Rapper Emmanuel Jal's Trip to Peace

DATE October 10, 2005 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Rapper Emmanuel Jal discusses his background in Sudan
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest survived the famine in Sudan, survived traveling on foot back and
forth between Sudan and Ethiopia looking for a safe place and survived being a
child soldier in Sudan's civil war. Emmanuel Jal was conscripted by the Sudan
People's Liberation Army or SPLA, the southern militia fighting the government
of Sudan. Jal was given a gun to fire when he was eight. He was saved from
this life by a British aide worker, the late Emma McCune. A movie is being
made about her life starring Nicole Kidman. As for Jal, he's now an
international rap star living in Kenya where many Sudanese refugees live.
He's just made his first CD released in America. It's called "Ceasefire."
Rapping on alternate tracks is Abdul Gadir Salim, a Muslim musician from the
north of Sudan. Jal is Christian and from the south. Jal raps in several of
the languages spoken in Sudan as well as in English. This track "Gua" is a
new recording of his first hit single in Kenya.

(Soundbite of music)

Backup Singers: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. EMMANUEL JAL: (Singing) Just call on a minute, think for a minute.
(Foreign language spoken) I confiscate that. When my people for granted in
the land, when my people will be free in the land, when my people, that's
why...

Backup Singers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mr. JAL: (Singing) Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. I can't wait for that day
when I see no more kids, no more fear, no crying, no tribalism. They pulled
us and arrested in my motherland. I can't wait for that day when the
wonderful people go back home and plan their nation in this generation. I
can't wait to see that day.

Backup Singers: (Singing in foreign language)

GROSS: That's Emmanuel Jal from his CD "Ceasefire."

Emmanuel Jal, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. JAL: Why, sure. Thank you.

GROSS: Before we talk about music, I'd like to talk with you a little bit
about your story, a really amazing story. So if it's OK with you, let's
go back to when you were four. When the civil war broke out in Sudan, how
many years after the start of the civil war did you actually leave for
Ethiopia?

Mr. JAL: OK. What happened, the war broke out in '83 and then my dad was a
policeman and also my mom was working as a nurse and as a teacher at the same
time. And it was insecure, so his friends used to be assassinated at night or
killed if you're suspected to be supporting the SPLA. So what happened was my
dad left and he joined the SPLA. So I was left with my mom, so there was
no--enough stuff, food, like and everything. So we joined. That was '85.
That's when we joined my dad. And I was taken from my home, '87, to go to
Ethiopia, so...

GROSS: When you say you were taken from your home, were you given any choice?
I mean, who were the people from the SPLA who came to take the orphans and the
children who no longer had homes?

Mr. JAL: There were no schools in the south. So in the villages, people
just take care of cows and that's life. There's nothing to do, no schools.
So the SPLA suggested that the children should be taken to school. So all--in
all the part where this really had control. So children were collected. And
also it was a good thing. People were giving out their children and they're
seeing they're going to school and at least they'll be in a safer place
because it was promising taking them to schools and they'll be better people.

GROSS: So your mother was OK with this?

Mr. JAL: My mother died '87, death.

GROSS: So she died before you left?

Mr. JAL: She died before I left, yeah. She died, like, few months and then
after few months we're collected.

GROSS: So how far was the walk to Ethiopia?

Mr. JAL: I don't know how many miles it was, but we walked long distance.
It took us, like, two months to reach there.

GROSS: Were there adults with you to lead you and to protect you?

Mr. JAL: Yeah, there were a few adults, few people with guns, but because
we're many, it was not easy, like, to control all of us. On the way, sometime
at night, the (unintelligible)...would take advantage and snatch someone and
disappear in the bush. So we face places where we'd lose people on the way.

GROSS: How...

Mr. JAL: And it was much safer to travel at night than in the day sometimes
because of the planes that dropped bombs.

GROSS: Who was bombing you?

Mr. JAL: The government of Sudan.

GROSS: The government that the SPLA was opposing.

Mr. JAL: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: How big was the group that you were traveling with?

Mr. JAL: About--to be honest, at that time I didn't know numbers.

GROSS: Right. Interesting point.

Mr. JAL: So I didn't know how to count proper, so just say people, but now if
I see a number, I can approximate.

