Rex To Power Highlife Abroad

Finally Rex Omar, winner of the Ghana Music Awards’ Contemporary Highlife Song 2004, is setting off to test the decision he took three years ago, to stick to manually played music rather than miming to computerized supporting music.

He has been invited to participate in two international music festivals, one in France and the other in South Africa. In France he will be performing at the fourteenth edition of the "Festival des Escales de Saint-Nazair" on 6th August 2005.

Then he will perform for two nights at the "Joy of Jazz Festival" in South Africa on the 26th and 27th of August 2005.

In pursuit of his determination to seek a way for Ghana to enter the international music scene and subsequently the charts, Rex has nurtured a band, the "nu-Ashanty" with a repertoire that can sustain more than a three hour performance of a lively variety of powerfully rendered African music.

The band has such excellent instrumentalist as Anthony Ackah Blay on guitar, Ben Taylor on keyboards and Emmanuel "Shabo" Koomson on bass.

Trap drums and an array of congas a jembes combine with Rex Omar, playing his custom made "Atumpan", to provide exciting rhythmic patterns that qualify the music as authentically African.

A three part horns section adds power and sophistication to Rex’s musical arrangements. Rex told Showbiz that he is elated by the challenges posed by the two opportunities and promises to keep the flag of Ghana flying high!