interview

QUESTION:can i hear your story with the guitar since you became one of the great players ?

OMAR KHORSHID: you may not believe it but in my childhood i did not like the guitar at all, when i became 9 i started music lessons at school, the only instrument i disliked was the guitar , i preferd piano and violin...

Q:hate the guitar !!! for no reason?

OK: no , there is a reason ,i was very slim in my childhood and the guitar was too tall for me i couldn't handle it , with time i changed my opinion to the guitar and started to like it , that's when the rockn'roll music started and elvis songs especially when plays the guitar i found myself ride this wave and kept asking my father to buy me a guitar but he refused..

Q:why the refusal since your father is director of photography,meaning he understand the value of art?

OK: frankly the refusal came mainly from my mother , she thought the guitar will keep me busy from my studies

Q: and did you overcome this refusal ?

OK: yes , i made a band with two friends and went in the music shops to buy a guitar from my savings and we had hard time to bargin for prices till i convinced a seller to sell me a guitar as low as 12 pounds and i got my first guitar ever...

Q: did the guitar really took you from your studies ?

OK: not at all , the guitar made me attached to stay at home and that's alone made me focus on my studies...

Q: how you improved your hobby till you became professional ?

OK: when i became 13 i started to play at private parties and friends cheer hard for me and i started to feel i am so big and became the greatest player in the world despite i was playing by hearing without reading the notes and without any musical study , till one one night i went to play on stage i saw someone play guitar in a great way and comparing to him i felt small and also saw myself as a weak player without musical knowledge and it was the turning point of my life...

Q: what did you do ?

OK: i went to greek institute for music and joined the guitar section and after a while the masetro of the institute came to me and congratulate me because i was learning in a month what the others learn in 6 months and at 17 i became a teacher in this institute along with my school studies , but...

Q: what happend ?

OK: the institute closed because the mastero[ owner] died and there was no simillar institutes like it , i started to study music by mail from an institute in london and i became aware of orchestration, arrangments and soundtrack scores...

Q: when you started to take guitar from a hobby to make money from it ?

OK: first time i got paid was in a hotel in suez a, the hotel asked me along with a pianist and a drummer to play for 10 days with a daily payment of 5 pounds each, it was a secret from my family but they found out and when i returned to cairo , my mother shouted at me and smashed the guitar , lucky me i had 50 pounds from the hotel i went and bought a new guitar and kept it with a friend , each time i want to play i go to his house...

Q: so you stopped at this point ?

OK: no, i joined the band ' les petits chats ' 3 months after it was formed and started to play with the band offically in omar khyam hotel in cairo[ mariotte hotel in zamalek now] and palstine hotel in alexandria , the group was the top among others in egypt , at this point my father introduced me to composers and singers like oum kalsoum and abdel halim hafez...

Q: halim , how did you meet him?

OK: one summer i was playing with the band in palstine hotel in alex and halim was there listening , i went to his table and he said , you play very good on the guitar omar , do u like to play with oriental orchestra ?

Q: and you said yes of course...

OK: no , the thought of playing with oriental orchestra never came to me before , my taste was jazz music , tom jones-james brown songs , i refused halim offer and told him the the guitar has no major role in oriental orchestra, but halim said you won't lose a thing if you tried , if you successd the guitar will be a basic instrument in the oriental orechstra , i agreed for halim and it did oppose my work with the band ...

Q: what was halim opinion of this experince?

OK: he was happy with the result as i appeard with him on stage and he told baligh hamdy to make the guitar appear well in his music..

Q:so by that time you moved to oriental music and left the band?

OK: honestly i went back to the band but halim told me to focus on the oriental music and forget the band and invited me to join his orchestra to tours outside egypt , i was fascinated about the idea and i apologised to the band and said goodbye to them...

Q: was it a risk then..?

OK: yes , because i wasn't known that much as a guitarist in oriental music , but i became an instant member of halim orchestra and with oum kalsoum , my start in oriental music was with two giants that made me found myself in the arabic music , i did not cage myself in just one band....