Omari, Abdou El

Lost Tape - 1980

Label: Born Bad

Genre: World Music

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CD Digi / Cardboard €18.99

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Abdou El Omari was born in 1945 in Tafraout, south of Agadir — a village suspended between the pink granite peaks of the Anti-Atlas and the waves of the Atlantic. A landscape already musical in itself. He grew up in the dry mountain light, surrounded by the rhythms of nature and Berber’s culture.

Very little is known about the man — a veil of mystery still surrounds his life, only deepening the fascination. His name remains discreet, but his music continues to travel. It seems to drift from another time, another world, or perhaps from a dream shared between the blue nights of Casablanca and the silent dunes of the Sahara.

In the 1970s, as Morocco was transforming, Abdou El Omari shaped a sound of his own — a visionary blend of spiritual jazz, psychedelic funk, Moroccan traditions, and early electronic experimentation.

Today, his work is resurfacing, rediscovered by a new generation of listeners in search of lost horizons. This record stands among its rarest and most precious fragments.

An Initiatory Journey
At ten, El Omari left the mountains of the south for the vast port of Casablanca — a city in motion, crossroads of Arab-Berber, African, European, and American cultures. Music was everywhere: on the radio, in cafés, in jazz clubs run by Moroccan Jews and expatriates, and in the crates filled by passing American soldiers.

His path was anything but ordinary. While his brother ran a record store, Abdou chose another way — first as a butcher, then a servant for a French family. They helped him train as a hairdresser and later supported his admission to the Casablanca Conservatory in 1960.

For seven years, he studied there, became a luthier, met musicians, and discovered the instrument that would define his sound: the Farfisa organ — symbol of the psychedelic and modern era’s music, from Pink Floyd to Terry Riley.

At the same time, after becoming a hairdresser, he opened his own women’s hairdressing school in Casablanca in the 1970s, before founding a second one in Safi. His school was the only one in the country officially recognized by the state, a proof of his professionalism and dedication to passing on his craft. However, despite his undeniable talent he was never a full-time musician.