Picking up the mic

Growing up with violence as your neighbour and revenge under your pillow, it can’t be easy to hear the drumbeat behind every gunshot. Emmanuel Jal, a former South Sudanese child soldier for the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army, has made it a long way since he held his first gun at seven – and has lived many lifetimes in between. He has authored “War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story” and released five studio albums including his latest, the kEy. The kEy was nominated for the JUNO’s World Music Album of the Year, a recognition that Jal’s sound deserves to be heard on a grander scale.

“I am still in shock, really,” said Jal. “It’s one of the best welcomes for me in Canada. The album is dedicated to a social enterprise [called the Key is E] that invests in small business owners that have an impact on child life, so we work hard. I co-wrote some of the songs with Paul Lindley, who is also the founding member of that enterprise.”

Among what can sometimes become a formulaic approach to making music, Jal’s album is cut out of a wholly different cloth. The kEy features a range of artists from Nelly Furtado to the African Children’s Choir and combines a family of adoptive sounds including soul, contemporary hip-hop and traditional African music. Recorded in Kenya, Uganda, London, New York, and Toronto, Jal’s music merges a community of sounds from the farthest reaches of the world.

While my life is the polar opposite of Jal’s – I do not know what it is like to look down the barrel of a gun, and my mother’s voice is not just a memory – he makes it surprisingly easy to relate. In “Scars” he reminds us that we all have running blood underneath healed tissue, while his track “Taxi Driver” will make anyone tap along to the exotic beat. For Jal, it was as therapeutic making music as it was for me to listen on the other end.

“Music is where I am able to become a child again. This is where I was able to see heaven again, in the sound. I am really connected to the sound.”

It is this sound that deserves every award, and not necessarily in the form of a JUNO statuette. In many ways, the kEy is as much an anthem of celebration and testament to the tenacity of character as it is a story of hardship. With the help of drumbeats and tambourine shakes, Jal begins a conversation about education that is longing to be had.

“Being a child, war is not the place. A child having a gun is not the place. They’re supposed to be in school. It’s a hell in itself. Education is enlightening people. Education gives you ways to fend for yourself. Those who know will always exploit those who don’t know. Through education we are able to learn from each other. Music is telling stories for social emotional learning, to enlighten people’s souls. It is a universal language. [It can be used to] put a spotlight in dark areas.”

Though years divorced from the CSLA, Jal hasn’t left the battlefield. There are still people who want to silence his music. On a recent visit to Sudan, Jal suffered a brutal beating by the police for playing a show, a life-threatening move to prove that activists are not welcome.

“People threaten you with death. But if you stand your ground – you know, we will all die one day, but I would rather die trying to make a difference than just live on my knees.”

Yet the art of making a difference is not measured in awards. Whether or not Emmanuel Jal walked the JUNO stage this past weekend is irrelevant. In his lifetime, Jal has walked far longer. All he asks is that we walk with him, even if only for one track.