Black History Month - Oholiab
In honour of Black History Month, I have interviewed people who have taken 2020, a year of so much dramatic change, into their stride. From a worldwide pandemic to a summer of BLM protests, this year hasn’t been a year to sit out and just watch.
Oholiab A-Muteb is a videographer, animator and songwriter from the Netherlands. After graduating film school in Utrecht, he has amassed 40,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and has worked on music videos and animated lyric videos for some of the most popular artists in the Dutch music scene, like Ronnie Flex, Fedde Le Grand and Dio:
Did you always know this was the career you wanted?
I’ve always known that I wanted to build a career as an artist. Soon as I was taught how to read and write, I started writing poems and songs but it wasn’t until I was 17 that I realised I had a talent for film as well.
What's something people would be surprised to learn about you?
People would probably be surprised to learn that I am quite a computer nerd and I absolutely love binging anime series.
What is the most fulfilling part of your work?
The most fulfilling part of my work is when I manage to finish a video project or a song. fine-tuning the last details and then watching or listening to the final product on replay.
How has working as a videographer, animator and songwriter changed for you during the pandemic?
At the beginning of the first lockdown in March I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I was working from home for a media production company for 3 months and was getting less fulfillment from my job than I already did. After a while I decided to leave the company and focus on my own passions, which are music and video editing. So now I’ve started my own business And I am focusing on adding music videos, animating lyric videos and writing new music.
What’s your favourite thing about the music industry?
To be honest there’s only one thing about the music industry that I like and that is the fact that we are all creative people trying to tell a story from our own angle.
What are your thoughts on diversity within the industries you work in? Do you think much has changed this year?
I’ve been looking around a lot within the industry as I working and I have to say that I don’t feel like a lot has changed when it comes to diversity. Most companies are still doing their best to keep the employment rate of people who look like me as low as possible until they get publicly called out for it.
What are you currently working on?
Right now I am working on building my business as a video editor/animator and I’m working on my first album.
If you had to choose a song to describe your year, what would you choose?
Everybody Loves The Sunshine by Roy Ayers Ubiquity