Omar Ibn Said: Remembering His Name, Retelling His Story

The Arts Member-led Forum and San Francisco Opera’s Department of Diversity, Equity and Community invite you to a powerful and thought-provoking panel discussion. As home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States, the Bay Area might have special interest in the 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner for music, Omar, by Grammy Award-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens and composer Michael Abels.The production runs November 5-21 at the War Memorial Opera House.
A true story of an astonishing journey enshrined in a 200-year-old autobiography of enslaved Islamic scholar Omar Ibn Said in the Carolinas, who publicly records his story in Arabic-evidencing the act of writing as the preservation of identity.
Omar is a sweeping canvas of text, Christian and Islamic faith, profoundly realized in Kaneza Schaal’s transcendent production embodying the horrors of the “Middle Passage,” prison life, plantation traumas and creative human spirit.
Illustration by Brian Stauffer; Kennedy photo by Karl Nielsen; Taylor photo by Suzanne V.
November 1, 2023
Speakers
John Kennedy
Conductor, Omar; Former Director of Orchestral Activities, Spoleto Festival USA
Carl W. Ernst
Co-author, I Cannot Write My Life
Mbaye Lo
Co-author, I Cannot Write My Life
Cole Thomason-Redus
San Francisco Opera Department of Diversity Equity and Community
Dr. Anne W. Smith
Co-chair, Arts Member-led Forum, Commonwealth Club of California-Moderator
Taylor Raven
Singer, Performer, Omar's Mother in Omar
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"Then there came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and brought me to the great sea, AND SOLD ME INTO THE HANDS OF THE CHRISTIANS who bound me and sent me on board a great ship." Omar Ibn Said met the Christians on the beach. They were there waiting for prisoners to buy. Omar Ibn Said was therefore captured by MUSLIMS who sold him later to christians on the beach.