Words by Sara Cederberg
Listening to Inheritance, the solo debut of Palestinian-American composer, producer, DJ, and sound artist Omar Ahmad, is an incredibly immersive experience. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist based in New York, Ahmad effortlessly transcends genre boundaries, merging Balearic ambiance with Arab polyrhythms, family field recordings, and deep house.
At its core, Inheritance is more than just an album; it’s a contemplation of profound questions inspired by the colonially divided Palestinian Territories. Through his music, Ahmad navigates inquiries surrounding land rights, intergenerational trauma, and the duty of the youth to honor their heritage—an exploration all the more poignant and timely amidst profound devastation in Gaza. It’s no accident that Inheritance was released and premiered on Radio al Hara, a Palestinian online radio station broadcasting from Bethlehem.
Off Shelf: I read in another interview that Inheritance is your first debut record under your own name, as you’ve previously performed under the moniker Twin Primes. How does that feel, and what does it mean to you?
Omar Ahmad: I actually have held a lot of shame over my name. “Omar Ahmad” felt like “John Smith of the Middle East” as a kid in post-9/11 New York. Given that a lot of my life and time in dance spaces were through more of an escapist lens, Twin Primes was a very fitting and obscure name to hide behind.
Once the pandemic hit, I needed to reckon with a lot of things: a challenging breakup, the minor death of nightlife, my projection of fear of self onto many projects that kept me too busy to hear my own thoughts. Inheritance was born out of the quiet. It was the first thing I wrote that actually felt like who I am and holding the mirror up to myself. During this time I gained a lot more confidence in my name, and with the Great March of Return followed a few years later by the 2021 Israel-Palestine Crisis, I felt emboldened to reclaim my name.
OS: Inheritance was written and recorded in the same house where your grandmother used to live. That’s incredibly powerful. How did being in that space shape the creative process and contribute to the overall atmosphere of the album?
OA: My grandmother was an archetypal example of a strong, hardened matriarch who softened by the time my siblings and I were growing up. I first lived in that same house with her and my family in my earliest years, so it was both a return to my grandmother’s home and my own. It smelled of incense and old textiles, and cassette tapes of Qur’anic verses played constantly in the background.
She was the person whose determination and selflessness ensured my family would eventually make it to the United States, and she was a critical force in my upbringing. Being in the space invoked intense memories through sight and hearing, and even the smell of the doors and floorboards was distinctly transportive. The opening of the first track, “A Little Time for Me,” samples the opening of a door in her building, and the end of “Cygnet Song” closes with the slamming of a drawer shut in that space.
OS: Can you explain the significance of these samples, at what step in the writing process you layered them into the music, and how they contribute to the overall theme of the album?
OA: There were dozens of hours of cassettes that I was rifling through during the pandemic, largely because I am a very nostalgic person and have always loved looking backward. As someone who often suffers by staying too committed to a concept, I spent less time hunting for sound bites and just more time watching old videos for the sake of it. In the process, a few clear choices arose:
The sample of my father in the West Bank, visiting the land of my grandparents and stumbling upon three lone girls, somewhat tough and independent despite being so young.
The sample of my sisters announcing my birth to my dad and mom on video camera, speaking to my grandmother who was building a new home for us.
The sample of my grandmother replying, telling us all of what she had built for us and that we would one day return.
The sample of my parents’ wedding tape, with a singer named Eid Hamdan crashing the party just to plug his own brand and obnoxiously make everything about him – a not uncommon occurrence in the more patriarchal and archaic parts of Arab culture.
The samples all felt like tender moments or hilarious life events that don’t necessarily drive home an intensely clear message but instead invite the listener into the more intimate, relatable, and real nature of my upbringing. Many writers try too hard to make sense of life, to fit a singular narrative, which frustrates me at times.
OS: In your Instagram video series about Inheritance, I think you recalled telling a couple of people that “the record is a combination of too rhythmic for the ambient heads and too ambient for the rhythmic heads.” Can you elaborate on how a departure from “harder” beats allowed you to connect with rhythm in a different way?
OA: This album signaled an opportunity to explore a beat as a contributor rather than a focal point. Frankly, I was hiding behind intense beats to obfuscate a lot of insecurity around my melodic chops.
As a challenge to myself, all of the tracks of Inheritance were made without any rhythms first, as a way to really stay in the discomfort of learning what to do with clashing and undulating melodies that I was afraid to tame. Much to my surprise, my main learning was that starting with beats made the melodies and field recordings suffer: they needed to fit into a predetermined framework that I set, often arbitrarily or too much with the dancefloor audience in mind.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m still a DJ and euphoric, energetic rhythms are still amongst the most impressive feats of music production. That said, once the tracks were more or less complete without beats, it allowed me to really feel through what rhythms would be best-suited, and they generally came through more simple and soft. It also emphasized the beauty of downtempo music: so much more can fit between the pulses.
OS: If you’re comfortable sharing, what is bringing you hope and light during this time, and how are you thinking about art and community playing a role in the struggle for Palestinian liberation?
OA: I would be lying if I said I feel a strong amount of hope or light at this time, but if I had to answer, I think the reflection of Palestine as a mirror for so many other current, and horrific, struggles if one of the most important guides for us out of this nightmare. Much of Palestinian and broadly Arab art is pressured to be very kitschy and relies heavily on tropes that are antiquated and have an Orientalist lean. For there to be spaces where Palestinians can produce art that does not explicitly need to sound Palestinian, but instead can have the freedom of broader expression, is a meaningful start.
Inheritance is certainly not going to meet the desires of people who want to listen to an Arab artist doing Arab things. And for Palestinians to be afforded the same breadth of voice, depth of emotions, and complexity of lived experiences moves us in the direction we all need to get to: that Palestinians exist, as humans and as people deserving of love. It’s wild that that’s still a debate point, but just this morning I was watching videos of Knesset members saying things along the lines of “Palestinians don’t exist, this land is just for Israelis. Palestinians do not exist” to no challenge or discourse by the Israeli government.
OS: Have you discovered an album or song recently that excited you?
OA: An album I’ve been connecting a lot with lately is the self-titled album by D.K./S.K.. Everything both of them touch is gold, and I was doing a vinyl dive on D.K. to find his record The “Goddess is Dancing” when I stumbled on this collaborative record from 2017. I’ve been in a more meditative, intentional space when considering the music I listen to and it’s rare to find an album that allows for so much space while remaining as engaging and dynamic. Very inspiring.