SCOPE: Singing for peace: From child soldier to top rapper

Asian Political News, April 4, 2005

NAIROBI, April 4 Kyodo

A former Sudanese child soldier is turning tables in Kenya as the latest music sensation after releasing his first album on war.

Emmanuel Jal, who fought in the bush in southern Sudan 12 years ago, is topping the music charts of the East African country that he migrated to as a runaway child soldier in 1993.

His debut album entitled ''Gua,'' the Nuer word for peace, has lately been voted in Kenyan radio and television stations as the best hit of the season.

''It is a sort of prayer for peace in my country, Sudan,'' Jal, who was trained as a fighter at the age of eight, told Kyodo News in an interview. He said he fought for four years in one of Africa's most grueling and long-standing civil conflicts, which claimed more than 1 million lives.

''Through music, I can speak to many people,'' he said.

Jal started his music career in 2000 as a teenager scarred by war, performing his songs in church halls and street concerts to help raise funds for street children and his fellow refugees. He composed and wrote songs recounting his experiences as a child soldier of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA).

''For four years and some months, I was just doing that until 2004 when I started recording,'' he said.

The lyrics mix messages of peace with Jal's own personal tales, delivered in English, Arabic and Nuer, his local language.

At the age of eight, Jal was handed an AK-47 and learnt how to fight. By the age of 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had witnessed hundreds of his fellow child soldiers die in southern Sudan.

''Life in the bush was terrible,'' he said repeatedly, recalling times when cannibalism was the only way to fight hunger. ''I even contemplated eating human flesh at one point.''

Jal was born in southern Sudan just before the civil war between the southern rebels of SPLA and the Islamist government of Sudan broke out in 1983. When the war spread to his home village, Jal was taken by the SPLA commanders to Ethiopia.

''At first, we were made to believe we were being taken to school there, but actually we were being recruited into the army,'' he said.

Today, the 25-year-old former child soldier is living a different life in Kenya, miles away from the battlefields of southern Sudan, where he is coming to grips with his new status as the country's hottest rapper. His music has now reached record shops in Kenya.

''His music is good and has had a great impact on our viewers,'' said Arthur Kamau, a lead producer at Kenya's Nation Television, one of the first television networks to play his album.

Kenya, which played a crucial role brokering a peace deal in January between the government of Sudan and the SPLA, is home to many refugees from Sudan and war-torn Somalia.

But what does this rap superstar make of the recent peace deal to end Sudan's 21-year civil conflict?

''I think it will work out this time round since the international community is very much involved,'' he said noting that many other peace agreements between the two warring parties have failed in the past.