GROSS: So what would you approximate now looking back?

Mr. JAL: From my group were hundreds, but when we accumulated
(unintelligible)...it turned into thousands.

GROSS: After getting to Ethiopia, you were expecting to go to school and I
guess you did go to school for a while, but then you were recruited into the
SPLA army as a child soldier. You were--What?--about eight or something?

Mr. JAL: Yeah. Actually what happened was most of us volunteered to be
trained because it was better than to be forced to, but one reason was...

GROSS: Wait, wait, wait. Was that your choice, was volunteer or be forced to
do it?

Mr. JAL: Yeah, if you're forced, it will be bad. So it's rather you
volunteer, but the main force was the bitterness that many young people had in
their heart 'cause you come from a village where you see your house abandoned.
Some of them lost their parents, and then because you are told a story, when
you ask who did this, then you'll be told, `It's the government of Sudan who
did this.' So every young person was willing to fight because they wanted
revenge and, you know, they are told, `This is our land. It's being snatched
from us. So every person has to play a part in the struggle.' So every kid
was down for it.

GROSS: OK. So you were around eight. What were you trained to do in the
army?

Mr. JAL: They will learn how to operate the guns, yes? Learn how...

GROSS: Which guns?

Mr. JAL: AK-47. Then we learn how to cook for our self, food. We learn how
to build our own houses. Then we learn how to attack a town and how to make
ambush, how to run if the war is hot, how to fall back. People died in the
training. Sometime we learn how to eat hot food, hot food in a few minutes.
Then we have less time of sleep, maybe three hours of sleep and then sometime
you're waken up unexpectedly. So we're learning how to live life of bigger
people. It was hard, but a few of us managed.

GROSS: Were there certain kind of missions that the SPLA sent the children to
do?

Mr. JAL: Basically they would pick the bigger ones, the ones that were taken
from, like, 11, 12, if you have a bit of muscle. So they would come and pick
them. And later they tell them, `We're taking them to a different school
which is far from here. So the school that you're being taken, it gets a
prize in the front line.' That's what used to happen sometimes.

GROSS: Was it that they'd say they were taking you to school but you'd up in
the front line?

Mr. JAL: Like, what happened is we're in schools. So someone would come and
say, `We need the people of this age. If you're not of this age, you'll not
come.' So they'll take from age 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 there. So they say, `We
are taking you to a different school of your age.' So the ones that are left
don't have knowledge of where those people have gone to. So when they've
gone, they've gone to a farther place which is not a school but they'll go and
get dressed in uniform now and fight.

GROSS: What were some of the typical missions that the SPLA sent you to do?

Mr. JAL: It's just attack a town and weaken the defense system of the
government because young people don't know you die at once. So sometime
they're brave, but when they really get scared, they're really scared. It's
hard to convince them to fight.

GROSS: Where you ever so scared you wouldn't fight?

Mr. JAL: Sometimes, you know, before shooting, I would feel like going to
toilet when it's time to urinate. Before you fire, you're really scared,
nervous, but after you fire the gun, you become OK and it pulls you to get--it
makes you scream and you want to even run inside the fire. But sometime I
never knew, like, people used to die once and they go. So it's just like the
way kids play here with toy guns. It's toy, but there now we're using the
real guns and young people excited to fight.

GROSS: You say most of the children in the SPLA didn't really understand the
meaning of their own death...

Mr. JAL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...but what about the meaning of some other people's deaths? I mean,
you were carrying guns. You were killing other people. What did it mean to
you when you were...

Mr. JAL: You see, the training that we're given, it kind of kills feelings,
you know? You don't miss people. Like, I never missed people from my home.
You feel nothing. It's like we don't have feelings. So we just obey commands
and that's all. So it's like we're, like, kind of robots in a way. It's just
like the way people are in the army, you know, and then when someone dies
because he still thinks young, you don't know they've gone for good, but after
some time, that's when you realize this person is gone. `Oh, he's really
dead,' you know, and that's when I used to feel, after someone, after a while.
But if someone died three days, I don't feel it, but after a while, I'm, `Oh,
this person is gone.' And because there was no--that friendship attachment and
all that, it's hard to find that love, you know, in the army, you know?
People are just hard. Everyone want to show that hardness.

