Customer Reviews

Ceasefire

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album is simply brilliant. Why do the poorest people make the best music? More importantly, this album shows how music can help overcome internal strife and pave the way for future peace. It is so good to find an album like this that is musically and politically so uplifting. I wish them both all the luck in the world!

Southern Sudanese Emmanuel Jal and Northern Sudanese Abdel Gadir Salim are the epitome of contrast. First, they represent the opposite ends of their country's political/religious, the former a young Christian, and Salim a Muslim and an elder of his country's music tradition.

Jal, now 25, was one of the thousand of young children forcefully removed from their homes by the insurgent guerrilla movement pitted against government forces. In Salim's case, having been brutally stabbed and barely surviving the attack of an orthodox Muslim man enraged with Salim's impious music, violence is no stranger.

Musically speaking, whereas Salim, Emmanuel Jal is an example of African music diving into Western music, most specifically his strong commitment to Hip-Hop. Salim is a consummate singer and oud player of Sudan's Folk music. So, "Ceasefire" besides not being a casual title, it is also a great album.

Proof of it, for instance are Jal's hip-hop influenced "Aiwa" -with its insistent percussion and dead-on rapping- or "Elengwen"-where the elder Salim trades verses with Emmanuel Jal-or "Gua," where chant-like choruses and an Eastern-leaning saxophone speak gloriously to one another. There are, also, more traditional Arabic songs, "Ya Salam" and "Lemon Bara" stand out, or you can sway along with the gorgeous "Asabi."

This is a stunning statement of two great musicians who could easily have chosen to remain enemies, but fortunately for lovers of great music anywhere in the world, they did not.

Recently, Sudanese rebel leaders and government ministers met to agree on a peace deal designed to end Sudan's 21-year civil war. If ever they hit a snag, they should play Ceasefire. Peace will have a better chance.

This album deserves more than five stars. There aren't many CDs that I would say that of, but this one absolutely does. It's simply outstanding.

Emmanual Jal, a young Christian rapper from the south, collaberates with Abdel Gadir Salim, a Muslim master musician and singer from the north. This gesture alone, and their intention of peace, is powerful enough. But this also makes for fantastic listening! Every song is infused with longing and soulful joy, and there is no way to listen to this without being deeply affected. Jal and Abdel Gadir Salim each contribute five tracks, and on many of them they are both featured. Many of the songs, like Aiwa (which means "Yes"), have powerful rap in a mix of Nuer and other languages (including Arabic and English. The beautiful Elengwen has a more African sound, with African percussion and chorus. And this album includes a brilliant new version of Gua (you can hear his original version on the Rough Guide to Sudan), one of Jal's most powerful songs.

Abdel Gadir Salim's songs are amazing as well. On Ya Salaam, Lemon Bara, Gamearina and others, soulful melodies collide with intricate, rolling arrangements, with his trademark backing band of percussion, oud, accordion, guitar and saxophone. Abdel has a soft, soothing voice. Songs like these are truly unforgettable. And don't forget the closing song, Ceasefire, where the two musicians speak, and Jal raps over almost an acoustic reggae-inflected beat, over the traditional Sudanese song Bitzīd Min 'Adhābī (which Abdel Gadir Salim performs, with words, on the album Blues of Khartoum and Oxfam Arabia).

I cannot overstate how great this album is. It's full of joy, energy and passion. If you like African or Arabic music, this is infused with a powerful dose of both, but all you have to appreciate is fantastic music. This is a really inspiring album. I hope it can inspire people to bring peace to Sudan.

These two gentlemen of the Sudan could not have grown up in more different lives, despite living in the same country.

Jal, of southern Sudan, was forced into duty as a child soldier with the Sudan People's Liberation Army, before even reaching his eith birthday.

Salim is of northen state, and was a statesman of music while Jal was fighting with the SPLA.

In a country where it has been North Vs. South... this collaberation (aside from its musical brilliance) is also socially progressive and important to Sudan.

Musically, this is a brilliant collaberation. Jal, has a very 21st century sound; this sound blends effortlessly with Salim's more organic, traditional, Egyptian influenced style...

"Aiwa" (Arabic for "yes") with a verse in Nuer that translates to "I would love to sing in all the people's languages/ With this chance that I have I want to express/ The whole of my heart to the whole of the world."

It's brilliant and socially aware in a country that needs more of this unity through music.

Keep Emmanuel Jal on your musical radar...

Ceasefire is one of the best cds I have heard in a while. Salim is a masterful musician. Jal's rap sounds best in Nuer and the other African languages he speaks.
The music vacillates between sub-saharan African sounds and more Arab rhythms but its all good.

I don't understand much more than a handful of words on this album but this one of the best albums I've ever heard. I can feel their message of peace. It really is amazing how music communicates over all language barriers. It sounds of ancient African tradition mixed with modern rap and jazz. This is truly a masterpiece.

Wow, what a great recording! My husband bought the CD for our 11 year old and it has become a family favorite. The music is full of African rhythms and African heart. It reminds me to pray for peace. We salute the artists and their message.

I bought this CD after hearing a program on NPR highlighting Emmanual Jal. I intended it to be a gesture of support and wasn't expecting anything out of the CD. Once I put it in my CD player though, I couldn't get enough. The music is upbeat, and fun to listen to. Additionally the lyrics that i can understand (only 25% is in english) invoke a deep sense of gratitude for the wonderfull country we live in here in the US as well as a sense of moral obligation to help those living in less blessed conditions.

Some wars in our world seem to have been and still be eternal and their cruelty is beyond our ability to imagine how men, women and even if not often children can sink and delve into such unhuman acrtivities. You can try to look for causes, motivations or even explanations, but you will only find pretexts, false pretenses, in one word nothing that can really stand the challenge of truth. Darfur in Sudan is one of these conflicts whose origin has long disappeared in our memory and whose end we cannot even conceive. But our worst feeling is the conviction that there is nothing we can do, that we are powerless in front of these two parallel instincts, that to kill and that to survive, to kill to survive and to survive to kill. This CD is a voice that comes up from human consciousness and its only objective is to ask for, preach even and for sure defend peace for Sudan, for Darfur, a peace that has definitely never existed for the human communities living in this territory, even in the memory of their oldest members. And here an adventure can start because it is the voice of a human soul. A voice that slams its words, raps its sentences, disentangles its blues, weaves the lace of its gospel, in Nuer as much as in Arabic, to African as much as Arabic music, borrowing all the styles that can intermingle in the vast auditoriums of the world to produce a feeling of estrangement that is so great that we finally feel at home, we finally feel we have reached the destination that had been ours for so long after a voyage that can only give man's soul the strength and the life it needs to reconquer its control over history and death. The power of this music comes from the long rivers of blood in which it was steeped with the vital hope and the unshaking faith that one day the springs of the Nile river will be reborn pure and clear providing children with the water in which they can relearn how to bathe and domestic animals with the desire to come and drink without taking the risk of a criminal bullet roaming around for a target.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universit? Paris Dauphine, Universit? Paris I Panth?on Sorbonne