Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal (* 1980 in Tonj , then Sudan ) is a musician and actor from South Sudan . The former child soldier is artistically and politically committed against the military abuse of children in Africa.
Life
Jal was born in Tonj in the Bahr al-Ghazal region of South Sudan. His father was a member of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army ( SPLA). His aunt was raped in front of his eyes and the neighbors shot. His mother died when he was seven and the SPLA took him to a training camp in Ethiopia where he received military training.
During a mission at Juba in 1991, he fled with about 400 other child soldiers at the age of eleven. Due to a lack of food and water, just twelve children survived the three-month flight to rival rebels through the jungle and finally reached the city of Waat in the state of A'li an-Nil . There Emmanuel was adopted by Emma McCune , an employee of the aid organization “Street Kids” and the wife of the rebel leader Riek Machar , and smuggled to Kenya on an aid flight .
There she sent Emmanuel Jal to a school in Nairobi . When Emma McCune died in a car accident in 1993, her friends allowed Jal to continue attending school. In 2005 his song Gua ( Nuer for "peace") made him a hit in Kenya and a star all over Africa . Many of his lyrics deal with the civil war in Sudan .
Jal said during the Africa Festival in Würzburg : “The music is innocent, the problem is the lyrics. With the lyrics you can get people to kill each other or to forgive each other. ”Jal sings in English , Arabic , Swahili , his Sudanese mother tongue Nuer and the related language Dinka .
He performed at the Live 8 concert in the UK . There he criticized that there were too few African artists on the stage.
As spokesman for “Stop the Use of Child Soldiers” and the “ Control Arms ” campaign , Emmanuel Jal campaigns against the abuse of child soldiers and for the regulation of the international arms and arms trade. Since 2006 he has also been an ambassador for the development aid organization Oxfam .
With the Arab north Sudanese oud player Abdel Gadir Salim he recorded the record Ceasefire ("Armistice"), which is intended to serve as a musical call for peace in Sudan.
In February 2008 Jal was a guest in Berlin for the Berlinale , where the documentary Warchild about his life as a child soldier celebrated its world premiere. Directed by Christian Karim Chrobog.
In the independence referendum in South Sudan in 2011 , Emmanuel Jal voted for the independence of South Sudan, although he had previously spoken out in favor of the cohesion of Sudan. He justified this with the fact that the South Sudanese in Sudan were still disadvantaged and that he could only be a "first class citizen" in an independent South Sudan.
On February 16, 2014, he received the Dresden Peace Prize for his musical and political engagement against the military abuse of children in Africa .
Discography (selection)
Albums
- 2005: Gua
- 2005: Ceasefire
- 2008: Warchild
- 2012: See Me Mama
- 2014: The Key
- 2018: Naath
Filmography (selection)
actor
- 2010: Africa United
- 2014: The Good Lie - The Price of Freedom (The Good Lie)
- 2015: War Child - Chapter One (short film, also screenplay)
Autobiography
- with Megan Lloyd Davies: War Child: A Child Soldier's Story . St. Martin's Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-312-38322-0 .
literature
- Deborah Scroggins: The White Warrior: A Fate in Africa (Original title: Emma's War ) Construction Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-35102636-3 .
Web links
- Website of Emmanuel Jal
- Emmanuel Jal at Discogs (English)
- Emmanuel Jal in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ TOPIC
- ↑ Biography on the official website of Jals ( memento of the original from September 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Berlinale, short description of "Warchild"
- ↑ Peter Shadbolt: China, hip-hop and the new Sudan , in: CNN Inside Africa, February 4, 2011
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jal, Emmanuel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Sudanese child soldier, musician, actor and activist against the use of child soldiers |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1980 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tonj , South Sudan |