GROSS: My guest is Emmanuel Jal. He was a child soldier during Sudan's
famine and civil war. Now he's an international rap star. His new CD
"Ceasefire" is his first to be released in the US.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Emmanuel Jal. He was a child soldier in Sudan's civil
war. Now he lives in Kenya and is a rising international rap star. His new
CD "Ceasefire" is his first to be released in the US.

You grew up in war and that's all you knew was war. You never really knew
peace 'cause you were four by the time the civil war broke out. And, you
know, when you're 18 and you're in an official army, you've had a chance to
develop a conscience, a sense of right and wrong. When you're a child, you
haven't had that chance yet. And so here you are...

Mr. JAL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...having to shoot people and being shot at yourself without the
benefit of an adult sense of what's right and what's wrong or, you know, of
a fully formed conscience, you know, an understanding of what's right and
what's wrong.

Mr. JAL: It was because of what many of us are seeing. We understood, even
me at the lower age--I was five, six--and I was in the cities where the
government were and I would see how the black are treated bad and how they're
treated like slaves. If you're a black person, you're meant to be working for
the Arabs, you know? So you work for them. And as a kid, I don't understand
why things like this. So most of us come from that background. So they know,
that's why they had that bitterness to fight, and it's hard to find any
ex-child soldier from SPLA to actually say, `The SPLA is bad,' because it was
the thing that we're seeing, like, fighting for, freedom, for all of us.

GROSS: Now I've read about some countries in which there are child soldiers,
in which the children are truly exploited and the children are considered the
most expandable of the troops and they're basically just used--everyone knows
they're going to die, their lives are cheap, no one really cares. Did you
feel like you were treated with more care and respect by the SPLA, the Sudan
People's Liberation Army?

Mr. JAL: Yeah, sort of. The only thing I knew is they never give us drugs.
We're given proper food, and if we go to fight, it wasn't often. It was maybe
to weaken the defense system. Then the other army will come and fight because
they're also thinking twice, and they actually took others to schools, like,
maybe to Cuba and many other place because they're also thinking, `If we wipe
this generation out fully, then we may be out,' but because there was another
pressure, they still had to use as well.

GROSS: Did you assume that you were going to die young?

Mr. JAL: I used to pray, so my mom inspired me before she died because I
used to see her pray and she's telling us there's somebody called God there.
So if you ask him, he'll protect you. So I used to pray this--before war,
with the helicopters coming or gunship coming to throw bombs, I used to
believe, like, God is there and is going to protect me. So I had so much
belief. So I never thought that I'll die.

GROSS: And you're a Christian?

Mr. JAL: Yeah, I'm a Christian. I'm from Muslim background, but we had to
change to be Christians.

GROSS: After traveling on foot from your home in Sudan to Ethiopia where then
you started fighting for the Sudan People's Liberation Army, you eventually
walked back to Sudan as one of hundreds or thousands--you can tell me
which--of boys doing the same thing. Was this journey on foot any easier or
more difficult than the one to Ethiopia?

Mr. JAL: It was more difficult because now you have ammunitions and you have
a gun and, yeah. And sometime you could be ambushed. There are minefields in
some places. It wasn't easy. It was terrible because there was pressure,
guns, fight. You're walking to Sudan and the enemy's chasing you. So when
you're tired or what, if you're about to relax, they still catch up with you.
So you fight, fight, fight. Then you learn to move back with tactics.

GROSS: So you had all the problems of hunger and thirst plus you're being
attacked all the time.

Mr. JAL: Yeah. It was an escape, but with tactic now, you just don't run
desperately. So you run in a way that the enemy knows they don't have to run
after you so hard because you are armed. So you run maybe after a few miles,
you try to make a defense, fight with them a bit and then running again. Just
like this until we crossed the river where they are not able to come across
'cause that was the border.

GROSS: Now I've read that during this period, there was so little food that
some of the boys would eat flesh of dead bodies.

