News
An uncharacteristically timid June sun intermittently traces the walls of the studio throughout the afternoon. In the heart of Brooklyn’s former industrial hub, since claimed by artists and creatives, Omar Offendum moves around the space in character. Dressed in a tarboush as an homage to his grandfather and great-grandfather, wearing a long black thobe, sneakers, and holding his mother’s cane, crusted with mother-of-pearl motifs, I jokingly tell him he looks like someone who came from a parallel universe where the Sykes-Picot agreement never materialised. “That’s the idea!” he says, laughing. We sit in the middle of the now-empty studio with the production packed and gone. He faces his chair towards the large bay windows to enjoy a view of Brooklyn in the waning afternoon. With the set now fully dismantled, the tarboush and thobe packed away, he’s in a black t-shirt and jeans. The anachronistic traveller from another world was tucked within him, until the next show.
In his place, a Syrian man who has resettled in New York after spending several years in California spends the next hour telling me stories the way a hakawati would, perhaps not too dissimilar from his neo-hakawati character on stage: a storyteller one encounters outside the Umayyad mosque telling the crowd about his day. As an orator, he speaks poetically, but masters cliffhangers, stopping his story right before a big twist so that his listeners come back the next day to find out what happens next. His stories explore themes relevant to what the community is experiencing at that moment, often through the use of metaphor. “It’s an experience I felt so proud of as someone from the sham. I felt like this is truly the keeper of story, of culture.”
There is a thread connecting the practice of the hakawati and that of American emcees. Both are mobilising language through sound and rhythm to tell you a story. But to Offendum, the hakawati offered a jumping off point that is unique to the story of his people, an homage to a culture and a history that he is deeply invested in. The archetype became a convenient way of telling his story from airport detention to how he met his wife.
Every Offendum performance is a portal to another world where the set design is meticulously assembled to provide the audience with an immersive experience they wouldn’t otherwise get from listening to the music from the comfort of their homes or on the go. The beauty is in the communal experience. His music takes you on a journey through time and space with songs that weave headlines and personal anecdotes. Offendum is telling us the story of his life, and by extension, that of a segment of the Arab community’s life.
As an Arab-American, Offendum’s identity is singular and complex. He spent his early childhood in Saudi Arabia before immigrating to the US at the age of four. Growing up in D.C., he attended a school surrounded by other diasporic Arabs from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds: some were the children of diplomats, while others came from blue-collar families. His lens, therefore, leaned more into pan-Arabism, a reflection of his environment. Present at all times was an immersion in Arabic literature, providing the chance to appreciate poetry from Palestine, Iraq, and Sudan. Having lost his father at a young age, he credits his mother for being a key influence on his artistic choices.
“When she would host a ‘azimeh [gathering], for instance. Her attention to detail with every single dish,” he reminisces. “Not just the way it tasted but the way she presented it, you know: the colours of the napkins, the way the house would smell before [the guests] would come. Where she’d want them to walk between the rooms as they came. Not like it was this big mansion or anything. It’s just that she cared, and I learned about how she was as a child. And she was always like that. Saved up whatever little money she had to buy fabric and make clothes.”
He learned early on that money wasn’t what made someone’s aesthetic memorable. It was the way they carry themself and how the essence of who they are shines through that confidence. This gave him a fuller picture of what it meant to be Arab, to commit to details, to love craft and craftmakers, and to internalise resourcefulness as a means to an end. “I was very fortunate to grow up in a home that nurtured a love for the Arabic language,” he says. “Through the lens of poetry and literature, which of course is the backbone of the Arabic language. I say that often. The older I get, the more I really feel like that’s the case. My mother had a collection of Arabic poetry books that spanned, I would say, fifteen hundred years.”
Beyond a rich library, his family was connected to the Damascus intelligentsia; from Nizar Qabbani, who signed a poetry collection for him, to Duraid Lahham, who once taught Dabke to Offendum’s mother. The latter’s influence on Offendum’s music is mainly inspired by his famously beloved character, Ghawwar El Toshi, and his humour. Despite Lahham having fallen out of favour with most Syrians due to his stance on the 2011 revolution, Offendum still sees immense value in the art that his El Toshi character produced for the world, and specifically for Syrians. As such, he was still keen on honouring him in his music, particularly in his album Lost in Translation, where he features a lot. “There’s a guy who walks around the old city now, who’s a lookalike,” he tells me, pulling out his phone to show me a clip of this man in Damascus, and for a brief moment, we both leave Brooklyn behind for a glimpse into this other world.
