Emmanuel Jal
I was caught off guard by an article in last issue’s Rolling Stone about a rapper named Emmanuel Jal. He grew up in Sudan and was given an AK-47 and forced to become a child soldier at age 7. After five years he finally escaped his country and his murderous past. He started using music as an avenue to make his voice heard, speaking out against the injustices he endured.
From the RS article:
Emmanuel Jal has a hard time taking 50 Cent seriously. “You can’t kill people and then talk about it on TV,” says Jal, a 28 year old MC who fought as a child soldier in his native Sudan. “If you take somebody’s life, for the rest of your life, it will haunt you. My experiences and the horrible things that I’ve done—the pictures are still clear.”
He is a spokesman for the Make Poverty History campaign and the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. He passionately uses his role model status to criticize the rap culture here in America.
From the Harvard Gazette:
Jal sees hip-hop as one avenue to peace, tolerance, and literacy for millions of African youth “who have difficult times,” he said. “Music is the thing that can speak to your heart. American hip-hop is still entwined with gang culture, drugs, sexual violence, and greed,” said Jal, a practitioner of what he calls “conscious” hip-hop. “It’s a battleground,” he said.
Call me an old man, but this reinforces my disdain for popular culture, primarily the lifestyles encouraged by many rappers. They are a joke and they know it, and they roll in the money while their listeners feel the pressure to live up to what the rapper has made popular by rapping about. Not all rappers are rapping about killing people, and some music I listen to doesn’t discuss the best topics either. But somebody other than Bill O’Reilly should be calling for some accountability and rallying for a backlash (without trying to oppress free speech). There are a lot of people trying, but frankly, they don’t have the credibility or platform to make a dent. I don’t know if Emmanuel Jal can’t do it by himself, but he’s trying and I have to commend him a little for that. He certainly has the credibility.
