Peace

This is Omar Waqar, Thanks for your interest in Such records. I have created this label for the purpose of documenting my own musical projects and experiments.

When I was growing up in America there was no artist out there that truly spoke to my experience, some came close but no one really represented me, so I set out on the task of becoming my own artist. I was going to change the world with music, I was going to wake people up to injustice. I tired for years to get noticed by major labels and talent scouts, but it seemed as though I was fooling myself, I had put too much importance on “success” I had made my own goals an idol to worship. Then one day I woke up and realized i had been an artist all along, I had all these DIY recordings and no one to listen to them. What was I to do?

I was watching that horribly stereotype filled movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Laughing inside to the seemingly cartoonish portrayal of South Asians in western media. When the small asian boy shouted ” Indie! Indie! look out” I knew then that the future would be a glorious one. Filled with loud craziness and experimental music. I was going to DIY my face off. Indie… yes… Indie, indeed.

I spent the next several years learning, making instruments composing a bunch of music, traveling, and performing. In the end I had what seemed to be a slew of recordings. So I figured what the hell why not start a label, release a bunch of it, see what happens. The original purpose of the record label was such any way; to document I mean. But who would help me? The commercial music guys thought I was too all over the place, hard to market, my music was “too ethnic” for white america. The hipster guys thought my music was too commercial, not enough black rimmed glasses and over use of Moog keyboards.

I pondered the meaning of counter-culture, was it really just some shit the hippies made up? Was punk-rock the antidote to all that love crap? In America the tides had turned and feeling increasingly isolated I turned to the music and philosophy of South Asia who I guess I saw as my ancestral  people. I soon came to realize that nothing is truly original, and history repeats itself in beautiful and sometimes frustrating ways. There are these amazing parallels that exist in the world if only we look for them. For me it was the rebel’s art, anywhere you look they are there. Through out history, in every country in every time period. People did things in the name of love long before the flower children and will do so long after them. People rebelled against authority, they spoke their mind, they expressed themselves…and some paid for it with their lives. But as long as we are human, we will seek to understand creation through creation. No one can stop us.

Such records is my reaction to the world around me. I refuse to be the bastard child of the so-called clash of cultures. I have come to see the universal truth that all experiences are ultimately the same. I do not hate your freedom. I hate injustice. I do not prescribe to violence. As Rumi said “I make this living music for my host”

The only ritual I need is love.