Colombian neo-cumbia. Egyptian avant garde. Arabic surf guitar. And a baby boy. All this and more has been on the mind of musician and music promoter Rick Omonte as he rolls out a new series of shows for 2022 through his nom de booking, Shaki Presents.
“It’s been a wild two years,” Omonte said. At the beginning of 2020, as a promoter, he had months of shows lined up bringing international acts to New Haven, and was active playing with the Mountain Movers. But in mid-March of that year, Omonte had something even bigger on his mind. As the pandemic began, he and his wife were welcoming their first kid into the world, on April 6. They spent a few days in the hospital, and Omonte recalled being able to tell when doctors were about to visit them by the faint sound of their using the rows of automatic Purell dispensers stationed in the hallways. Before getting in the car to go home, he recalled “firebombing the interior” with disinfectant.
Brian Slattery Photo
Omonte.
Meanwhile, “it was as if somebody clicked the light switch,” Omonte said. It began with his extended family, who did not visit. “No touching the child, no kissing the child,” Omonte said. For Omonte’s father, “no visiting his grandkid. My father didn’t touch my son for six months.”
He also experienced what every working musician and music promoter did: “It was wild, within one week’s time, to watch nine months of work I’d been doing get immediately cancelled,” he said. “I had a couple agents” — people he was working with to book bands — “who were not willing to accept it.”
Omonte, however, was already heading past acceptance, into adaptation. It helped that he’d read an article by Chicago-based musician Tim Kinsella, who’d seen the Covid-19 outbreak hit that country before it hit the United States. It “sent a chill down my spine,” Omonte said. The takeaway from the article, for Omonte, was: “you guys don’t get it. I come from the future, and I watched what happens. I watched people who were neighbors, helping each other, saying ‘get off my land.’”
The problem was as much how people were reacting to the pandemic as it was the pandemic itself. “How kind hearts became cold hearts, and smiles became grimaces with fangs,” Omonte said.
For Omonte, the solution was to adapt. “It’s all about adapting,” he said. “How fast can you do it? How can you make it through? How can you adjust to the new reality?” His wife started working from home, and he and his family hunkered down.
He had his moments of feeling useless; what good was being a DJ, musician, and concert promoter when everyone was in lockdown? “I had those moments of ‘which record will I eat first?’” Omonte said with a laugh. “How meaningless is it to be a concert organizer? I’ve come out of that headspace now, thank God.”
It helped that there were blessings too. “Being locked up in the house with my baby and my baby mama, I got to navigate all those dynamics,” he said. “At least you’re stuck at home with your wife and kid.” Besides, he added, “it doesn’t help to give up.”
In time, like many musicians, Omonte also kept playing. “A lot of artists used the pandemic time to create,” he said, and he and the rest of the Mountain Movers — Dan Greene on guitar and vocals, Kryssi Battalene on guitar, and Ross Menze on drums (Omonte plays bass) — were no different. They formed a bubble. “We were all kind of on the same page without consulting each other. Little by little the conversations trickled in about jamming. What that produced is eight hours of Mountain Movers material. We’re sitting on hours and hours of it,” to be released at some point in the future.
He also kept up his regular slot on WPKN, even if he couldn’t go to the studio. “I never stopped buying the records, I never stopped playing the records,” he said. He recorded three-hour vinyl sets in his bedroom and sent them to the station.
With the vaccine came the possibility of performing with the Mountain Movers and doing DJ sets. Omonte went for it. “I DJ as much as I can,” he said. “I hate saying no to a DJ gig. I love dropping that needle and I see someone smile.” Then they walk across the room and say “I can’t find this on Shazam. What is it?” In October 2021, the Mountain Movers opened for Yo La Tengo at Central Park’s SummerStage concert series; staying active had made all the difference.
About nine months ago, Omonte turned his energy to booking shows again. He reached out to everyone he’d been corresponding with in late 2019. For a few, he said, “the minute those shows got cancelled, I never heard from them again.” But “most of the time, there were real people behind those phones and emails, and they didn’t forget.” The general tone of their responses: “oh great, you survived?”
Omonte was able to tell which bands were active in part by watching their schedules. “A lot of international acts tour Europe first. It’s way more supportive now, there’s more money for the arts,” he said. “Bands need to tour, whether you take that financially or spiritually. Yeah, they’re trying to make a living, but there’s a mental health component to it too.” Omonte understood that; he’d felt it himself, relying on music to keep him grounded.
“They needed it, I wanted it,” he said. “And flash to a show like Kaleta,” who played with Super Yamba Band at Cafe Nine in March, “where every five minutes someone came up to me and said, ‘I can’t tell you how bad I needed this.’” It was as though “we all forgot we’re social creatures,” Omonte said, and people are beginning to remember.
Omonte is now cautiously optimistic about booking live music. “There was a measure of moving into the water very slowly. Now I feel some people are ready to dive in,” he said. “We at least know what to expect if we have another spike. It’s less scary now.… The adapting is where we’re at.”
Omonte’s next show — the Nigerien band Les Filles de Illighadad a couple weeks ago, playing its second show in New Haven after Omonte brought the group to the State House in 2019 — was sold out. “People were having a great time. The band was having a great time,” he said.
“Now it feels almost like a flex. I got a whole bunch of shows coming,” Omonte said. Those shows — all at Cafe Nine — include Elephant Stone, a Canadian band that incorporates Indian music and psychedelia into its indie rock, on May 20; neo-tropical psychedelic group Los Cumpleaños and Arabist surf guitarists Habbina Habbina Combo on May 21; Egyptian musician and composer Maurice Louca on May 27, with New Haven-based Enid Ze opening; Bolivian-Finnish soul artist Bobby Oroza on June 24, with a DJ set from Dayansiiita/Sonidero Mixteco; and Colombian cumbia experimentalists Meridian Brothers on August 17, a show that Omonte has taken years to book.
“The first note I heard from that band, I was emailing them,” Omonte said. “My goal was to book them at New Haven. I talked to them until they realized that I was serious.”
With more shows in the works, Omonte humbly feels that the work he put in as Shaki Presents for the past several years meant that he has picked up where he left off before the pandemic. He has become ever better at bringing international groups to New Haven, from helping secure visas to dealing with agents to aiding with travel arrangements to finding bands a place to land in New Haven. “People have now noted — Shaki, we’re good, he’ll take care of you,” Omonte said.
It also helps that New Haven’s music fans keep showing up for his shows.“That’s the thing that I’m convinced about with New Haven — the bands realize why it’s off the chain.” In other cities, music fans may see a band as simply an evening’s entertainment, but New Haven is “where you get lifers,” fans that will continue to support bands time after time. “All you got to do is be a good band and kick ass, and people are going to take it from there,” Omonte said. It helps that he’s booking the shows at Cafe Nine, with its “incredible connection to the community — all different kinds of shows have happened there.”
Omonte is driven as a promoter in part because he’s also, still, at heart, a music fan, who has been getting back to going to live shows as an audience member as well. “Me and my homie went to see Sean Paul,” a dancehall titan, he said. He found the show was sold out. “I had my panic attack of ‘am I crazy?’” he said, thinking of the packed room that awaited him. But as he got into the show, he realized “I needed people cutting loose. I needed to cut loose myself,” he said. “Just a couple years ago, I would be eating this up. I had to remind myself that we’re not out of the woods, but don’t give up on this. Don’t give up on that feeling.”
Besides, he added, “all the energy I put into this, it comes back to me. Maybe not that day, maybe not the next, but it always comes back.”
Visit Cafe Nine’s listings for details about upcoming Shaki Presents shows.