The Offering by Omar Musa and
Mariel Roberts.
The Bicentennial Hall. The Q.
Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. Q Locals. August 8 2024
I close my eyes and let the vivid images swirl through my mind. Internationally renowned Hip hop poet, author and rapper Omar Musa has returned to his hometown to present his autobiographical show The Offering to Canberra and Queanbeyan audience in Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre’s The B Theatre. He is accompanied by acclaimed cellist Mariel Roberts. They have recently married and the show is an opportunity to introduce his wife to his hometown audience.
From the blue plastic sea to the
lush jungles of his father’s homeland and family, Musa fills in his richly
daubed palette of reminiscence with accounts of his grandmother and the
innocent uncomplicated life of relations who live in Sarawak and Sabah. Musa's poetic landscape is a mesmerising terrain of imagery. Assonance sways our
emotions. Alliteration evokes the poetic sounds and rhythms of his narrative.
Repetition provides fills in the palette of the mind’s imagining with a richness
born of passion. Through it all renowned American cellist Roberts provides a
soulful accompaniment, drawing her long bow across the strings at times mystical,
at times emphatically percussive and always the perfect evocative companion to
Musa’s weaving narrative from poetry to hip hop to the rising urgency of rap or
the oral tradition of his grandmother’s poetry in the mind.
The offering is a seductive
insight into one man’s memory where fact and fiction merge in a whirling
kaleidoscope of poetic images. Musa is more than a wizard of words. He is the
voice of social conscience. He uses hip hop to lure us into his art and rap to
invoke his fervent message. As a water spirit he entices his audience to plunge
the depths of the sea to search for the land of his father’s ancestor. Musa is
the hypnotist of the heart. He enfolds our emotions in his mastery of language.
He takes us with him on a rolling surf of memory and social commentary. Roberts
is his Muse breathing life into his performance.
But Musa is more than an artist
who uses his poetry to paint pictures in our mind. The recurring image of a
plastic sea and a blue bucket washed up from the depths is a harsh reminder of
the pollution of pristine waters and humanity’s destruction of the natural
environment. His rap is protest. His quest is to restore his humanity through
the discovery of his heritage. The answer is in the history of changing colonization
in the many flags that adorn Borneo’s exploited past. It is in the grandmother’s
poetry, preserving the traditions and legacy of his father’s homeland.
The Offering is Musa’s gift to his Australian hometown. It is also
the journey of discovery to unveil through poetry, story and song one man’s identity.
It is a message not lost on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people as
much as on the land of the people of Borneo. Musa and Roberts remind us in this
captivating and insightful poetry and music performance that we live in an
altered and damaged world. And yet, like every great poet, Musa releases the
hope to be found in his verse that if we dare to search then the answer of who
we are may be revealed.
The Offering had only one
performance at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre as part of Q The Locals
programme. It is a very special performance that hopefully will return to a
much wider audience. It is a poetic and musical feast for every discerning
theatregoer.
