Emmanuel Jal has won worldwide acclaim for his unique style of hip hop with its message of peace and reconciliation born out of his experiences as a child soldier in Sudan. His music can be heard alongside Coldplay, Gorillaz, and Radiohead on the fundraising ‘Warchild – Help a Day in the Life’ album, as well as in three ER episodes, the National Geographic documentary God Grew Tired of Us, and more recently in the feature film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He also featured on John Lennons ‘Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur’ amongst the likes of U2, REM and Lenny Kravitz.
We caught up with him during the Aye Write! festival at Glasgow’s Mitchell library in March 2009.
Congratulations on this truly inspiring interview. I hope it is heard by politicians and policy makers as well as music lovers everywhere.
[...] Listen to the longer podcast on RadioMagnetic – recorded during the Aye Write Festival in Glasgow in March 2009 – and you can see why. I think what gets me most of all is the humanity, hope and humour of a young man who lost his childhood in a war that destroyed human kindness in almost everyone he met. He calls it a jungle where circumstance forced people “to do things they would normally consider barbaric”. This jungle also provided him with the resources it takes to survive as a refugee in a strange and not always welcoming land. [...]
[...] Emmanuel Jal’s case the story is literally written in blood. Listen to the full podcast on RadioMagnetic – recorded during the Aye Write Festival in Glasgow in March 2009 when Emmanuel Jal was taking to [...]