Omo Bello is a highly sought-after French Nigerian soprano opera singer who is passionate about singing and has entirely devoted herself to music. As a young child Omo thought she would become a doctor because this was the expectation of her parents but as she grew so did her love for music, and when the time came, Omo chose music over medicine. After a degree in Cell Biology and Genetics at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, Omo moved to France where she studied at the Conservatoire de Paris. It was a challenging six-year journey in a country where she had no family, no friends, no acquaintances and did not understand the language. It would test her passion and love for music. She had every reason to quit and return home as some did, but she was determined to learn to sing and stayed the course until the end and graduated with a master’s degree.
She holds a diploma in singing performance from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London and has been recognised for her singing, winning first prize at the Paris International Competition, amongst many other awards. So far, Omo has sung in over twenty countries. In this interview, she shares her inspiring journey of pursuing her dreams against the odds. As you read her story, I hope, and I am sure Omo does too, that you will be inspired to pursue your dreams and make sacrifices that are necessary to attain them!
Please tell us about yourself, Omo, tell us where you were born, where you grew up, and what it was like.
My name is Omo Bello, and I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, that’s in West Africa. I grew up in Lagos, the typical middle-class Nigerian family, in a quiet neighbourhood called Yaba. My father is an architect and my mother a lawyer. So, we grew up in this sort of family where you were expected to follow in those lines. When I say those lines, I mean when asked what you want to be the child would have four or five options between lawyer, doctor, engineer, and accountant. So yes, it was that type of family, and I thought I would be a doctor.
When and how did you begin to sing?
My early memories of singing were from very young. All I know is I always loved to sing and so to put an age to it would be difficult because all the memories I have of loving to sing were like all of my life. My mother shared with us this love for musicals from very early. We had those VHS tapes playing in the house, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and Annie, later on. So, I was that child who would be glued to the TV, not because it was a film but because it was about music. I would learn all the songs, all the words, and I would go to the garden, pick up a stick and play out what I had seen (She laughs). So that was me. I would project myself as a singer in those moments, imagining myself on a big stage singing with lots of lights and cameras (more laughter). So, I’ve always loved to sing. I think that in a child is very tell-tale signs to the parents when it comes to talent and aptitude. In the case of music, that was the clear sign for me. I would eventually join the choir, later on, and the orchestra and take it up more seriously. But as a child, those were the signs.
Awesome! But why classical music because, it is not a very popular genre of music where you come from. So why did you choose it and what support was available? Because to begin with, telling your parents you want to become a musician was not popular, as you said, you could only be an accountant, a doctor or lawyer, those sorts of things. To say you were going into music was difficult enough, so why did you choose that path and what support was available to help you achieve your dream?
Very true. No child from a self-respecting family could say I want to be a musician (She laughs). That is tantamount to saying, I want to be a disgrace to the family (more laughter). So you are very correct. In my case, it was more or less a diplomatic type of move. I don’t know if I chose classical music or classical music chose me. There was that love for music that was always there. I remember having little encounters with classical music along the line like concerts of Luciano Pavarotti and the Three Tenors; those were first impressions on TV. And I remember this popular advert for British Airways where there was this very short but quite captivating duet; it’s called The Flower Duet, it used to air a lot those days on TV. So that was another little encounter. Another encounter still was in junior secondary school, I took music as one of the subjects I studied, and I had this fantastic music teacher in my second year. The first year was a disaster thank God it didn’t continue that way because I would have probably hated music. So the second year of junior secondary school, I had this fantastic teacher who quickly realised I love to sing and got me and two other girls rehearsing little melodies, which we would sing with him at the piano and then he took us for our first competition. So that was one of the bigger encounters with formal music this time. Because there we had to study music theory, the notes and all of that. But the big encounter if I may say, was in church. And so for the first time I went to church for an orchestral concert there was this choir, and there for the first time in my life I saw an orchestra, choirs, of course, I had seen but an orchestra, no. And it was just amazing to me to be able to find all kinds of people playing different instruments, somebody waving the hand and everything was in perfect harmony. So beautiful the music, so difficult and I said to myself; this is so difficult I can see it is so difficult, and that’s what I want to do because I felt it was this challenging thing that I needed to master, so that was it for me. And at that point I said to my mother, I want to learn to play the violin. So the first instrument I would go and learn properly was the violin. The support is where I met someone I call my angel. So there were several angels God sent me along the way to help me in my path, and the first angel would be the one in the church who taught me how to sing – my first singing teacher. Her name is Princess Adebanke Ademola. And then the second one would be the chance encounter with the Cultural Attache of the French Embassy who got me a scholarship with which I was able to actually pursue music professionally in France. So that’s a condensed version of a very long story (more laughter).
