Interview with James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch, the directors of Food Matters

(Re-printed from an article in Common Ground Magazine)

Food Matters
documentary inspired by love of family
interview by Joseph Roberts
October 2008

Joseph Roberts: What inspired you to produce Food Matters?

James Colquhoun: The biggest single motivator for us was personal experience. My father was quite unwell at the time. He was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety and depression and not responding well to a raft of medications. He was suffering quite severely from the side effects. That spurred our personal interest in sourcing alternatives for healing and looking at the source of the problem, as opposed to masking symptoms which medications often do.

That led us to study at the Global College of Natural Medicine. We were quite surprised that many others are familiar with the concept that you can eat well to prevent illness. We also discovered that nutritional therapy and detoxification processes can reverse illness – heart disease, diabetes, depression, cancer and mental illness. That was a really big turning point for us and we were quite motivated to inform as wide a population as possible.

JR: Which basic principles did you discover?

JC: Metabolic illnesses play a part in just about every illness that exists – you have an over-toxicity and a lack of nutrients. These can be caused by any number of things, but in order to reverse these illnesses, we need to look at detoxifying the body and replenishing nutrients. Those concepts basically facilitate our bodies to create balance and self-heal. Everyone is familiar with how your body heals itself when you cut yourself or if you have some sort of scar. It’s not such a different concept whether you have a cut on your arm or heart disease or diabetes and so forth. Once you restore balance to the body and give it the environment that creates optimum health and balance, it will regenerate and self-heal.

James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch

Laurentine ten Bosch: Our society has become so used to instant gratification as a way of life that we always look at the symptoms first – how we can tackle them and the quickest way to overcome them. The pharmaceutical industry knows how to approach the instant gratification society very well. Many of the teachers in our film, however, are looking at how we can resolve the underlying cause, rather than just fixing the symptoms.

JR: How did you get interested in these issues?

LB: A lot of our family was overcome by illness and we’d both been working in fields where we regularly dealt with a lot of people. I was working in the food service industry and we realized that we weren’t really looking at what we were putting into people’s mouths.

JR: In 2000, Studio D of the National Film Board produced the documentary The Genetic Takeover. Common Ground rented a theatre and showed the film to hundreds of people. Following the film, we had a Q & A with a panel of spokespeople from Greenpeace, the Society Preventing Environmental Conservation, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Sierra Club and others.

LB: People are hosting screenings of our film all over the world through the Brave New Theatre platform. We’ve teamed up with this company and people everywhere can register to host a screening, anywhere – in their living rooms or a community centre or a cinema or a church. [See www.foodmatters.tv/]

JR: That helps build community too.

LB: We’ve got a lot of screenings in America – all over the East and West coasts –in Canada, even Australia and New Zealand are really coming along. Even places we haven’t marketed to like Norway and Tel Aviv and Israel.

JR: What do you feel passionate about nowadays?

JC: We’re as passionate as ever about having this message heard by as many people as possible. We believe that if one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population watch this film, we can create a shift in conscious awareness surrounding nutrition and natural healing. We would really love our message to be so widely heard that it can create that shift. We’d love to see our film used in conjunction with other media and information sources as a means to shift regulatory bodies and governments. If individuals demand nutritional therapy and ask for these approaches to healing, we can essentially shift the industry away from a sickness-based model to a wellness-based model. It’s extremely fulfilling for us to be a part of that process and that message.

JR: Why did you call the film Food Matters?

JC: We had a number of other titles for the film, but it actually originated with a comment from David Wolfe, the raw food commentator in the film. During our interview with him, he said that we now realize that food does matter; food matters.

JR: What is your position on Frankenfoods?

JC: Our stance on genetically modified foods is similar to that of Arnaud Apoteker, the head of the anti-genetically modified foods campaign for Greenpeace. He says that this manipulation of the environment and of food is a huge biological experiment on a global scale that cannot be controlled and is extremely dangerous. It’s a risk we should not be taking. The single most important thing that each country should adhere to is the clear labelling of genetically modified foods. If people had the choice of organic, all-natural foods versus genetically engineered, heavily processed foods and the labels delineated the two, I’m certain they would veer away from Frankenfoods.

LB: We have the same issue in Australia. We’ve just been notified that our country is now more open to genetically modified foods, which is a big shame for the farmers who are growing organic food and trying to promote it. Although we would have loved to, we weren’t able to focus on it in our film; it would have made for a very long film.

