My dad, Ahmed Omar, recorded an independent Oromo cassette album in Minnesota in the mid-late 90s. Here is a 1:30 snippet of "Eelee Fi Shankooyee."
Akkam, jirta?
Full disclosure, I used AI to help me organize all these messy family details into a clean post, but the music and the history are entirely my dad's!
I am currently working on building a definitive historical and musical archive for my father, the Oromo singer Ahmed Omar.
My father grew up in Dire Dawa and East Hararghe, with close family ties to Haramaya. After delivering an anti-Derg poem at a youth plaza gathering at age 16, he had to go into hiding in Haramaya (where he actually met the legendary Ali Birra, who heard him sing and famously gave him the musical advice to "follow the drum"). He eventually fled the Derg regime on foot through the desert to Djibouti, and years later, made his way to Minnesota.
He never recorded his music in Ethiopia. Instead, between 1994 and 1998, he went into a studio right here in the Twin Cities to bring his songs to life. Because there weren't many East African instrumentalists around at the time, he actually hired non-African professional American jazz and funk session musicians. He mouth-drummed and sounded out the rhythms to them, teaching them how to play the specific syncopated East Hararghe bounce.
This snippet is the first 1:30 of his song 'Eelee Fi Shankooyee'. He released this project on CD and cassette in the mid-to-late 90s, and it used to circulate a lot at local weddings, social gatherings, and barcha circles.
Unfortunately, my dad wasn't the most organized when it came to keeping track of his records, studio receipts, or tracklists, so a lot of the official details about this release have been lost to time.
I’m reaching out to the community to see if anyone recognizes this recording or remembers his cassettes circulating back in the day. If you have any leads on the original album name, the exact release year, or any old physical copies, please let me know! Also welcome to general discussion. I have some more songs I can post as well.