Although he attended architecture school and worked in that industry for a little over a decade, music was always part of Offendum’s life. He moonlighted as a rapper on the weekend, and slowly that secondary life grew well beyond the confines of a corporate job. While he loves architecture, his heart was always more into music, as it helped him connect to Arab diasporas from the US, to London, Amsterdam, Amman, Dubai, Helsinki, and Honolulu. His transition into the industry was less of an abrupt turn and more of a gradual transition into a life that he knew was always ultimately meant for him. With that said, no knowledge or skill is ever wasted as his architectural background still rears its head in, when he’s building sets for his stage. But his aesthetic isn’t just a product of his love for architecture; a well-rounded man, he finds inspiration among creatives from various industries that have shaped his understanding of art. Offendum’s music, too, bears the imprint of filmmakers, architects, and even chefs, not just poets and musicians.
“There are directors who have always been deeply influential,” he admits. “People like Martin Scorsese, the visual quirks and symmetry of Wes Anderson, even though some of the things he does are so orientalist and weird, but at the same time, I appreciate the colour, and I appreciate the attention to detail big time. And architects as well. There are so many to name, but people like Rafael Viñoly & Tadao Ando from Japan, who did magical things with just concrete and light. So we get to the essence of things through architecture. A lot of it seems like it can be about ornamentation, but that’s just one aspect of it. It’s really about knowing how to orient a structure in relation to the sun, the stars, the rivers, the mountains, and how you can create a very unique story just knowing those things.”
This is evident in his show Little Syria, where he created an on-stage universe out of a desire to teach Americans about a part of their history they’re not familiar with. Little Syria is a reference to the Mahjar community that laid roots on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. Composed mainly of Levantines who arrived in America at the turn of the twentieth century, Little Syria was home to Gebran Khalil Gebran, among others. It was also where the first Sahadi’s, a popular Levantine grocery store, opened before relocating to Brooklyn. These performances are an opportunity to imagine what the Levant looked like before British and French imperialism, and how life there flowed. To him, it is a way to summon ancestors and commune with them on stage.
“I think about the chair that I sit on when I’m doing the Little Syria show. Khalti, allah yerhama, [my aunt, may God rest her soul] who lived here in New York, was the first person to literally lift me up when we came. She quite literally carried me, and when I came back to New York, it was one of the things that was left here that I ended up inheriting. It was in bad shape, so I had it reupholstered. I went to the fabric store and I went with something that wasn’t necessarily even Damascene at all, but something that I thought could work nicely. I found an Italian antique furniture restorer who helped me. We went on this journey together, and he refurbished this chair for me. Then, when we premiered Little Syria back in 2022 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, I walked in on opening night and saw the chair there and felt my aunt still lifting me up after all these years.”
There is, of course, the ghost of Khalil Gebran who also appears in this performance. He tells me about a drawing that has deeply influenced his thinking.
“When I read Gebran Khalil Gebran’s letter to Young Americans of Syrian origin, it’s not like I don’t know he’s Lebanese. But he wrote about being Syrian. In fact, he had one of the most beautiful illustrations. It was a really simple black and white drawing of his vision of a free Syria, with this like figure that has Greek / Arab androgynous quality to it, reminds me of the statue of Liberty standing holding this banner, and on the banner it says: “On the rubble of our past, we build our future glory.’”
على أنقاض ماضينا سنبني مجد آتينا
He credits this drawing for getting him through the deepest, darkest hours of the Syrian conflict and for also prompting a deeper reflection on what “Syria” means as a concept. While Offendum distances himself from nationalism, he feels deeply invested in understanding the territory as a historical, cultural, and geographical entity that sits at the fulcrum of Asia, Europe and Africa with borders that stretch beyond current colonial delineations.
“When I think about what I do as a rapper. I take bits of poetry, the movies I’m influenced by, books I’ve read and just cook it up into something of my own. That’s what it is. I forgot how much chefs also influence how I see the world. I’ve been very fortunate recently to meet chefs who know what I’m doing.”
Offendum’s built universes are enriched by his collaborations. His relationship with Thanks Joey and their iconic Shami Duo is one such project. Joey being younger meant he was connected to a fresher sound that helps Offendum stay current. What makes their bond rich is that even in the absence of music, they can still sit together and share moments together regardless of craft or creative projects.
“When I work with Joey, he makes a beat while I’m writing a song. I don’t have that with many people. Usually, people will just send me something or compose something later. [Joey and I] do it together in tandem, so I really feel like a duo. That’s why the Lost in Translation album is Omar Offendum and Thanks Joey. Even though I’m the only one rapping on it, it’s truly both of us together.”
His life bleeds into his work through these various settings, so that when you walk into his show, you are entering his personal living room, learning the world from his eyes and through defining moments of his life. And as he bares himself to the public, we discover a man with an insatiable love for life, and a reverence for the world learned through beauty and its impact on his senses.
Photography: Anka Garbowska
Fashion Direction: Charlie G. Ward
Photography Assistant: Sasha Brons
Set Dresser: Vango Jones
Grooming: Valissa Yoe
Production: PIQUE
Production Designer: Electa Porado
Producer: Imad Elsheikh
Talent: Omar Offendum
Words: Lara Atallah
