Jal moves to a more joyful musical place
Former child soldier finds solace in hip-hop
The nightmares still find Emmanuel Jal.
But they don’t have the power over him they once did.
On a cellphone from Toronto, the 32-year-old hip-hop artist, activist and former child soldier is promoting both his fourth album, See Me Mama, and his new Canada-based label, Gatwitch Records.
But, as is often the case with the former “lost boy” of Sudan, the topic soon turns to his harrowing past. At one time, Jal’s experiences as an eightyear-old, AK-47-toting child soldier haunted his dreams every night. But hip-hop proved cathartic and therapeutic, chipping away at the horrors over the years.
“They are not as effective as before,” Jal says about his night terrors. “They come once in awhile. The nightmares have been to vary. They are not constant like a long time ago (when) there was jungle or smoke or a bomb exploding or me being chased by a tank or helicopter, killing people or somebody’s head slashed off with a machete or I’m in a battlefield firing and my gun refuses to fire.
“They come. But they’re not as effective.”
So when Jal, who will be performing as part of Afrikadey on Prince’s Island Saturday night, says his new disc is more celebratory than past work, it seems a much more significant statement than your average rapper claiming to have lightened up.
“The story is still there,” he says. “But they are love songs. They are celebrating. It’s more about dancing.”
“It’s more joyful. It’s not as sad as previous records.”
Jal is not 100 per cent sure when he was born in Southern Sudan, but suspects it was somewhere around 1980. He was a young child when civil war broke out in the troubled country. His father joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and his mother was murdered by pro-government soldiers. While part of a mass migration of children into Ethiopia, he was recruited by the SPLA and trained to kill on its behalf.
With the help of a British aid worker, Jal escaped into Kenya. But even that came with hardships as he lived for years in the slums. But Jal eventually stumbled upon hip-hop and discovered the genre harboured incredible power, both spiritual and political. Puff Daddy’s Best Friends, a song about Jesus, was a particular eye-opener.
“I thought ‘Even gangsters sing songs to God,’ ” he says. “That’s how it began and I started making my own lyrics. With music, there was a different feeling it brought. It was a different world. You express yourself and start to see heaven.”
But while Puff Daddy may have been an early influence, Jal has had a prickly relationship with gangster rap in general. In 2008, he released a song called 50 Cent as a plea to the controversial rapper to stop glamorizing violence. But Jal says he has come to the realization that sex and violence sells in the entertainment industry and he’s more reluctant now to blame the artists themselves.
Still, he can’t help but point out the irony of how he own music has been treated by certain record labels and mainstream radio.
“I remember there was one DJ who said he cannot play my music because it was too real,” he says. “I said ‘What about gangster rap?’ They said, ‘This is not real, it’s just gangster rap. It’s just acting. But your stuff is too real. We don’t want real stuff.’ ”
Not that Jal seems even slightly deterred. He founded Gatwitch Records because no other label would put out his music. He hopes to sign other artists to the roster as well.
Meanwhile, he continues his peace activism and work for charities. As part of a challenge to raise funds for his charity Gua Africa, Jal left his London home and promises to stay away until he raises a significant amount of money.
But while he may now describe himself as a “modern nomad,” his heart and mind are never far from home. The title track of See Me Mama is dedicated to his mother, who was violently killed when he was only seven. “It’s dedicated to my mom, telling her where I am now and what I’ve achieved and the people I’ve met,” he says. “So the song See Me Mama is almost like a prayer to ask my mother to think of me as I walk in this mysterious world that I don’t understand.