JR: Is the government in Australia similar to Canada, in that it is run by very large corporations with a lot of clout?

JC: Every governmental body globally is lobbied by interest groups and the more effective they are, the more they can change legislation in their favour. The most effective ones are those with the biggest pockets, and the companies with the biggest pockets seem to be the agro-chemical companies and pharmaceutical companies. That’s why the decisions that are made predominantly support the multi-nationals, whose interests are not necessarily for the health of the general public.

As individuals, we have an opportunity to shift consumer choices. Laurentine and I like to talk about “flirting with your shopping trolley.” If people support sustainability, organics, biodynamics, sustainable farming and foods that support health, corporations will quickly shift to make sure there’s enough supply. Hopefully, we can create change from the bottom up instead of from the governmental level down. Our focus is on intellectual distribution. We’re concerned with distributing good, solid information to as wide an audience as possible. People contact us every day saying this has changed their lives or they’ve used the information in conjunction with a holistic practitioner to be able to correct their depression or their other illnesses. These sorts of responses are very gratifying.

JR: You provide a forum for many different groups in the film with various approaches to diet – vegetarians and non-vegetarians, vegans, people into raw food. The common thread is that people can improve their health and recover from diseases caused by poor food and lifestyle choices or toxic, environmental poisoning.

JC: Our message is to spread the good news that there are other opportunities for healing outside of the conventional realm for people who are suffering from illness or pain. The more this knowledge spreads, the more people will have access to life-saving information, which is the most fulfilling role we can play.

We’re really excited about people taking our message to the world through the platforms we’ve set up on our website; people can purchase a copy of the film and hold screenings in their local communities. They can also purchase wholesale copies for families or friends. We’ve had so many wonderful people step up and help with this. We really hope this will continue to create a shift in consciousness about how we interact with nutrition and wellness.

LB: I’d like to add that we started from a grave concern for people who are ill and who don’t know where to turn. In America, you get bombarded by advertising. It’s a capitalist society and marketing goes on everywhere. We were quite concerned for people who are ill. Doctors don’t have time to talk about nutrition and opportunities. They don’t have enough time to teach and hold hands.

We looked at the opportunities for people from a truth-seeking perspective – what really works and which modalities are getting results. That’s why we’re very lucky to have studied at the Global College of Natural Medicine, an independent organization with no government funding so you don’t see the influences of the meat and dairy boards and pharmaceutical companies. We were lucky to have these teachers speak to us through the college.

JR: How do people find out about the college?

LB: It’s online at www.gcnm.com, based out of Santa Cruz, California. You can study their programs from all over the world. We were fortunate to be able to learn from them. It was these teachers who inspired us.

________________________________________________________________________

Also check out the official Food Matters film blog at:

http://www.foodmattersblog.com/

Director Rod Mann talks about his film “Entheo:Genesis”

ROD MANN: AWAKENING THE DIVINE WITHIN
by Elise McDonough
(excerpted from High Times October 2007)

Let's talk about the beginning of this project, before you even started
shooting. Why did you decide to make this type of movie?

It grew out of a class on altered states of consciousness I took at CIIS [California Institute of Integrated Studies] taught by Ralph Metzner. I was inspired by an interview he'd done with Peter Jennings involving a report on MDMA debunking the Ricaurte study. It was proven that MDMA was not actually tested in a study that showed brain damage as the result of Ecstasy use; instead, it was methamphetamine that produced these harmful results.

It was a very powerful piece, and it inspired us to start work on this movie that we had been talking about for a long time.

The film started out as a cataloging of the contemporary studies at UCLA, Harvard and around the world that are using entheogenic and psychedelic compounds as adjuncts to psychotherapy. We began unfolding the origins of shamanic use and added a chapter on shamanism, and then got into the use of psychedelics in indigenous cultures as rites of passage. Then we had to explain the importance of rites of passage, and then the focus of the film changed: It became more about this cycle of what went wrong in the 60s and 70s -- and
now this renaissance in psychedelic use, this resurgence.

What do you hope people will take away from this movie after they see it?

I hope there will be an experience of understanding the many ways that we all find to participate with some form of expression, whether it be poetry, hip -hop, trance dancing, surfing, race-car driving -- any of the various ways in which you can interact with the edge of tension and transcend the internal chatter. It's about honoring the many ways that we find flow, which is about being able to improvise and react in the moment, because through flow we find balance in our lives.

