Composer Omar Fadel remembers when the “music bug” bit him. He was ten years old, and the piano opened his world to other instruments including percussion, cello, and guitar. His sound skills led him to Los Angeles where he worked for Stewart Copeland, drummer of The Police. Since then, he has composed for the Emmy Award winning film, “Belly of the Beast”, the Peabody Award winning film, “The Judge,” “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” and, more recently, the forthcoming Netflix film “NAGA.”
Hayat Life Editor-in-Chief Fira Gasimova spoke to Fadel about his interest in composition, his cultural influences, and the lessons he has learned along the way.
Fadel loved playing music from a young age, but it took him time to find his place within the industry.
Gasimova: When did you decide to become a composer?
Fadel: My grandmother taught me piano when I was five or six years old, but I didn’t take it seriously until I was ten or eleven. Then I started playing the drums, the guitar, and I just kept adding instruments. I always found practicing scales to be so boring, so the moment my teacher would leave, I would come up with my own tunes. I don’t know if I was good at it, but it’s the thing that I enjoyed most. Shortly after graduating college, I moved to Los Angeles and started the composing journey.
Gasimova: Did you have a lot of supporters on your journey into composing?
Fadel: You have to have people helping you. I didn’t come from a family of the arts, but my parents said, “Okay, go and work hard.’ When I got to LA, I had a couple lucky breaks and some people gave me a chance. One of my first jobs was for Stewart Copeland, who was the drummer of The Police and is an active film, TV, and video game composer. I worked with him for several years, and that was like getting a master’s degree in composition and learning about the industry. He was someone that championed me. He would introduce me to people and say, “Hey Omar, you should go do this, you should try this, you should talk to this person.” He was, professionally, a big supporter earlier on.
Gasimova: I think that’s amazing, having someone like him. Sometimes even one supporter is enough for you to have this power to go on.
Fadel: A year or two prior, I could have never imagined I would have the fortune of working with somebody like that. So many of the tricks I have today are what I learned from him. I’m incredibly thankful for that.
After moving to LA, Fadel worked on a diverse range of projects spanning film, TV and video games.
Gasimova: In 2013, when you were working on Assassin’s Creed, was there a lot of pressure for you and how did you get the opportunity?
Fadel: There’s always pressure. You learn to live with the pressure. I hadn’t done a video game until then. That was a new thing, figuring out how it worked. You write music differently for a video game, because the music has to loop. If the player is playing a particular section of the game for a long time, you have to write music that can loop seamlessly. The lead composer on Assassin’s Creed IV was a very successful composer named Brian Tyler, and we had been chatting for a while. He was overworked and needed someone to help. I played most of the same instruments he played, and that’s how I got it.
Gasimova: Looking back on all your collaborations, do any of them stick out to you, any special moments or favorite projects?
Fadel: There is a filmmaker named Erika Cohn who I love working with. We’re best buds now. The first film I did with her, “The Judge,” was about a Palestinian judge and all of the hardships she goes through as a woman, the fact that she’s Palestinian in occupied territory. Another film I just finished is called “Norah” and it’s a Saudi Arabian film about a girl coming of age in the early 90s in a religiously and culturally repressed society. That’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve scored, maybe ever. I can’t wait for everybody to see it.
Gasimova: I noticed that you worked on many projects that feature Muslim characters. What do their stories mean to you?
Fadel: When I was a kid, you didn’t see stuff like that in Western media. It’s nice to be part of bringing those stories to the media. It’s important to have a film or show that represents people other than mainstream Americans. That’s fulfilling to me, to be contributing in whatever small way I am. I moved to LA in 2005 and by 2010, I was friends with all the Arab-American and Muslim-American people in the entertainment industry. It’s not a big community. So everybody knows everybody, and it’s so much bigger now 13 years later. It’s amazing, it’s fun to be part of that community. There’s been some great progress, like “Rami,’ I would never see a show like that 20 years ago.
Gasimova: I like to give that example, it showed duality in a way.
Fadel: Exactly, it’s humanizing. To bring it back to Erika’s film “The Judge.” That was one of those things about the film that I liked. It focused on a Judge in Palestine, a woman, a mother, in an incredibly difficult place to live, and it didn’t make it exotic. When you humanize it, it makes it accessible emotionally to the audience. When I watched the first cut of it, I thought, “Yes, of course, I wanna be a part of that. It’s gonna help things.”
Looking ahead, Fadel recognizes the cultural influences in his composition and is excited for future projects.
Gasimova: I see that you were born in Houston, and Houston has a large Muslim community. Growing up by Muslim culture, how did it shape your musical style, if it did?
Fadel: My parents moved from Egypt and we only lived in Houston for about a year. After that, my dad got a job in Oman. We were there, then Cairo, Houston, Ras Al Khaimah, Dubai, and Alexandria. We moved around all the time. From an early age, I was around Muslim culture, but it was varied. I remember when we’d go back to Houston, there was a big Egyptian-American population. In Dubai, there’s a melting pot of people. My first drum teacher was a Punjabi guy. That music, Middle Eastern music, and music from around the world was a jukebox in my head. It’s rare to come across a style of music I haven’t heard before. All the different cultures mixing, it’s always been there and made me who I am for better or worse (laughing).
Gasimova: Is it easy for you to separate your vision and the music that you want to create from the director’s vision? Do you ever clash?
Fadel: ‘One of the first conversations we’ll have is me trying to figure out what they are looking for. Everybody has a different sense of taste. Where our tastes align, that’s the sweet spot. I like music with a little bit of edge. Not necessarily a right angle, not a circle, maybe a square with a rounded edge. When I was a kid, I loved punk rock music, so the punk ethos is still in my music though sometimes it’s not apparent.
Gasimova: Having all these experiences in your pocket, what advice would you give to your younger self and to anyone aspiring to be a composer?
Fadel: I don’t have very many regrets. Every mistake I made ended up happening for a reason. The answer for any composer trying to get into it is, number one, find your own voice. Find the thing that you’re best at and become amazing at it. The second answer is, the way this industry works, you go work for an older composer, and you learn the tricks of the trades. Go work for someone who is more seasoned and experienced in the industry. It’s almost like 300 hundred years ago, the painter would have an apprentice.
Gasimova: You worked on the film “NAGA,” are there any other projects that you’re working on currently that you’d like to share?
Fadel: There’s “Norah” which I finished a couple of months ago. It’s going to be great. I also recently scored a feature-length documentary called “36 Seconds.” It’s a deep, dark, and heady documentary about hate crime, specifically in the Muslim-American community. That’s one I’m also excited for. But right now, I’m super excited for everyone to see “Naga” which is an absolutely bananas film brilliantly written and directed by Meshal Aljaser. It drops on Netflix the first week of December.