Mr. JAL: When the SPLA had its own crisis, so I think there's no point, I
can't fight. We can't fight each other. So when my knowledge was growing,
I'm saying, `What's the point? There's no common enemy. We're fighting each
other.' So I said, `Let me go home to where my dad is and try to live in the
village. At least I owned a gun to protect the family back at home there.'
But the journey ended up being terrible. So that's where I was forced, you
know, occasion, we're, like, almost to eat a dead body.

GROSS: So when you're almost forced to eat a dead body, what goes through
your mind when you're deciding, `Do I do this or not?'

Mr. JAL: I was thinking, like, `What about if I survive? What am I going to
do when the people there have eaten someone? Does it mean I'm going to be
eating people, because if there's no food then because I've eaten somebody and
survived, so I'll end up snatching children and eating them?' So I think
then--I said, `God, if you're there, just give me something to eat because I
don't eat someone.' So--and the prayer seemed like it worked. A bird came and
then I ate that bird. So I'm saying, `You know, it worked.'

GROSS: What is it?

Mr. JAL: A bird, a crow.

GROSS: Oh, OK.

Mr. JAL: I was depending for some snails, snakes, vultures and then wild
animals, others.

GROSS: But some of the boys you knew did eat the flesh of the dead?

Mr. JAL: Some ate. You know, like, when you relax, you're in a different
tree. Other people are in another tree. So that--and when we later met
different group, different place, those who ate never survived. Any person
who ate a human being that time, they never survived, but the few that
survived went and died from trauma because when we got rescued, there's proper
food. So they just become mad and they just die.

GROSS: Well...

Mr. JAL: They're crazy because they remember the images eating human beings.
So they just go crazy. Some would just commit suicide.

GROSS: Emmanuel Jal will be back in the second half of the show. His new CD
is called "Ceasefire." I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

GROSS: This is FRESH Air. I'm Terry Gross back with Emmanuel Jal. He was a
child soldier fighting with the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the SPLA,
during the civil war and famine. Now he's an international rap star living in
Kenya. His new CD, "Ceasefire," is his first to be released in the US.
Here's another track from it.

(Soundbite from "Ceasefire")

Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language) Hey, yo (unintelligible).
You haven't seen us 'round. In music land ...(unintelligible) so we've got to
work now. We've got to come together, ...(unintelligible) together,
everything's possible just to be together. Tell me, have you ever heard
(unintelligible) we can build this land.

Mr. JAL: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)

Mr. JAL: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)

Mr. JAL: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)

Mr. JAL: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)

GROSS: When we left off, Emmanuel Jal was talking about how he survived near
starvation and other hardships walking from Ethiopia to Sudan, trying to
return to his village.

Eventually, you met an aid worker, Emma McCune, whose story has been told in
two books and is about to be told in a movie, and Nicole Kidman is going to
play her. She met you, she took you under her wing, she took care of you.
She basically adopted you and smuggled you into Kenya where you were able to
actually live a more normal life and get an education. How did you meet her?

Mr. JAL: What happened was there was an American friend of her called
Christian. So Christian introduced--Christian was the first one I met and
then told Emma like, there's this kid--so both of them were fighting over me.
One of them--Christian wanted to take me to America, and she wanted to take
me, so they were fighting over me. But later, Emma managed to convince
Christian, that--`Let me take the boy.' So then I don't know why they chose
me. There are many other boys, but I ended up being chosen. So she
donal--that's how it happened. But she came later and realized--like, she's
actually my cousin, 'cause she married my uncle.

GROSS: What was it like for you to actually have an adult who wanted to
protect you? An adult who didn't want to send you into war but wanted to send
you to a safe place and protect you?

Mr. JAL: It's always been in my heart, that--like, I want to go to school, so
someone here's telling me, `I'll take you to school.' So I just said, `Cool.'
I was disarmed and everyone else supported it. So then they said if you take
him to school, then he's going to be a better person and he'll come, because
in Sudan, people believe if someone has gone and they have the knowledge, then
they'll be able to help their people better. It's like they have seen the
light, so I was so happy. But life wasn't easy where I went to, because I am
from a chi--a child that is just violent fighting. So people around me would
suffer trying to control me because I was fighting all the time. Taken to
school, I would fight in class. So I was violent everywhere, but I changed
within time.

GROSS: Tell me more about what you were like then. Did you have any social
skills? Did you know how to talk to people? Were you honest? Were you
trustworthy?

