Omnia – Latin for everything – is a self-described “neoceltic pagan folk” band. The band has its origins in a group of like-minded friends centred around Steve Sic (Steve Evans van der Harten), but the group really took shape when Jenny met Steve while dancing at a music festival. She was swept off her feet.
Jenny, who played the piano and Celtic harp, decided to spend her life with the man in Iron Age Celtic clothes and woad on his face. She soon became his principal music collaborator in Omnia. In the following video from 2012, Steve Sic plays the flute while Jenny Evans van der Harten (they married!) plays the harp. Both sing. The song is Fee Ra Huri.
The band declines to explain the meaning of the title. While the lyrics are more or less nonsense, they evoke the incantations of traditional Irish dance. The flute playing reminds me of Jethro Tull, but the musical palette is different. Michael Spence comments “This is where music crosses borders, you’ve got tuvan, Irish, tursk, aussie, balkan, russki, Eastern European and country all in one!!” With 81m views, Fee Ra Huri is Omnia’s most popular video on YouTube by some distance.
Fee Ra Huri is a foot-stomping, danceable, melodic song with an appeal that reaches beyond Omnia’s core fan group. Omnia aspires to be more than just a band. According to their webpage, “OMNIA has become a way of life, converting people to the cause of Nature and respect for the living planet and personal freedom through the medium of their very own PaganFolk Musick.” You don’t need to identify with the band’s values to like Fee Ra Huri. Their second most popular video demands more commitment.
Earth Warrior is the kind of Omnia song that divides fans of Fee Ra Huri and the band’s music prior to 2010’s Wolf Love album. The lyrics are didactic, for a start. Even listeners who are sympathetic to paganism and eco-mindedness can find the video a bit much. Metalocality writes on Reddit: “This kind of vacuous self-important crap makes it difficult to publicly be a pagan. They do nothing but hurt the cause they profess to defend with their repellent smugness and trite costumed buffoonery.” On the other hand, the video has 12M views on YouTube.
Omnia founder Steve Sic is the son of traveller parents. He lived in Cornwall, Holland, USA & Germany before leaving home at 15. Omnia’s website describes him as an “off-the-wall Gothic-Punk Artist, musician, eco-anarchist, occultist and freedom fighter”. For a time Steve Sic and Jenny were based in Holland, but they have recently moved to Slovakia where they live on a secluded 40-acre mountain they call Terra Omnia.
According to their website, Stenny (as Steve Sic and Jenny sometimes refer to themselves) have renounced air travel and being present at any festival or concert venue as they can’t abide “the dishonesty of it all”. During the pandemic, on Omnia’s Facebook page, Stenny championed the type of conspiracy theories that place Bill Gates, his millionaire buddies, advocates of 5G technology, Big Pharma & “Klaus (Rothschild-) Schwab’s GREAT RESET” at the centre of an enterprise that seeks to enslave freedom-minded people.
Steve Sic sees himself as a shaman. If you would like to see more from Omnia, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow them on Facebook. You can also visit their official website for more information.