In many ways, this film tells the collective visions and stories of that which is ineffable to the one but tangible through the eyes of the many. So you have many different, beautifully passionate and inspiring individuals, all talking towards this same collective psyche, and about patterns in the evolution of consciousness through the origins of indigenous cultures practicing animism and shamanism, and how that influenced Western thought.

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Click here to listen to an audio podcast interview with Rod Mann on In a Perfect World

John Marks talks about his film "Shape of the Future"

Middle East Peace Documentary Airs Simultaneously to Israelis, Palestinians
August 8, 2005

(Re-Printed from Voice of America news.com)

"The convention is that when you make a documentary about the Middle East conflict, it's full of bloodshed and historical footage. We've made a documentary series that has neither blood nor historical footage," says writer-producer John Marks. “In other words, we're trying to talk about the future. We're trying to show people that peace is possible, that it can be achieved, and that people really don't have to live in a conflict for their entire life."

Mr. Marks is founder and president of Search for Common Ground, a 23-year-old conflict resolution organization that creates media to solve problems that most people might think of as impossible: problems like the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. The group’s latest production, The Shape of the Future, is the first program ever broadcast simultaneously by Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab television.

"We were on the ground in Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank, shooting this for a year,” Mr. Marks said. “And we spent a lot of time talking to people about the future. We asked them, for example, what kind of future did they want, what would a normal life be for them, that was an important question."

Interviewed in their homes, Israelis and Palestinians expressed similar yearnings. "A normal life in this country, here in Jerusalem, is the kind of life where you do not have to be afraid,” says Israeli Riki Amedi.

“A normal life, in my opinion," says Palestinian Neveen-Abu-Rumeil, "is when every woman, her husband and children, are able to live in a home where they do not need to lock the doors -- where you do not fear there are military raids outside."

The series, which aired in both Hebrew and Arabic versions, interviewed people on both sides of the divide about how to solve the four basic issues: Jerusalem, security, Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements and borders.

“We used people's stories and their lives as a way of going through it,” Mr. Marks said. “And in each one of the programs, we would have a pair, several pairs of Palestinians and Israelis, people who were roughly the equivalent of each other."

"I prefer to see Jerusalem unified,” an Israeli journalist says in the film. “That means one city in terms of running the place and taking care of the population, while we are also talking about two capitals."

A Palestinian counterpart agrees: “I am convinced that Jerusalem could be the capital of two states and an open and joint city. That would solve the problem of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and also solve the problem of the city as a whole."

"We also tried to speak as much as possible to the center and to the right,” John Marks said. “We avoided what you would call the usual suspects for peace, who could be wonderful people, it wasn't a question of that, but we felt that we would have much more impact if we could get people who were more conservative to talk about what needed to happen."

And so, the Israelis who speak about compromising on settlements include a brigadier general, Dov Sedaka, and a former head of the settlers' council, Otniel Schneller:

"Under certain circumstances,” Mr. Schneller says at one point, “I would agree, for the sake of peace, to give up part of my land."

General Sedaka contends, “The dismantlement of settlements will not decrease the security of the state of Israel. I think that the state of Israel will be more secure if there is a Palestinian state."

Among the Palestinians who speak about the refugee issue is a former minister of prisoner affairs for the Palestinians, Hisham Abdel Razeq, who spent 20 years in Israeli prisons. He notes, "A political solution would deny both the Israeli grand dream and the Palestinian grand dream. It would require an agreement between the two sides to live in peace and to end the state of war and conflict."

“We cannot live on our swords forever. To kill and be killed,” the Israeli journalist says towards the end of the film. A Palestinian broadcaster puts it poetically: "Each side was brought up on dreams. Both parties should perhaps reach a truce with dreams.”

The Shape of the Future will have a second life after broadcast. John Marks says one Palestinian organization has already created an educational curriculum based on the film and trained 150 teachers. And an accompanying music video, by popular Israeli and Palestinian musicians David Broza and Wisam Murad, singing the same words in Hebrew and Arabic, is reaching many more people, appealing to the hopes of many Israelis and Palestinians for a peaceful settlement.

Sundance Film Festival: The rebel and the Empress

Thirty years after being forced into exile with her husband, the Shah of Iran, Queen Farah explains to Geoffrey Macnab why she agreed to a documentary on her life

Empress Farah, the widow of the Shah of Iran, is set to be an unlikely star of the Sundance Film Festival.