Mr. JAL: I was kind of naughty, you know, very naughty. Like people would
remember me well because sometime they'd remember how I used to do things,
like I never had any--terrible manners, nothing. So if I'm eating in a place,
maybe a chicken, I'd just eat it; after I finished, throw it on the floor.
Whether it's a carpet or not, I had no idea. So then, you see, people who had
cats, like Emma, they had cats, so I would che--kick them out of the house.
Just as--why are you keeping animals? They're supposed to stay in the bush,
you know, and dogs. So people--I used to cause a lot of trouble. But it took
me time to adapt to lead a life with feelings, you know, where you feel for
people and children, affection and love them, yeah. It took me time.

GROSS: How do you learn to feel affection and love when you've been deprived
of it for so long? And not only that, when you've been taught to just kill?
I mean, how does something like love re-enter your life? How do you learn to
feel again?

Mr. JAL: It's just like the way people--just concerned about you. They're
not even--you don't know why they give you nice things. They take you out.
They smile at you. You talk badly with them, but they still respond
positively. So you just wonder, why are they doing this? What are they
trying to do with me? Why are they like this? So it's--Christian's like
those who were asking--I says why is this white woman trying to take me all
around? Why is she doing all this thing? Can't she get her own child of
hers? So with time, when I understand the love she had for me, then it
humbled me like to change and to try to respond, because I'm thinking, damn,
this person is doing too much. So those are the things that bothered me. She
comes--I've done terrible--maybe I've fought with someone, so she's called.
Or maybe I've broken someone--thing or done--talked badly to someone, so the
concern that she had was--or the effects that it gave me, hard to adopt, and I
began to develop feelings for people and trying to talk to people positive and
nice.

GROSS: But Emma McCune, the aid worker who adopted you, she died--What?--a
couple of years later? And then after starting to feel something for her, and
after she helped you so much, she was gone. So what did that do to your
ability to grow emotionally?

Mr. JAL: Yeah, I was like becoming more human. She died. And I said, `What?
She's dead? How?' So I said, `You mean, she's not going to be there anymore?
She's gone?' To me, when someone dies, I don't respond like that, so I--if
someone die, I feel nothing. But here, if someone is dead, I was asking a lot
of questions, many questions, and I didn't know, but there were people around
me that tried to talk to me. Like Emma's brothers came and Emma's friends,
and my uncle was there, so they talked to me and I understood and said, `This
is life. People come, they'll show you love. They'll be with you, but
sometime they have to go.' Yeah, but it took me time to, like, understand it
fully, she's gone.

GROSS: My guest is Emmanuel Jal. He was a child soldier during Sudan's
famine and civil war. Now he's an international rap star. His new CD,
"Ceasefire," is his first to be released in the US. More after a break. This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Emmanuel Jal. He was a child soldier in Sudan's civil
war. Now he lives in Kenya and is a rising international rap star. His new
CD, "Ceasefire," is his first released in the US.

When you returned to your village in Sudan, looking for family and wanting to
protect your family, who did you think would be left? Your mother had died,
your father was fighting with the SPLA. What and who did you expect to find?

Mr. JAL: Relatives, you know, my brothers and sisters, the others are the
people I wanted to find there.

GROSS: What are your brothers and sisters doing now? Did they survive?

Mr. JAL: One of them is Tutrakme(ph). She walked from Khartoum to
Cupia(ph). Came back to Sudan, then met some people who told her, `We know
your brother is a famous singer in Kenya.' So they gave her a free lift on a
plane. They smuggled her and brought her direct to our--and she sung with me
a song--the song who I sung it with my sister, actually. But the rest, I've
yet to find them. As I stabilize myself with time.

GROSS: You've gone from being one of the lost boys of Sudan to being a music
star in Africa. I'd like to talk with you a little bit about music. Let's
start with how it entered your life. I don't imagine you were hearing a lot
of music when you were a child soldier fighting with the Sudan People's
Liberation Army. Like when did you start to actually hear contemporary music?
Because the music you're doing now is a form of hip-hop.