I love that. That is an amazing story, and I like the fact that you didn’t shy away from it because of the challenges. You felt it was difficult and you went for it. That says something about you.
It does (she laughs). That has always followed me. I was in university when I was doing this very seriously. I was studying Cell Biology and Genetics in the University of Lagos, and so I was going to the university in the mornings and when I finish my lectures at about three, four, thereabout, go straight to the music school. We had and still have this music school in Lagos called the Music Society of Nigeria, and I will be there up until nine, for the concert rehearsals, concerts and all sorts of things. So, I had this double life I was living so you can imagine that in the university I was like the laughing stock, people my colleagues were like, what is she doing? (More laughter). And so, everybody is going in one direction, they were listening to groups called the Plantation Boys, Fela, and all those afro hip-hop types of music everybody was listening to. And I was doing something completely different. So yeah, definitely, there were naysayers, but it is amazing because definitely for me it didn’t even matter. I was so passionate about it I wasn’t even hearing what they were saying. And I suppose that is the sort of positive stubbornness in me. I sort of found my very essence; for me, that was all I wanted to do so it didn’t matter what anybody thought, and of course, everybody thought I was crazy. But the deal I made with my father was I would keep up the good grades and then get to do music. So that was it, and I was doing fantastically well in the sciences. I could even have gone on and been a doctor, but at the point where I got the scholarship, I had this choice, and I chose music, I chose to sing. And I had my bachelor’s degree. I got the degree to keep to my word to my father. I got the degree; I have it with me still, never used it (laughter). And then I went to sing.
Wonderful! Wonderful! So that’s how you dealt with the naysayers. You were so passionate about music that you weren’t bothered about what anyone had to say about you or what you were doing.
Exactly. And usually, when somebody says I cannot do something, my attitude towards that type of statement is usually this; obviously, somebody telling me I cannot do something means that thing is very difficult, so I acknowledge that and then I put in the work. If it is five hundred percent that is needed, if it’s ten times the amount of work, I mean it was sheer hard work, needless to say, right? I was coming from Lagos, Nigeria, where there is no opera house, no conservatoire of music that is a proper music institution, I had so much to catch up on. I had so much to learn, an entire culture to learn, and of course, it was difficult. But usually my response to, you cannot do this, is that I want to prove the person wrong or prove that statement wrong by putting in much more than is needed to get it done and satisfy myself in that way that yes, I can do it (she laughs).
Awesome. So, it takes more than just passion and talent to succeed in what one has been called to do. One needs to also be determined.
Oh yes. And one needs to be prepared to put in the effort, lots of effort. I usually see that there are a lot of people with talents. I think the greatest collection of talents is probably the grave because a lot of talented people never got to fulfill the dreams and use their talents and died in that state. So for me having the talent is ten percent, it’s not even close to being enough. I feel the ones who are the most talented are the ones who have the greatest responsibility to the giver of the talent because we are all accountable for the talents that we were given.
So now, let’s talk about your singing and how much work goes into it, because people have been talking about Omo Bello and how wonderful you are when you come out, and you do your thing. So please tell us, how much work goes into preparing for every performance?
