Music
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Discography
Emmanuel has released four studio albums: Gua, Ceasefire, Warchild and See Me Mama. His music can also be heard alongside Coldplay, Gorillaz, and Radiohead on the fundraising Warchild – Help a Day in the Life album, as well as in three ER episodes, the National Geographic documentary God Grew Tired of Us and in the feature film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He is also featured on John Lennon’s Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, amongst the likes of U2, REM and Lenny Kravitz.
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Bio
Emmanuel was born into the life of a child solider. Through unbelievable struggles, Emmanuel managed to survive and emerge as a recording artist, achieving worldwide acclaim for his unique style of hip hop with its message of peace and reconciliation born out of his personal experiences.
Through his music, Jal counts on the unity of the citizens to overcome ethnic and religious division and motivate the youth in Sudan. After escaping to Kenya, he fell in love with hip hop in the way that it identified issues being faced by the neighborhood, which he was able to identify with in a unique manner. Although he lacked any music background or knowledge of its history, he felt that hip hop could provide the easiest and most effective vehicle to express his story and lobby for political change.
Emmanuel’s live appearances have included Live 8 and Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday Concert. He has performed with acts such as Faithless, Razorlight, Supergrass and Fat Boy Slim in Europe and has toured the United States as part of the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival, in which he performed in New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles and New Orleans. Jal also performed with Moby and Five for Fighting in the 2007 live concert film, The Concert To End Slavery and, more recently, with Alicia Keys at her Black Ball in New York and Joss Stone at the Melbourne Festival closing Concert, 2011.
Emmanuel is in demand as a speaker and has addressed the UN, US Congress and the highest tiers of several governments. In 2010 he was involved with the British Council, Clinton Global Initiative, Adolescent Girls Initiative (World Bank in association with the Nike Foundation), Child Soldiers Initiative and the launch of Ericsson’s Refugees Reunited Software.
He was one of the faces of Amnesty International’s 2010 World Refugee Day Campaign and appeared at Alicia Keys’ Keep a Child Alive Black Ball 2010 in London.
In 2011 he has taken part in the Oxfam Climate Change Campaign, CNN Freedom Project, Amnesty International ‘Toast to Freedom’ single and spoken alongside Kofi Annan and Martti Ahtisaari for CMI in Finland, Matt Dillon for Refugees International in Washington DC and Angelina Jolie at the ICC for Cinema for Peace.
Emmanuel’s press and media coverage includes interviews with the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, BBC Newsnight, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, MTV, BBC Radio 4 and many more outlets worldwide. His 2009 TED Global talk has achieved tens of thousands of YouTube hits.
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