Not many people would quit a lucrative practice at the prestigious Yale University in the US to pursue their calling. Omega Okello did just that, turning her back on her research job to pursue music.

The petite 28-year-old is getting used to the "you-mean-you-quit-Yale" gasps she receives every time she tells people about her burning desire to become a diva. One thing we can count on as a nation is a bankable musician in the Diaspora.

Omega's music is the kind that will sit comfortably alongside global names and create auxiliary demand by way of music downloads. She hopes to release three multi-genre albums by the end of the year and as fans of her debut jazz album Omega Jazz Take One will attest, she is sure going places with her incredible range.

The album which has been enjoying ample airplay on Radio One's Sunday night Jazz Evenings show, features renditions of American classics like What A Wonderful World, Summer Time and At Last plus a Luganda/English redo of Amazing Grace. A little bit of both but what is wrong with that?

The second album will be a World Music (any of various styles of popular music combining traditional, indigenous forms with elements of another culture's music) album while the third will see Omega go back to her church roots on a Praise and Worship album.

Hopeful

Omega knows she is racing against time here, hence the three albums in a year. "Most of the people who sing professionally today started their careers as teens," she says calmly. She knows she will catch up though, given her rooting in music at an early age. "I know I was not singing for a career ... because I had my sights on being a doctor back then," Omega reminisces. She went to the US as a 16-year-old because it provided better prospects of her becoming a medical practitioner.

Omega Okello sung as a child and a teen but put it aside to pursue her career. But the talent kept beckoning until she decided to pursue it professionally. Courtesy photos

She attended high school in Marysville, Washington after which she proceeded to Seattle Pacific University, earning a degree in Biology. But on meeting some of the same inequalities in the American medical system similar to the ones she had seen in Uganda, Omega changed her career path and read a degree in Health Advocacy from Sarah Lawrence University.

She worked with a couple of Connecticut Health Advocacy Organisations to increase access to healthcare for the disadvantaged. Before quitting Yale, she was part of a research team at the university's Obstetrics and Gynaecology department tasked with detecting the causes of high-risk pregnancies in women over 40.

That is when the overbearing urge to sing professionally took over.

"I spoke to my husband and after assurances we would survive on his steady income, I dived right in," she says with a broad smile. You can see Omega loves her beau a great deal in the song she commissioned Sylver Kyagulanyi to write her. It is called Omukwano Gunyuma, Luganda for "love is fun".

Omega may be based in the US but she wants to make her work, especially the World Music album as authentically African as possible. That explains her recent trip to Uganda where she not only tested the waters but got to collaborate with her former singing colleagues Nicholas Mayanja of First Love Studios in Ntinda. Omega, Mayanja and Rubaga Miracle Centre music director Isaac Serukenya used to sing together in the early 90s as part of a gospel a cappella group.

Before that, Omega had sung as a child at Makerere Full Gospel Church before touring North America as a pioneer member of the African Children's Choir. Omega continued to shine in high school at Makerere College School during the school's annual performing arts celebration Mapa. She believes it is important to work with Africans on her World Music effort. "Some elements are best brought out by Africans," she stresses. She has recruited a South African for this project and is greatly counting on the talent at First Love studios to "infuse their expertise".

Now that she has made up her mind about what she wants to do in her life, Omega does not want some cocky record label executive snapping his fingers asking her to jump. She describes herself as an independent artiste who boasts of owning her own record label, AlexOm Productions LLC in the US.

"That way, I can sing the way I want, design the website [www.omegaworldmusic.com] my way and even instruct my lawyer on what clauses to add into my contract," she says self-assuredly. She is even doing her own distribution and hopes to have a say in what kind of artistes can be signed on to her label.

If everything goes according to plan and the albums are ready in December, Omega will return in February 2008 to unveil her new singing self to what should be an expectant record buying public. For now, she is convinced that despite arriving somewhat late to the globe's recording industry, her near-lifetime of musical upbringing will help her close whatever gaps there maybe.