The Book Café Carpark, Harare
Friday 9 September, 6-11.30pm

This week Sudanese hiphop star EMMANUEL JAL lands in Harare for a whirlwind hiphop collaboration with Zimbabwe.  A mega performance in the Book Café car park on Friday 9 September from 6pm will headline Jal and his 6-piece band, following a star line-up of some of Zimbabwe’s best – feisty mbira star Chiwoniso Maraire, ‘Comrade Fatso’ and Chabvondoka, and ‘Outspoken’ and The Essence.

Emerging from a vicious background of child-soldiering in Southern Sudan, and after escaping to Kenya, Jal fell in love with hiphop and felt it could provide the easiest and most effective vehicle to express his story.  Emmanuel Jal’s music grew in Kenya, reached the word through the airwaves, and he is now an internationally renowned hiphop artist, with a strong message of peace for the world.  “Jal set the hip-hop bar higher,” wrote the Washington Post in 2008.

Despite his accomplishments in music, Jal’s biggest passion is for Gua Africa, a charity that he founded. Besides building schools, the nonprofit provides scholarships for Sudanese war survivors in refugee camps, and sponsors education for children in the most deprived slum areas in Nairobi.

Jal, whose own childhood was robbed from him, aims to protect the childhood of others through music. “Music is powerful.  It is the only thing that can speak into your mind, your heart and your soul without your permission” he said.

Jal will be making powerful music on Friday 9 September, alongside Zimbabwean artists who also have a story to tell, gifted young musicians, songwriters and poets who have achieved some acclaim in the world, also gracing stages from New York to Berlin and Capetown to Zanzibar.  The open air concert kicks off with the Zimbabwean artists, followed by Emmanuel Jal at 10pm.

‘War Child’
A documentary film about Emmanuel Jal called ‘War Child’ was made in 2008 by C. Karim Chrobog.  It made its international debut at the Berlin Film Festival and its North American debut at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Cadillac Audience Award, and an autobiography under the same name was released in 2009.

As part of the Emmanuel Jal programme, ‘War Child’ will be screened on Thursday 8 September, at the Mannenberg Film Club

This entry was posted on September 2nd, 2011 at 3:36 pm by Bev Clark and is filed under Media, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.