Students Organize for Syria at UF hosted an open mic poetry night on Monday, March 11, in the Rion Ballroom in the Reitz Union where poets and musicians were encouraged to perform.
Omar Offendum traveled from his home in Los Angeles to share his art with the crowd. He combines storytelling, poetry, rap and hip-hop music to shed light on issues of importance to him in the United States, the Middle East and his home country, Syria.
By combining hip-hop and Arabic poetry, Offendum expresses his relationship with the two different parts of the world he is rooted in.
The Syrian-American artist grew up studying the Arabic language and was heavily influenced by the hip-hop music he listened to growing up in Washington, D.C.
Offendum, 38, is a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow for 2018-2019.
On Monday, I talked with Offendum about his unique poetry style.
Vanessa: What topics do you cover in your poetry?
Omar: I find a wide range of issues interesting: socio-political commentaries, social justice, but then also just descriptive poetry about life and Damascus, where my mother is from, life from me growing up in America, between D.C. and later in Los Angeles, and then just hip-hop and hip-hop culture.
Vanessa: What is your writing process and what inspires your creative flow?
Omar: Life. Life and living it. The people who inspire me as poets have sometimes lended themselves to translation in the sense that Arabic poetry, that I’m really inspired by it. I’ve translated it into hip-hop songs. I’m inspired by American poetry, like the poetry of Langston Hughes. Then obviously the bigger issues of the day: socio-political issues, immigration, Syria and the refugee crisis.
Vanessa: When did you realize you wanted to be a poet?
Omar: I grew up listening to hip-hop music, reading and citing poetry, so it’s always been part of my life. When I got into college, I attended the University of Virginia and I studied architecture there. That's also where I first started making beats, writing rhymes, performing at local clubs. That’s where I first started getting my feet wet in terms of performance.
Halfway through college, 9/11 happened, and that major political shift in this country also gave me an opportunity to realize how powerful it was to have a platform to express myself onstage. I pushed back against some of the divisiveness that I started hearing in the media. There was misinformation about my culture, whether it was my Muslim culture, my Arabic or Syrian background.
Fifteen years later, it’s important, not just in terms of how Muslims and Arabs and people of color are viewed here in America, but also in terms of the refugee crisis and war that unfolded in Syria.
Being able to use my music as a rallying point to bring people together and raise funds for humanitarian relief reinvigorated my drive to continue to do this. So much so, five years ago, I left my work at the architecture firm and started music and performance full time.
Vanessa: What is one piece of advice you would give to young artists who are starting their careers?
Omar: As hard as it is sometimes, enjoy the fact that you are just starting out. It might seem daunting, but in that there is so much to think about in terms of opportunity of which directions you want to take your work, who you can be inspired by and to try your best to appreciate each step of the way and not dwell on what you’re not accomplishing, but focus more so on the process and nurture the artist within you.
Omar Offendum is a Syrian-American rapper and poet who uses his art to bring awareness to the issues he cares about most.