After repeated requests, she has agreed to speak to me about a new documentary, The Queen and I, in which she is the subject. The film – which has been chosen for the Sundance Festival – was directed by the Iranian-born film-maker Nahid Persson, a former communist who spent much of her early life trying to topple the Shah's regime. In theory, the two women – the deposed monarch and the revolutionary – should detest one another. In practice, when they came face to face, they discovered they have more in common than either anticipated.

Both are mothers. Both are exiles (Empress Farah in Paris, Persson in Sweden). Both have suffered bereavement. (Persson's teenage brother was executed in the early days of the Khomeni regime.) Both feel the same nostalgia for the homeland they left behind. Both are dismayed at the course of Iranian society, 30 years after the revolution, as an Islamic republic, under the current President, Ahmadinejad.

"She [Nahid Persson] was an Iranian and she was a woman. Although I knew that she held a different political opinion, I thought at some point we had to have a dialogue and that we should not keep our animosity and bitterness forever. That is why I accepted," the Empress says to explain her decision to take part in the documentary.

Since leaving Iran in 1979 with the Shah, who died in 1980, the Empress has had plentiful experience in the glare of Western media. To many, she is a symbol of a regime guilty of human rights abuses and the suppression of free speech. To her supporters, she is a link with an old order that they hope will one day be restored.

At times, Persson's documentary makes the deposed queen seem like a modern-day Marie Antoinette. With its archive footage of the Empress in her crown at her coronation ceremony shown next to old newsreel material of her forced into exile after the revolution as street protesters burned her image, it highlights the extreme contrasts in her life. One moment, she is living an existence of fairy tale-style opulence. The next, she's a pariah. Old friends melted away as she and her husband looked for sanctuary after the revolution.

The Empress knew that once she agreed to participate in Persson's film, she would have little control over how she was portrayed. "She [Persson] had the camera and had the editing power. It's like interviews you do. You say what you do but you are not in control of the ideas of the person who is making the film about you or interviewing you."

Even after shooting had begun, she had reservations. There are moments caught on camera when she seems on the verge of backing out: "You never know after all these years, and all the ups and downs of my life and all my interviews, I wasn't quite sure what would be the result of the film," the Empress explains. "At one point, as you saw in the film, I was tired and I was not sure I was doing the right thing. But then I decided I should continue. After all, I have been the queen of my country for 20 years. Even if I have been outside the country for 30 years, I still have feelings for my country."

She knew Persson was bitterly opposed to the Shah's regime but says that the film-maker was only a teenager at the time of the revolution. "She came from a very poor family. At that age, they believe communism can give them happiness and equality. That's why I still have a feeling for the young people in Iran."

The Empress is loyal to her husband's memory. She isn't about to apologise for the perceived excesses of the Shah's regime. In the documentary, just in case the portrait offered of her is too sentimental, Persson includes a harrowing interview with a man tortured under the Shah. "All these people who say 'Long Live Farah', if they hear the truth and if they have a conscience, they would stop saying that," he says.

The director also films a press conference in Berlin where the Empress is asked about the poverty that existed at the time of the Shah. She acknowledges that life "wasn't perfect" but that is as close as she comes to contrition. The get-out clause, for both film-maker and subject, is that the situation in Iran today in terms of human rights is worse than it was under the Shah.

There is also the sense that during the time of the Shah, the Empress and the film-maker lived – as Farah puts it – "in two different worlds". Behind the palace walls, Farah had little sense of the daily problems of working-class families like Persson's.

What makes The Queen and I moving and disorienting is the unlikely friendship that springs up between the two women. The film-maker is clearly wary about being seduced by the charm of the Empress. The Empress, for her part, knew that the documentary could easily turn into a hatchet job. However, both the director and her subject eventually rise above their suspicions of one another. When they come face to face, they can't help but like one another.

Persson discovered that the Empress knew about her previous work (including such documentaries as Prostitution Behind the Veil and Four Wives – One Man. "When I met her, I saw her as a normal person," the director says. "When I saw her first, I thought 'strange woman'. She is very beautiful now but I remembered her as very young, very charismatic, with all clothes and a crown and everything. Now I was standing in her apartment alone."

"I think it is a new idea and, above all, I think in the end, it has a positive message," the Empress replies when I ask if she is impressed with the documentary. "I think it is fair. [But] Nahid spoke and expressed her opinions [in the documentary] when she was alone. I was not given the chance to do the same thing the other way."

