Ceasefire is stunning. This collaboration between Emmanuel Jal, a Christian from southern Sudan, and Abdel Gadir Salim, a Moslem from northern Sudan, sends a powerful message throughout the country in the shadow of war. For more than twenty years the Moslem north had battled the non-Moslem south until a peace agreement was reached earlier this year. Sudan’s future, however, remains uncertain. Ceasefire is a powerful and symbolic cry for lasting peace that is urgently needed at this crucial moment in Sudan’s history.
The music lives up to the historical backdrop. Jal is a rap sensation whose popularity has exploded from Nairobi to all of Africa and beyond. Salim is a respected and popular composer, singer, and oud player whose songs reflect the musical traditions of Sudan. He is absent from about half of the songs, which are written and performed by Jal. The remaining songs are written and performed by Salim and his band but feature occasional bursts of rap by Jal. The result of this unlikely and eclectic collaboration is a vibrant and diverse fabric of sound that incessantly stirs up the soul.
Emmanuel Jal’s rap is soft but solid, and his talent is unquestionable. His warmly mellow voice flows over lively, energetic beats. Like his message, his rap stands in sharp contrast to the harsh American variety, and Jal’s style is much more listenable, despite the language barrier. He alternates with grace between each of the five languages (there are translations) on this CD, sometimes multiple times in a single verse. In between verses, joyous and hopeful choruses explode over the music, adding an exotic dimension that accents Jal’s laid-back rapping.
Though most of the songs concern peace for Sudan, one stood out for its address of another urgent issue in Africa. ‘Nyambol’ tells the story of a young girl who suffers abuse and then escapes a forced marriage to ultimately achieve an education and become “an important person” and “important leader” in her village. The song showcases both Jal’s rapping ability and his understanding that peace in Sudan, though extremely important, is just one of the many issues in Africa deserving the world’s attention. He shows definite promise for being both a musical messiah and force for social change in the future.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
wow, outstanding job Jackson, thanks and welcome! Excellent background info and job of conveying the urgency of the music, while also making sure we know it isn't strident.
In the high gloss artificiality of the pop world, it is easy to forget that there can be so much more at stake than chart positions and weekly sales figures.
2 - Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
COMMENT IN ENGLISH
Some wars in our world seem to have been and still be eternal and their cruelty is beyond our ability to imagine how men, women and even if not often children can sink and delve into such unhuman acrtivities. You can try to look for causes, motivations or even explanations, but you will only find pretexts, false pretenses, in one word nothing that can really stand the challenge of truth. Darfur in Sudan is one of these conflicts whose origin has long disappeared in our memory and whose end we cannot even conceive. But our worst feeling is the conviction that there is nothing we can do, that we are powerless in front of these two parallel instincts, that to kill and that to survive, to kill to survive and to survive to kill. This CD is a voice that comes up from human consciousness and its only objective is to ask for, preach even and for sure defend peace for Sudan, for Darfur, a peace that has definitely never existed for the human communities living in this territory, even in the memory of their oldest members. And here an adventure can start because it is the voice of a human soul. A voice that slams its words, raps its sentences, disentangles its blues, weaves the lace of its gospel, in Nuer as much as in Arabic, to African as much as Arabic music, borrowing all the styles that can intermingle in the vast auditoriums of the world to produce a feeling of estrangement that is so great that we finally feel at home, we finally feel we have reached the destination that had been ours for so long after a voyage that can only give man's soul the strength and the life it needs to reconquer its control over history and death. The power of this music comes from the long rivers of blood in which it was steeped with the vital hope and the unshaking faith that one day the springs of the Nile river will be reborn pure and clear providing children with the water in which they can relearn how to bathe and domestic animals with the desire to come and drink without taking the risk of a criminal bullet roaming around for a target.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne
AND FRENCH
Quelques conflits dans le monde semblent éternels et sont d'une cruauté telle que l'on se demande comment des hommes et des femmes, souvent même des enfants peuvent sombrer si bas dans l'inhumanité. On cherche sans les trouver des causes, des motivations et on ne trouve que des prétextes, des faux-fuyants, en un mot rien qui ne tienne la route. Le Darfour au Soudan est un de ces conflits dont on ne se souvient plus du début et dont on ne voit pas la fin. Mais le pire sentiment face à ce drame c'est l'impuissance qui est la nôtre. Ce CD est une voix qui monte de la conscience humaine et dont le seul objectif est de demander, de prêcher même, de défendre pour sûr la paix pour le Soudan, pour le Darfour, une paix qui n'a probablement jamais existé pour les communautés vivants dans ces territoires, même pour leurs plus anciens membres. Et c'est là qu'une aventure peut commencer, car c'est une voix de l'âme humaine. Une voix qui slamme, qui rappe, qui blues, qui gospelle même, tant en Nuer qu'en Arabe, tant sur une musique africaine qu'arabe, et en empruntant à tous le styles qui peuvent se croiser dans les vastes auditoriums du monde pour produire un dépaysement si grand que l'on se sent enfin chez soi, enfin arrivé au terme du voyage qui était le nôtre depuis bien longtemps, un voyage qui ne peut que donner à l'âme de l'homme la force et la vie dont elle a besoin pour reconquérir son empire sur l'histoire et sur la mort. La force de cette musique vient bien sûr des fleuves de sang dans lesquels elle a été trempée en espoir vital et en foi inébranlable qu'un jour les sources du Nil retrouveront leurs eaux pures et claires dans lesquels les enfants réapprendront à s'ébrouer et les animaux domestiques à venir y boire sans craindre une balle criminelle.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne