Ceasefire is an album whose backstory threatens to overshadow its music. Emmanuel Jal and Abdel Gadir Salim have spent most of their lives less than a thousand miles from each other, but they may as well have been on different planets, as they fell on different sides of the front line in Sudan's long and brutal north-south civil war (a separate conflict from the current troubles in Darfur). The war pitted the Muslim, Arab, and comparatively wealthy north against the south, where most are adherents of indigenous faiths, along with a sizable Christian minority. Salim is an elder statesman of northern Sudanese music and a master oud player, while Jal was forced into duty with John Garang's rebel SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) group before he turned eight, training in Ethiopian camps and fighting skirmish actions before he learned to read.
After years of fighting and a defection to a rival rebel group, Jal was ultimately helped out of the country by Emma McCune, a British aid worker with Street Kids International, but was left as one of thousands of so-called Lost Boys of Sudan after her death. Schooled in Kenya and London with help from McCune's friends and family, Jal turned to music after converting to Christianity. And it seems fitting that his odder-than-fiction path into the world of hip-hop should find him entering the international stage (he's already released an album of gospel hip-hop in Kenya) on an album he shares with a musician from the north of Sudan, in an unprecedented pairing. Jal and Salim do not mix their music thoroughly on most of Ceasefire, instead allowing Salim's elegant desert blues-- played on oud, accordion, saxophone, wooden drums, and bass-- to rub up against the sequenced beats and funky flow of Jal, who raps in Nuer, Arabic, English, Dinka, and Kiswahili-- sometimes bouncing between four different languages in the space of one verse.
It works surprisingly well, and not just because the two musicians appear on some of each other's tracks. What really is striking about it is how effortlessly Salim's organic, traditional percussion and Egyptian-influenced singing style fits alongside Jal's more 21st century sound. Unsurprisingly, the lyrics of both men reflect on the hope for lasting peace in their country (a peace already encroached upon by the Darfur violence). Jal opens "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." The chorus trades Nuer lines with Arabic affirmations, something that would have been next to impossible only a year ago.
The vast majority of the album is not sung or rapped in a language I can speak, but I've always enjoyed listening to lyrics I can't understand. I think it removes an extra layer of baggage (Jal's evangelism can be heavy-handed in translations) and allows me to just concentrate on the pure sound of the voices, which in this case is hugely rewarding. Salim's singing has a clipped dryness to it as he plays his vocals against his wriggling oud lines and accordion merges with sax on pentatonic scales. Salim's contributions are tonally similar to each other, and breaking them up in order to place them throughout the album brings out the details in each of them. It likely also makes for a more interesting listen for Western ears used to modulations and non-diatonic chords.
As for Jal's songs, "Elengwen", "Gua", and "Baai" make a monster trio of hip hop tracks. The first begins with a bouncing beat and a guitar/flute duel before Jal offers some of his most interesting verses, from a flow perspective. Large, mostly female backing choruses offer catchy interjections, coming to the fore with a jerky English-language plea for peace on "Baai". Live guitar and sax spice up the arrangements, and Salim's oud shows up on "Baai", floating through the strutting beat like a linen caught in a sharp wind. The song may be about the end of an appalling war, but it has unbelievable floor potential.
Music obviously cannot put a wrecked nation back together, but it can be one of the first steps toward reconciliation, and Ceasefire succeeds beautifully as both that and an interesting album with potential to appeal in just about any corner of the world's geography. Perhaps the most impressive thing about it is that the music isn't overwhelmed by the history of its players and their country. Ceasefire is a celebration of peace that looks forward to better days, and that's something I think we can feel in any language.