Okay, I compare the work of a musician especially in the classical field, because like I said, it takes a lot of discipline and work. I compare the type of work we do to the work athletes do. So this means that we need to put in the hours daily to train the muscles and to train the instrument. In the case of the classical singer, it is the body. So, it’s not just the voice; the entire body is the instrument. So daily we have to do our exercises, the skills, the arpeggios, and the vocalizing. Then we have to do bodywork. Bodywork involves the type of work to do to free up the body for stage performances and stage work. Then there’s work we have to do on the music itself, so that would be learning the notes, mastering the music. All the written music with all the indications in them have to be learnt, and usually, it’s by heart. And so you have to learn the music, you have to learn the words, it’s an enormous amount of information that has to be mastered and memorised. So we get to sing by heart, unlike the instrumentalists who use scores while playing. And then the other work that goes in is that mental work to prepare to go on stage. Scientists compare the amount of adrenaline that rises when a singer of stage performer goes on stage, to what was needed in pre-historic times to flee a tyrannosaurus or an ancient wild beast. So it’s that amount of adrenaline that the body pumps out into the body when one goes on stage and so it’s very draining physically, emotionally, mentally, and what else can I say? And it has to be done on a regular basis because like I said with the athletes the muscles have to be regularly trained so that when one is on stage one doesn’t have to focus on that technical aspect anymore. One can release oneself to perform before the audience and all of that. And then the muscles are ready, they remember, the muscle memory is in place, and one can be able to perform as it were in a free manner without the public knowing all the work that goes into it because they are not supposed to see all of that.
So, what you’re saying is you need to practice every day. Even when you don’t have a performance coming up, you have to maintain a routine of daily practice.
Exactly. Exactly. And then there’s the bigger responsibility of knowing that you are carrying your instrument all the time with you. The violinist plays his instrument and puts it back into the case and closes the case and puts it where he needs to put it and then goes out and becomes himself. But the singer for example now we’re in mid-autumn, and the air is very strange, and it’s cold sometimes, hot sometimes. All sorts of physical environmental factors affect the body, and so it affects the singer. There’s that extra responsibility of knowing your instrument is all the time with you, the voice being very fragile and so we’re never free (she laughs). I heard about a very famous singer who at her retirement threw her scarf away from her neck and said, never again am I going to have to use this. And so we are all the time, even when we’re resting in quote, never really resting. Shop is open twenty-four-seven (more laughter).
Yes. I know what you mean. You have to keep your voice in good condition, that’s important. Let’s talk about your time in school. I understand that you spent six years learning to sing. Now someone is probably thinking, that is a long time, a child could have been conceived, born and started primary school in that time, but you used the time to learn to sing, and you were singing before, why did you have to spend that length of time learning to sing?
Very good question. In reference to athletes, the classical singers are in running the equivalent of marathon runners. And marathon runners they are all about the long distance, the long curves. Classical singers have to perform in operas where we’re singing on stage for extended periods of time. Sometimes operas last three hours, and before the opera, you have rehearsals that go on for weeks, months, and in between all of that we’re travelling a lot, and so it’s very intense. The voice has to be trained properly so that one can resist all of those difficult work conditions that go into a career. We get to travel a lot, and it’s exciting, but at the same time, it’s tiring. The air conditioning, heating and all sorts of weather changes, time changes, affect the body, affect the strength of the body and affect the voice. So you need to acquire technique, and that’s what we do in those six years, and I daresay we need ten years to know how to sing properly. After ten good years then you can say, yes, I am a master of my instrument. So, you need to have the proper technique to be able to go for the long run. And when I say the long run, I mean opera singers get to sing till they are eighty and sing well but of course not as good as in the glory days but well. And so that technique is what we learn during this period. Another thing that is important to note is that we opera singers sing without amplification. That means we’re able to sing in a theatre of two thousand, three thousand seats, and be heard without being amplified. That’s the sheer power of the human voice that we have to learn how to access in those years, and it takes time to be able to learn to master those types of skills.
Great! The next question is almost similar. What impact do you think that going to school for six years to learn to sing has had on the success that you now enjoy in your music career?
