Jal was born in the devastated war zone of Southern Sudan. The specific date is unknown even to him, but he thinks it was during the beginning of the 1980s. Around his sixth or seventh year on this earth, he was taken away from his family to fight in a bloody civil war with Sudan’s rebel army. He spent around five years into battle holding an AK-47 that was bigger than he was.
When Jal was 13 years old he had lived two civil wars and many horrors, he saw countless of his fellow child soldiers do terrible things in order to survive while being on the bloody fields of Southern Sudan. It all changed one day when a British aid worker named Emma McCune rescued him and smuggled him into Nairobi and raised him as her own.
The music became a catharsis for Jal, it helped him to let go of the pain of past experiences. In 2005, he released Gua, his first album. Gua means peace in the Nuer tongue, his native language. This record became a number one hit in Kenya. Gua also procured him a gig on Bob Geldof’s concert (Live 8) in the United Kingdom.
Jal has a one of a kind style of hip hop with its message of reconciliation and peace inspired by his experiences as a kid soldier in Sudan. In 2008 a documentary based on his life was presented. It was called “Warchild”, it won in a dozen prestigious film festivals worldwide. That same year, his biography Warchild, was made public by Little Brown.
The impact of his life story is larger than life. Jal was a performer at Mandela’s 90th birthday. His music has been featured in films, tv shows and documentaries. He also appeared on Lennon’s Insta Karma campaign with world class artists.