Omar Bashir was born in 1970 in Budapest, Hungary. He started playing oud at 5, next to his father, Munir Bashir, the Iraqi virtuoso who first made the Oud a solo recital instrument and popularized it in the West. At 7, Omar joined the Baghdad Music and Ballet school. He would eventually become a teacher there and set up his own band of 24 musicians specialized in traditional Iraqi music. They performed regularly across Egypt, Russia, Turkey and many Arabic countries. He came back to Budapest in 1991 where he joined Franz Liszt Academy.

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