Omar works with an array of African, Arabic, European, Indian, Latin, and North American musicians. Among his many associations are drummers and percussionists Steve Argüelles, Julio Barretto, Mino Cinelu, Miguel “Angá” Diaz, Marque Gilmore, Trilok Gurtu, Marcos Ilukán, Ramiro Musotto, Gustavo Ovalles, Pancho Quinto, Adam Rudolph, John Santos, Carlos “Patato” Valdés, and Orestes Vilató; singers Tim Eriksen, Lázaro Galarraga, Marta Galarraga, El Houssaine Kili, Xiomara Laugart, María Márquez, Will Power, Mola Sylla, the Tenores San Gavino de Oniferi—Sardinia, and Dhafer Youssef; trumpeter Paolo Fresu; and woodwind masters Paquito D’Rivera, Luis Depestre, Leandro Saint-Hill, and Mark Weinstein.
Prominent among Omar’s recent projects is Across The Divide (Half Note, 2009), recorded live at the Blue Note in New York City. Across The Divide is a song cycle documenting the shared rhythms of Omar Sosa and Tim Eriksen, an intense vocalist, equally versed on guitar, fiddle and banjo, and a leading exponent of the enduring spirit of a North American music that transcends racial and cultural categories. The album is a narrative, a tale of musical and spiritual passage, melding and mingling seemingly disparate cultures yet highlighting the musical roots common to us all. Featured within are sampled readings from Langston Hughes, renowned giant of the Harlem Renaissance, whose words add lift to the musical journey. Eriksen brings the rock-ribbed spirit of white Protestant folk and sacred music to the project, in a revealing encounter with Sosa’s grounding and African idioms of the New World. The result is an extraordinary and visionary work that is infused with all the dark fury of a nation’s unredeemed history. Across The Divide achieves something heretofore unknown in contemporary U.S. jazz—a powerful encounter between Anglo North American folk traditions and the living spirit of the Diaspora, an audacious revelation whose ecumenical power is testimony to the promise of Gandhi, King, and the many other ancestral spirits that suffuse Sosa’s artistry.
Another recent work is Tales From The Earth (Otá, 2009), led by flute player Mark Weinstein. The recording presents a thoroughly cosmopolitan outlook rooted in the rhythmic intensity and improvisatory, call-and-response spirit of Africa writ large. Artists of Cuban, Haitian, West African, European, African American, and Jewish American heritage, entered a Berlin studio for two days of intensive recording, without music or a predetermined conception, only a shared commitment to the communal, celebratory character that embodies the expressive riches of Mother Africa. Tales From The Earth resounds with Afro-Cuban traditions, featuring Omar on marimba and vibraphone, which he studied in Cuba’s conservatories before switching to piano. Other guests include guitarist Jean Paul Bourelly (Miles Davis, Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders, Cassandra Wilson); balafon master Aly Keita of the Ivory Coast; drummer Marque Gilmore (Roy Ayers, Steve Coleman, Graham Haynes, Toumani Diabate, Vernon Reid, Joe Zawinul, MeShell Ndegeocello, Susheela Ramen, Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh); and singers Aho Luc Nicaise and Mathias Agbokou of Benin.