Mr. JAL: What happened is I explored my talent at the age of 20. That's when
I started, because I was not in school sometimes. Sometime I'm in school, so
I found like, oh, now I can afford to go to school. I can do anything. What
do I have? What can I do and know? So sometimes, you know, the only
community level that was ready to take care of people was the churches, you
know. The singing in the church was so beautiful, you know. I love the way
they sing in the churches. It's awesome. You just go there, it's like
you're having a free concert with positive messages. Many will come, happy.
So--and most of the time, they're talking about God and all that. So I said,
`This God helped me when I was suffering, so why can't I write for him some
songs?' Then I wrote songs dedicated to God, and then we used to make
concerts and in schools and churches to raise funds for ex-child soldiers to
go to school with some communities there which helped them. And also for the
street children, so with time it happened.

GROSS: OK. So you started off singing in church and you fell in love with
the music from the church. How did you hear hip-hop?

Mr. JAL: Basically, you know, like hip-hop, it has a lot of relation in
Africa. Like the style I'm singing has no difference with the way men sing at
home. So the difference is that we don't have big--recording it, you know.
Mostly at home, like...

GROSS: You don't have...

Mr. JAL: ...I have known to--you have people that just use drums and they
ca--sometime you don't need this. You just use sticks and beat the stick and
make a song, and you just chant and people listen to you. So then someone
told me the way American are singing, they've just more defined what they've
taken from Africa. Because someone was telling me, `Even your grandfather was
chanting, so you're not wrong,' because I never wanted to do hip-hop. And I
said, wow. And so when I did decide, I remembered how people (unintelligible)
when as a kid I used to chant and do this. And I said, `Cool.' So I'm
hip-hop--let me just do it. So I just said, `OK, I'll chant like this, then
I'll get the chorus done this way, then now we add the music. So I would go
to a studio and then give them the sound that I wanted--to sound like--so they
just grabbed the idea, then they put the way I want my music sound.

GROSS: Well, you're rapping about things like peace, and a lot of rap music
in America is about drugs and sex. I guess you won't be chanting about that
in your music?

Mr. JAL: For...

GROSS: Or will you? Or will you?

Mr. JAL: Not really, because, like, what I've done from, my past is
terrible. Then because I know many young people are suffering down there
in--there, they need hope. They need to see good things happening. So, like,
my heart is poured down to them and see what I can do best. And, like, if I
just sing about women, and there are some of them who just look up to see what
I'm doing, you know, because they like my music. It may force them to start
thinking about women. And so I want to pass messages of hope into the music
that can strengthen people and not to give up their dream, because I was
hopeless, I was homeless, you know, things like those. And I've been a
refugee for 25 years. Nineteen years I was depending on aid, you know.
Things like those, just to show something to people, like it's possible. If
you have a dream, you can still achieve it if you hold it.

GROSS: I know you performed this summer in the Live 8 conference, and you
were among the few African performers in this concert, a concert to raise
awareness of poverty and starvation in Africa. But although--you performed in
England, but you weren't on the main stage. You were on a stage in Cornwall
that had a much smaller audience, that wasn't--I don't think it was televised.
How did you feel about performing in a concert for Africa, being one of the
few African performers, yet not being part of, like, the main event?

Mr. JAL: I met Bob Geldof and I asked him how come someone like me from--is
not on the Live 8--the main stage at Hyde Park. What he told me was, if you
haven't sold four million copies of CDs, you can't come to the Hyde Park. So
I said, `I just--I was just beginning. I haven't sold four million copies of
CDs.' So then he said if I was to pa--come and perform at Hyde Park, the
Chinese would switch off the TV. And I said, `Why?' `Because you are not
famous.' And I said, `OK, all right.' So the whole world would switch off
their TV because a coming-up African is performing, say, tha--himself is not
going to perform because he hasn't sold four million copies of CDs.

But later, when I found out people--other people didn't even sell four million
copies of CDs and they performed at Hyde Park--himself he performed--but when
I heard everything that you're saying, it kind of--he lost his respect that I
had for him. Although he has done good things, I just managed, like, to
forgive him, like. No man is perfect. You could try to do something, but
there'll be an error somewhere. But I felt marginized. But I said, anyway,
`It's OK. This is music business.' But with time, people will hear what I
have to offer.

