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.