The Queen and I is bound to polarise opinion. Supporters of the Empress will be deeply suspicious that their figurehead agreed to appear in a documentary made by a former communist. Colleagues of Persson may well question why she has made such a sympathetic film about a woman who symbolised a regime they detested. The Empress seems philosophical about these conflicting responses. "I have to listen to my compatriots' opinions. I can't give an opinion on their behalf. I once heard someone asked what is the secret of success. He said, 'I don't know what the secret of success is but the secret of failure is trying to please everybody'. I guess some will like the documentary and some will dislike it. It's like anything else. The supporters who know me and who understand me will agree with what I have done. But as I say, you can't please everyone."

No, The Empress is unlikely to be going on the festival circuit to accompany screenings of The Queen and I at Sundance and elsewhere. "It is Nahid's film. I frankly don't think that I could go to attend these festivals ... but I wish Nahid success."

--Re-printed from an article on the Sundance Film Festival in UK publication The Independent, originally published Friday, 9 January 2009

Earthdance Short-Attention-Span Environmental Film Festival

Exerpts from an Article in SF 360:
By Robert Avila

Who says it’s not easy being green? If you ask the folks behind the Bay Area-based Earthdance Short-Attention-Span Environmental Film Festival, engaging films with positive and eye-opening ecological themes can not only be easy but high fun. And they’ve been proving it since 2004, with an annual spate of short films covering a gamut of environmental subjects and stylistic approaches while studiously avoiding the doomy.
“We’re living at a time when we need stories that connect people, bring them together and inspire hope,” explains festival director and founder Zakary Zide. “We wanted to reach out and be more inclusive.” Doing so meant highlighting the humor, adventure and sheer wonder of the natural environment and the place of human beings in it. Rather than targeting single issues like global warming or the coming water crisis, EarthDance aims to be a bridge between art, nature and science. In that sense, says Zide, “It’s not even political.”

Neither is it (entirely) frivolous. Zide has a background in ecology and art and he’s even dabbled in filmmaking, documenting his own environmental sculptures à la Andy Goldsworthy and Rivers and Tides. The impetus behind founding an environmentally themed film festival had as much to do with what he and his colleagues at the Oakland Museum weren’t seeing in media representations of the natural world. “Too much gloom and doom,” he says. “Where was the fun? The weird? The quirky? And we didn’t want to be preached to.”

Over the past five years, unlike some of the more soused members of the animal kingdom (Oh, bee hive!), EarthDance has remained clear-headed and on the move. It’s reached out to audiences internationally, traveling thus far to Mexico, Canada, Ireland, Denmark and Israel and becoming in Zide’s words “a mobile, global event,” screening in 35 cities and venues worldwide. But it continues to premiere every year here in the Bay Area at the Oakland Museum, where it’s found a receptive home from the beginning. “We got our start at the Oakland Museum, and the museum continues to be the lead sponsor,” says Zide. Meanwhile, “the quality of the films has increased tremendously, as well as the number of international entries.”

It may look deceptively pint-sized, but with dozens of film festivals annually in the Bay Area’s teeming cinema ecosystem, EarthDance’s ability to succeed on its own modest but popular terms is no small achievement. “EarthDance sets itself apart by not taking itself too seriously,” explains Zide. “And that’s why I think it appeals to a broad audience. We’re like the SF International Film Festival on Ritalin meets Spike & Mike with a green, jet-age twist.”

Soldiers of Conscience filmmakers invite you to join the discussion!

SOLDIERS OF CONSCIENCE is a thoughtful and respectful documentary film about killing in war, about conscience, and about morality.

It is a film that is meant to provoke reflection and dialogue and action. And, because this is a film about a taboo topic – killing – the first step is to break the taboo and talk about it.

