The Oberlin choral ensembles are hard at work preparing to bring Omar's story to life on stage for our upcoming performances on December 6 and 8. Musical Union was fortunate to have Dr. Courtney-Savali Andrews ’04 and Dr. Talawa Presto join a recent rehearsal. They presented an engaging talk on the historical context of the opera Omar, co-written by Rhiannon Giddens ’00. Their presentation focused on the life of Omar Ibn Said, a learned Islamic scholar from Senegal who was enslaved in the United States in the early 1800s. Omar's autobiography, written in Arabic, challenges longstanding misconceptions about the illiteracy and lack of culture among enslaved Africans. Dr. Andrews and Dr. Talawa Presto—Professor of African American and African Diasporic Musics, and Visiting Assistant Professor in Dance in Africana Studies—illuminated how Omar's writings serve as a vital counter-narrative to racist assumptions that Africans arrived in America without education or sophistication. His stor...