many different names rather than just one. They can’t really label me – which is good.

ARTRAGE Do you intend to specialise?
OMAR It’s a bit late now! No, because I’ll get too bored. I get bored very easily you know.

ARTRAGE You are not with a major label you are with an independent. What are the advantages?
OMAR first of all the ‘street cred’. I hate that phrase! Actually, I hope they make up another one. The street credibility that I’ve got right now is in the black community. If I can play my records in a dance and the crowd goes wild, that means more to me than if I played in the Wembley Arena and got the same response. That’s basically why I think I’ve come back to the street rather than gone with some big orchestra or something like that. As long as I can still keep that approval while I go national and then international I’ll be happy. I lose that. I’ll be worried.

ARTRAGE That’s one advantage…
OMAR My creative control is another. If a major label had taken me in from the start – when Kongo Records took me in – I don’t know if I’d be at this point now. I wouldn’t have been given that leeway. Whereas because it’s a smaller outfit, I’ve matured over the years and basically taken grasp of where I’m going musically – definitely an advantage I wouldn’t have had with a major label. I’m grateful for that.

ARTRAGE You have been described as one of the most important up-coming artists. One supposes you get tired of these descriptions after a while.
OMAR No!

ARTRAGE You played an important role in producing the album ‘There’s Nothing Like This’, writing and playing most of the instruments, were you able to realise that album as fully as you wanted to?
OMAR People keep saying that with a bit of money, you can have production. But the music you are hearing sounds nearly exactly as how I demo-ed it. That’s how I wanted it to sound. I don’t ever regret it sounding like that.

ARTRAGE Your versatility is obvious. How important is experimentation to you?
OMAR It’s the basis of my music. As long as I do that I will keep coming up with things that are fresh. If I do get happy with something and I don’t have to experiment with it, that’s when I have to stop and take a holiday.

ARTRAGE You have achieved a certain degree of stardom, how do you respond to all this attention?
OMAR Well, you’re walking down the street and people are muttering, “Oh look it’s Omar, that’s him, that’s him.” I’ve never had that before, but it has not really changed me because I’m locked off to that anyway. I guess when I have to run down the street, that’s when I’ll take any notice of it. So far it’s been OK, no nasty problems or anything like that.

But it’s nice – that’s what I’ve strived for. Like when my tune plays and the people go crazy, that’s what I wrote the tune for in the first place. Any time my tune plays, you always see me grinning.

ARTRAGE Would you compare your style of music to Tony Toni Tone?
OMAR Yeah, the way they vary their music in different ways, but that’s as far as it goes.

ARTRAGE You were quoted once as saying “My biggest influence is me”
OMAR I didn’t say that, that was The Standard. I said to them, I listen to a hell of a lot of people but in the end it’s me you are listening to. So the short cut to that is my biggest influence is me. It makes me wary of what I’m going to say to people.

ARTRAGE People describe you as inner city urban, sophisticated British soul. How do you respond to all those pretty labels?
OMAR well, it’s just trying to put me in a bracket really, that’s how I may come across to these people, but I don’t mind I really don’t mind at all because there are so many. As long as I’m not just a brat or something like that, I’m alright. It just shows they can’t label me. I don’t want people studying me saying he does this and he does that. I want to them to take in the vibe and rest with it.

ARTRAGE You studied at the Guildhall School of Music?
OMAR Yeah I got a jazz certificate. I started off on a performance diploma which was supposed to be 3-4 years but after the first term I was sick of it and I wanted to leave but someone always steps in and says “you don’t have to leave, you can do this…what is the real problem…think man.” I was sick and tired of going in a couple of days a week and rehearsing for two hours, waiting for this guy to get my bar so I could play my triangle and the guy never gets to it, that kind of stuff you know, so basically I changed courses.

ARTRAGE What purpose do you feel your music serves – is there a message?
OMAR Topics of the songs kind of reflect the emotions, different aspects of love, different aspects of life. People relate to that because its plain English. But still the thing that motivates me is just getting out there and standing out from the crowd. I find that the easiest thing to do, rather than becoming some big business man, or doctor. Being a singer is something I wouldn’t swap for anything.

ARTRAGE Are you Afrocentric?
OMAR I wouldn’t like to be a spokesperson for Africa right now. Al I can be a spokesperson for is black music, because that’s related back to Africa. Certain times I have an urge to study something about Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia..sometimes the mood just catches me.

I suppose it’s because I grew up in a white area around white people so I had to do the finding out for myself. I think if you can get the message across without getting too heavy or going over the top it will be more effective.

ARTRAGE Is it important to have positive messages within your music?
OMAR Oh yeah even if its just a love song it can even have a double meaning as long as you are getting the message across. “We’ve got to love each other” kinda songs are fine but that’s not reality. Try singing one of those songs to someone with an axe in his hand!

ARTRAGE Are you very self-critical?
OMAR Oh yeah, I’m too self-critical.

ARTRAGE Tell us about your life in Canterbury
OMAR If I’d stayed I’d be talking like this (puts on a typically cockney English accent) wearing the ol’ steam pressed trousers, a donkey jacket; I’d have a Cortina and I’d be down the pub with a Fred Perry t-shirt. It was good for me to grow up like that. There aren’t any distractions down there it was an experience and an education to bounce my career off.

ARTRAGE What next?
OMAR I’d love to go international – a lot of overseas companies are interested. Also there are different people that I want to work with whether is it producing, playing or writing. For instance, I have just produced a track with Mica Paris. I very much want to have that Midas touch. I don’t think a major will be signing me right now. They are too late. Their heads are up their arse; they should have been there from the beginning. But that’s a different story.