GROSS: Oh, I'd like to end with the opening track from your CD, "Ceasefire,"
and I'd like for you to talk about what this lyric is about.

Mr. JAL: Oh, "Hadiya." It's in Arabic, it's in English, it's Kiswahili
and Nuer. It has four languages in it, and the thing is talking about how we
can use love. If we give love a chance to work within us, then we are able to
live and not to just kill each other all the time, and we can share the thing
we have and enjoy the land together. An example, is like being just the way a
white woman will marry a black man, the love doesn't know the color. It
crosses boundaries. So we give love a chance, then the tribalism, the racism,
all these things, they'll all die out. So then the girls just respond,
`Hadiya,' you know. `Hadiya, hadiya, hadiya.' Things like that.

GROSS: Well, Emmanuel Jal, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. JAL: Sure, sure. You're welcome.

GROSS: Emmanuel Jal is a former Sudanese child soldier who is now a rapper
living in Kenya. His new CD, "Ceasefire," is his first to be released in the
US.

(Soundbite from "Hadiya" on "Ceasefire")

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Hadiya.

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Hadiya.

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Hadiya.

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Hadiya, hadiya, hadiya.

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: Hadiya.

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: Hadiya.

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Group: (Singing) Hadiya, hadiya, hadiya.

Mr. JAL: Back to the, back to the, back to the history. It's kind of like a
mystery. If you've got love, you've got the victory. (Singing in foreign
language)

Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)

Mr. JAL: (Singing in foreign language)

GROSS: Coming up, Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new CD featuring long out-of-print
Pablo Casals recordings from the 1950s. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Recordings from the Pablo Casals Festival at Prades
TERRY GROSS, host:

Some prized Bach recordings from the '50s, now on CD, got our classical music
critic, Lloyd Schwartz, thinking about how some musical performances should
not be overlooked even if they might be considered out of style.

(Soundbite from Bach recording)

LLOYD SCHWARTZ reporting:

When I first started collecting classical records, an especially admired
series was already long out of print. They were the recordings made in the
early 1950s at annual music festivals in the small Catalan towns of Prades and
Perpignan in France, right near the Spanish border. That's where the great
Spanish cellist Pablo Casals was living to avoid a death sentence imposed by
Franco's fascist government. I remember going into the gramophone shop on
Manhattan's 8th Street and seeing a used copy of one of these box sets of LPs
for $300, way beyond anything I could afford. Years later, some of these
recordings began to appear on CD, but many of them have remained unavailable
in any form. So I'm especially glad to see three new double-CD albums on the
British label Pearl, all devoted to the music of Bach played at the very first
music festival at Prades in 1950. Here, oboist Marcel Tabuteau and violinist
Isaac Stern are conducted by Casals.

(Soundbite from double-CD album of Tabuteau and Stern)

SCHWARTZ: These days there seems to be only one respectable way to play Bach:
in so-called historically informed performances on instruments that were
either made in the 18th century or are reproductions of those instruments. Of
course, there are many excellent performances under these conditions, but Bach
was a composer for whom the particular instruments didn't necessarily matter.
He took pieces he or other composers wrote for one instrument and arranged
them for other instruments. In one case, "The Art of the Fugue," we aren't
sure he had any particular instrument in mind. But however out of date a
style of playing might be, it seems to me we should never overlook a great
performance. The warm expressiveness, the drama and the sublime beauty of
these Prades recordings, played and conducted by Casals with some of the most
searching musicians of the time, should be a reminder that we mustn't allow
any one style to dictate how music ought to be played.

(Soundbite from double-CD album of Casals and Joseph Szigeti)

SCHWARTZ: This is Casals with violinist, Joseph Szigeti.

(Soundbite from double-CD album of Casals and Joseph Szigeti)

SCHWARTZ: There's also a spectacular 13-disc, less-than-half-price set, on
the Music & Arts label of actual live chamber music performances from Prades:
more Bach but also Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and
Mendelssohn, some even more ravishing than any of the commercial versions,
some of unusual pieces these artists never recorded in a studio. And what a
few of them lack in perfection, they make up in urgency and spontaneity.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of the Boston Phoenix. He
reviewed recordings from the Pablo Casals Festival at Prades now on CD.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)
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