The Voice
Her voice, one of the most important discoveries of the Idols West Africa season, is big, broad and was made to sing the ballads. But Omawumi is no ordinary lounge singer, content with doing covers in bars and nightclubs. Grabbing attention from her Idols West Africa audition, she would go on to produce one impressive performance after the other.
The 2007 Idols West Africa season is memorable not just because it was the first and only season to involve West Africa (subsequent seasons were restricted to Nigeria alone), but also because of the fantastic line up of performers that impressed with the magnitude of their talent. But even among this class, Omawumi stood out easily. Timi Dakolo, eventual winner, was always the man to beat, as he has been gifted with the kind of voice that only comes around perhaps once in a generation, but while he was mostly limited to his vocal skill, Omawumi was undoubtedly the most interesting and entertaining performer of the season.
Lighting up her performances with an infectious energy and a dramatic zest that would eventually blossom in her recording career, Omawumi gave countless memorable performances. Whether she was straddling a chair, breathless from the technically challenging Ain’t no other man by Christina Aguilera, lying down on the floor and touching herself while singing Natasha Bedingfield’s I bruise easily or doing a Bob Marley impression of Waiting in vain, complete with freestyle rap verse, she left no one in doubt, not just of her ability to sing but to carry along an audience.
If there is one performance of hers that announced that a major star had arrived, it was at the performance show for the final six, where she came out and made mincemeat of Onyeka Onwenu’s eighties dance classic, Ekwe. That performance, big on drama and sound on technique, more than anything else, set her apart from her peers. Sure she over sang it, as every Idols contestant must learn to do at some point, but it was at that point that she really emerged as a true contender.