Yes, I had slightly touched it in answer to the former question, and that is that now I can say that I am able to master my technique, my instrument. I am able to move around from country to country continent to continent, in the past month, I was on three continents singing. I am able to go about in an autonomous manner and of course from day to day there are all sorts of things that affect the voice. For example, I got to the US, and I had been flying for about twenty-eight hours. I got there, I was so exhausted, I was dehydrated, and I had to sing the next morning. I arrived in the evening, and I was completely jet-lagged. So I know what to do in that type of situation to deliver. Come what may, I am able to deliver because the public comes to the performance and they don’t really care what you’ve been through (she laughs). They’re there to have an experience, to enjoy a performance, to be entertained and to be blessed if it’s in the church, etcetera. So, they don’t know, and they don’t care what you’ve been through. They just want to have the person come up and change their lives. And so I’m able to, thanks to all these years of training and technique building and all of that, know what to do come what may and deliver. And that’s where professionality comes in. The performer needs to, come rain, come shine, come little flu, come little whatever, be able to give that quality of performance that is expected of the performer. And success is to be able to maintain and increase the quality, the output, over the years, in a very consistent way otherwise we have what we call these flash in the pan stars who come, do one single, one big thing, and then poof, they’re gone. Voila! So that for me is the answer.
Okay, thank you for sharing that. So, with regards to your journey, going to school and learning to sing, what did you find most challenging and what did you find most fulfilling or rewarding?
Hmm…yes challenging. That one is very important. So, I told you that I fell in love with this music and as a result of this passion, for something extraordinary, I had to make a lot of sacrifices, and that means nothing good comes cheap, right? (She laughs). Even though the best things are free, I got up and left everything that I knew at the age of twenty-one. I left home for the first time, left my country, left my family, left everything that I called home and was dear to me, and I set out on this journey very importantly alone. That part of it, alone, is the part that I want to bring out, solitude. Solitude is not necessarily a bad thing, it doesn’t necessarily have to turn to loneliness, but it means when you want to fulfill your dream you will most likely have to do it alone. You may get support, you may get people who will help you along the way and all of that, but a huge part of it will be just you and your God. The many years in France when I was doing all of this, in a country where I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t have any acquaintances or family or friends and having to forge ahead with all the huge work I told you that needed to be done, and to do it, suck it up and do it, that part is not easy, I must confess. Because one needs to have first of all strength of character to be able to continue, and never give up. So that’s the challenging part, that solitude, even in the career. I have sung in over twenty countries, and when you go around on that type of career, it’s hard to find anyone who would accompany you on that type of journey (she laughs). I mean everybody has their own lives, so you’re on your own. So, you have this amazing contrast between the performer on stage, and you have lots of people, and the applause and the bravo and the flowers and this whole glamorous life on stage and you have the other side of it, which is alone in the hotel, alone in the airport going through all the travel hassles. So, it’s that type of contradicted life. So if I were to put a word to what the challenge of this is, it’s solitude. Then for the fulfillment part is that I am actually able to do precisely what I dreamed I wanted to do, and not many people get to be able to do that in their lifetime. I am doing it, I am living that dream, and it is something that is a blessing. To be able to wake up in the morning and say that you are doing exactly what you want to be doing. You know I remember a point in my life when I was working in a medical research lab because I was a scientist in my other life (she laughs). And I remember thinking, I don’t want to live this way for the rest of my life and I was praying and saying God help me I would just be so unfulfilled. And I was thinking; this can’t be, there has to be more to life than this. And so yes, I am aware every day of the fact that I am able to get up every day and say I sing for a living and this is my job. It’s very fulfilling and very rewarding, and I am very grateful every day for that privilege.
Omo, when you sing what is it that you want the audience to take away? Is it just entertainment or is there more to it?
Oh, there is much more. I am the type of singer who started out singing because I love to sing. That means that there was a phase in my life when I would be singing, it still happens but I am able to master it, and I’m crying. So that means for me a musical experience has to be the type of experience that changes you. Have you ever come out of a conference and felt like you could fly, you could do anything? You could be whoever you want to be? This sort of euphoria you feel when you have experienced a very good, very wonderful musical or artistic experience or performance? So for me, music is first of all, edification. For me. I am selfish in that way (she laughs). But what I am trying to say is that I want to be touched, I want to be moved. Each time, I sing, firstly for myself, and then from that well of edification I give out, I share. So that means that that part of the musical execution that involves emotion, that involves the spiritual part of it where one is able to, the only word I can use for it is, be changed. That part of it is very important, and in classical music, unfortunately, one can get carried away with the technical part. But that emotional part, that part of it that involves the emotions for me is extremely important. So for me, I want people who listen to me to be changed, to be transformed, to become better at the end of it because the most important thing for me when one encounters music I want the person to not be the same after having heard the music.
