<em>Emmanuel Jal:</em> A Modern-Day Nomad's Approach to Peacebuilding through Music
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
Emmanuel Jal:A Modern-Day Nomad’s Approach to Peacebuilding Through Music Lee-Anne Ragan (bio) and Emmanuel Jal (bio) I. INTRODUCTION Emmanuel Jal, a self-described modern-day nomad, was born circa 1980 in war-torn Sudan. After witnessing horrific violence and being forced to serve as a child soldier for approximately five years, he was rescued by an aid worker and smuggled into Kenya, after which he enrolled in school, discovered hip hop music, and later became a Canadian resident. Today, Jal is an internationally renowned peace activist, singer, and actor. In this essay, we explore Jal’s songs and the ways they promote peacebuilding through music. Through interviews conducted in Vancouver on July 15, 2012, and in Nairobi on April 14, 2014, we unpack the stories and meaning behind three of his favorite peace songs: “Forced to Sin,” “Emma,” and “We Want Peace.”1 They reveal the redeeming power of music to heal a man who underwent horrific violence as a child, and to advocate for peace and forgiveness in South Sudan and the world. II. “FORCED TO SIN”: FORGIVENESS, EMPATHY, AND HEALING In the 1980s and 1990s, four hundred “orphaned Sudanese children (the so-called lost boys)” tried to flee the war in Sudan, trekking hundreds [End Page 162] of miles on foot towards the perceived safety of Ethiopia (Hermes 2005). The majority died along the way from fighting, exhaustion, animals, sickness, and hunger; Jal is one of only 16 to survive. Jal’s 2008 song “Forced to Sin” recounts this experience and the ways in which the struggle to survive brings out the best and worst in him and others. Recalling how he considered cannibalism on the journey, he sings: SometimesWe find ourselves pushed toExtremities of circumstancesWhere our natural survival instinctsGovern our actionsWhich forces us to do things that weUnder normal circumstancesWould consider to beInhuman and barbaric2 With this song, Jal intended to bring about empathy for and awareness of the ordeal of child soldiers. To him, music and poetry have the power to reach the mind, heart, and soul, and this song shares the difficulties he and others went through as children in war. According to Jal, the song is also about self-forgiveness. He considers that forgiveness towards self and others comes with understanding, saying, “Forgiveness will elevate you to a form of power that you don’t actually know as a person until you experience it because you become free.”3 Jal views his music as a path back to himself and to healing. When many young people would have dulled their memories of horrific violence and conflict with drugs or alcohol or, perhaps worse, continued the cycle of violence, Jal turned to music as an outlet for healing and transformation. He says: “I just say music is for me to communicate to the wider audience, and music is where I become a child again. This is where I go to see heaven and any human being that doesn’t listen to music will go mad. It’s a therapy; it’s a pain killer for me.”4 Following the message of his own rhymes, Jal created Lose to Win in 2008 to motivate individuals to lose something in order to win for the greater good and make a positive change for the world at large. In the campaign, which ended in December 2013, participants gave up something of their choice and donated money to build schools in South Sudan. It originated when Jal decided to eat one meal a day to raise [End Page 163] money and thought it would take about a month to raise enough funds to build a school. Instead, it took 662 days, but “we put kids that were learning under the trees into classes.”5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qR-WesCJa4 III. “EMMA”: CHANGE, PEACE, AND CULTURE Some of Jal’s songs are addressed to world leaders (e.g., “Vagina”), others to the everyday person (“We Want Peace”). “Emma” was written for women, and is dedicated to Emma McCune, an aid worker who rescued him in 1991 (Rock.Paper.Scissors Inc. 2012). In “Emma,” Jal...
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Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,002 | 0,001 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,002 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Communication savante | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,001 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».