NEW YORK - After spending his youth mired in harrowing brutality and poverty as a child soldier in Sudan’s ethnic conflict, Emmanuel Jal was rescued by aid workers who pushed to give him a new start at life in a different country.
But there were times when he didn’t want it.
“When I was in Kenya I hated myself, I even cursed the day I was born. I hated it. I wanted to commit suicide. I went to England, when there was a car coming I would want to stop and the car to hit me,” says Jal, a slight, soft-spoken man whose gentle demeanor belies his past. “I was trying to look for death.”
Inspiration for a better life would come in an unusual form - the violent, crime-plagued rhymes of rappers in the United States.
“What made me brave is American hip-hop,” says Jal in his heavily accented English. “Someone come and say to me, ‘They have to rob for them to eat.’ So I would try and picture, how does America look like because I’ve never been there. So for me when I look at it and look at my situation - I was a child soldier, we never had food, we raid villages and we take the food and we eat ... So I said, ‘OK, let me testify.’ ”
Jal’s testimony came in the form of his raps - and now, through his music, his is hoping to heal not only the wounds of his people, but to promote peace while inspiring others.
“I lost my childhood, yes. My country is (at) war. People are dying now. What could I do with what I have?” asks Jal, who last month released his third international CD, “WARchild,” and is the subject of a new documentary of the same name.
Karim Chrobog, the director of the award-winning “War Child” film, says Jal’s story shows that “you can really survive horrible horrible things and come out of them and really make a difference ... he has put all the bitter things in life aside, his sense of revenge, his sense of the war and how it’s affected him personally.”
The dreadlocked Jal, who doesn’t know his age but believes he is in his 20s, was about 7 when the Sudanese civil war, which pitted Muslims against non-Muslims, tore apart his family and led to his life as a child warrior for the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. His pregnant mother was killed, and his father, a member of the SPLA, allowed his son to be trained as a solider for the anti-Muslim faction. Bands of children were taught how to use machine guns and put on the frontlines as the militia carried out attacks against government loyalists.
Jal, who says he is still growing as a rapper, recalls participating in verbal battles in the Sudan before the violence, much like playing the dozens in the United States, though he says he was never any good: “(It’s like) maybe telling somebody like, your sister is so skinny that she can shoot through a straw,” he says, laughing.
But as he grew older and started writing lyrics, Jal’s music struck a chord in Kenya, where his song “Gua” (which means peace) became a hit, and internationally. He performed at 2005’s Live 8 concert in Britain, was supported by PeterGabriel, collaborated with Moby, and realized that his rhymes were not only therapeutic for himself but others as well.
The lyrics on “WARchild” are not only inspirational and spiritual, but also political. One song talks about Africa being financially raped by the outside world, while “Forced to Sin” talks about his life as a soldier.
And while Jal was once inspired by American rap, he uses the CD to also criticize some rappers’ glorification of violence, sex and crime, most notably on the song “50 Cent,” which urges the multiplatinum rapper to stop promoting songs that might encourage black-on-black crime. The chorus: “Now 50 Cent I ain’t hating on you, still I think it’s my civic duty to warn you, you’re being played brother man, you’re being played by the man.”
“I sometimes ask myself, you say you’re a gangster, you deal drugs, you kill people,” Jal says of 50 and other rappers of his ilk. “If you’re a real killer, it’s not fun talking about killing people. It’s hard ... participating in killing someone is hard because human life - it doesn’t matter who you are, there’s no one can say, ‘I’m hardcore, I kill people.’ Somehow, someday it will burst in you.”
“You can’t be a gangster until you die,” adds Jal. “(50) should do something different, and maybe going back to the community because if we don’t do that, if we don’t save this generation, then it’s going to be a genocide, especially on black people.”