Wonderful! Omo, every star has a breakthrough moment, until then they are in obscurity. Tell us about your breakthrough moment, the moment where the dream you had in the garden when you were holding the stick became a reality right before your eyes. Tell us about that moment and how did it feel to know that your years of dreaming and your years of hard work had finally paid off?
Breakthrough moment…hmmm…you see the thing is, it’s much more than a moment because it’s so many layers of different moments that came together and explode into that breakthrough, right? Let me explain. When you have an artist, a performer, a singer, who all of a sudden has this huge international what we call a breakthrough moment, to the public or most of the public who discover that star all of a sudden at that point, it is like wow, she just brushed out of no where. It’s a lot more than that. It’s so many little sparks that exploded, right? Now let me explain my own different sparks. There was firstly that encounter that got me the scholarship that brought me to France. While I was studying like you mentioned earlier, I was singing. And before I was singing, during my studies I was singing, and I am still singing so obviously my performance improved over the years, and one can observe the ascension of the quality of my performance, before I started studying, as I was studying, after I finished and as I got full time into the career. So there was the Conservatoire that is the school that had the artistic effect on me. It developed my performing style. And then there was the competition that I did, the singing competition, the first big one that I did was in Italy. It’s the Luciano Pavarotti competition, and I got the first price before an international jury, which opened up other doors. Then there was in France the nomination for the Victoires de la Musique, which is the French version of the Grammys, which opened me up to another aspect. Then there was another competition called the Paris International Competition that I did that took place here in Paris which opened me up in another way. So all those moments, shall we say, contributed in their own way to the breakthrough, right? So that means that usually what the public gets to see is that boom, all of a sudden, an international star. But all those different moments one doesn’t necessarily see them, but they all add up into the breakthrough. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense! Wonderful! You have done an amazing job, well done! What advice do you have for the woman who would like to do what you’re doing?
Work very hard. Pray very hard. I think that in the case of the art, music, things that have to do with talent, we’re entering into this generation where people think unfortunately probably helped by the media with the voice and TV star academy and all those types of programmes. All of a sudden people tend to think that with the snapping of the finger, you can become a singer, you know. And it is actually quite sad because it doesn’t work that way at all (she laughs). And so that means you don’t go on academy and three months later become a star. No. That is not it. It is many years of dedication and commitment. For the woman specifically, it is also in certain cases having to overcome and persist through stereotypes and obstacles, that are sex targeted. So that’s where the pray hard, work hard, comes. Because I think a career in music is also, we say, time and chance. Time and chance mean the opportune moment where one meets one’s opportunity. But that opportunity needs to meet one prepared. That means one needs to have put in the hours that will make one ready when the opportunity comes so that one can ride with it and make use of it and fly with it. So if I were to advise I would say pray a lot and work hard because those prayers will bring the opportunity and when the opportunity comes it better meet you ready. A very good example I have is of a friend who I met here in Paris who had the same opportunity as I did. She came from Botswana, and she got this type of dream scholarship to come to France to study. She got here and firstly the solitude, she couldn’t cope. She was so lonely and miserable and depressed at having to leave her family and having to be in this country and having to learn this language which was so difficult for her and then on top of it, the work that was required. And she went off; I just want to sing for God’s sake what is this? And funny enough, unbelievable as it may be after two years she gave up, and she went back home. So looking at that type of story, it would be like, no that is not possible, how can someone have a scholarship somebody comes to you and says I am going to pay for all of your studies just go and do it, and it’s not possible? And so that is what happens, I believe when opportunity doesn’t meet hard work because one is not able to seize the opportunity and use it to the fullest.
That is so true, Omo, thank you for sharing that story with us. So how can the listeners contact you?
Okay, I can be contacted in two ways. Firstly, on my website https://www.omobello.com/, there is contact information to write me a message. Or on social media. I am on different social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Otherwise not least of all, I started a music foundation, The Omo Bello Music Foundation through which I can also be reached on the website for that. And yes, by all means, get in touch, and I would be glad to be in touch.