Click here to bring your thoughts and questions to this conversation >>

- Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan
Directors, SOLDIERS OF CONSCIENCE

Warchild Song Lyrics and Emmanuel Jal Bio

Warchild by Emmanuel Jal

i believe ive survived for a reason to tell my story to touch lives
i believe ive survived for a reason to tell my story to touch lives
all the people struggling down there
storms only come for a while
then after a while they'll be gone
blessed, blessed

my father was working for the government as a police man
few years later a hardy joined a rebel movement that was formed to fight for freedom
i didn't understand the politics behind all this 'cause i was only a child
after a while i saw the tension rising high between the christian and the muslim regime
we lost our possesion
my mothers, my mothers mothers suffered depression
and because of this...i was forced to be a war child

i'm a war child
i'm a war child
i believe i've survived for a reason to tell my story to touch lives (touch lives, touch lives, touch lives, touch lives, touch lives, touch lives, touch lives)

i lost my father in this battle
my brothers
all my life i've been hiding in the jungle
the pain i'm cutting is too much to handle
whose there please tell i....my candle
whose there anyone to hear my cry


Emmanuel Jal Bio

Emmanuel Jal is a soft-spoken young man with a lilt in his voice and a warmth in his manner; so friendly and so engaging it's difficult to imagine him toting a machine gun. Yet the reality is that, in the war-torn African country of Sudan, Emmanuel Jal learned to fire a machine gun before he could ride a bicycle.

It is not a difficult subject to broach for the young rapper, but it is a difficult story; one which reflects the horrors of subjugation of a people to a foreign ideology, and the blood spilled in the name of freedom. The guns in his life story were not expensive video props for cavalier (and perhaps dubious) rap stars and their boastfulness; they were real and they were a way of life as a means to survival. This story is real; set to music and told eloquently by Emmanuel Jal. This is his story, a coming-of-age amidst rebellion, famine and global apathy; a story of a child born into war who preaches the way of peace.

"The whole Sudan is my country... where I came from. When I was just a boy, the British left and religion was the main problem. It is called Sharia law; the law of Muslims. When the Arabs came into Sudan, they brought Sharia law and they did not let anyone practice other religions; the people in my village, in other villages... fought back."

During this time of intense conflict, famine raged across the nation as the war displaced thousands. People fled their homes to avoid being killed only to die of starvation. He had watched while strangers beat his mother, his grandmother was arrested and his aunt was raped by government forces. As one of the many young boys growing up in such abject turmoil, Emmanuel was embittered.

When he was about six years old, Emmanuel’s father, a commander with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), gave his son up to the rebels to set an example for others. The SPLA sent him, along with hundreds of other young Sudanese children, to a school in Ethopia. The children were forced to walk from their villages to Ethopia; many died on the way, eaten by wild animals, falling into rivers and getting lost. Once at the school, the children were trained in discipline and in the basic skills of killing.

"There was anger in my heart. I became a soldier very young; like many other children. I think it was '92. I wanted to help the fight; I thought I could go away and learn how to fly a plane, a jet plane to bomb them. At that time, all I thought about was killing. I trained; learned how to fire a gun. We practiced on killing animals. We would kill the animal and then have to bury it; so the Arabs wouldn't find the body but also sometimes because we had killed a farmer's (animal). I just wanted to kill as many Arabs and Muslims as possible. They were killing us..."

Scared and exhausted from the killing, Emmanuel and some of the other children - the “lost boys,” as they came to be known - deserted the rebel lines. On foot, they trekked across Sudan’s cracked, barren badlands, its crocodile-infested rivers and snake-laced mud patches to flee the war and be with their own tribe, the Nuer. Four hundred began the trek, only 16 survived to find relative safety in a refugee camp in Waat, Southern Sudan.

It was around this time in his life that Emmanuel met Emma McCune, a British Foreign Aid/UNICEF worker who rescued him from the bloody conflict and spirited him to nearby Kenya, intent on giving him a new life and new opportunities.

"I went with Emma; I still wanted to help the fight, somehow. When I was first rescued, I still wanted to kill. I thought I might learn something that could help the fight and then go back as a soldier. But I'm alive because of Emma, and she deserves to be known. She tried to help other people like she helped me. She took me to school; she helped me with my English. For a while there weren't even clothes for me to wear, so I wore her clothes and her shoes to school in Kenya.

"Kenya was a model of peace for Africa. They had better schools and a thriving economy; but at first, education-wise... it was difficult for me to settle down in Kenya. I was always fighting; thinking of myself as a soldier and I was expelled all the time! I had to learn to humble myself in order to help my people. So during my time in Kenya, eventually I changed. I began reading the Koran, the Bible; I was in the church choir; singing... and this helped me heal. When I turned to God, it washed away bitterness, the anger in my heart... I changed.

"I would have liked to help my friends change in a different way; as hard as it was to live in Kenya with so much for me to learn, there was always music in my life. Always there was music: music for harvesting; music for family; music for war. In Kenya I began writing songs in the church to fit myself into the community and have a new beginning. I wrote songs with that in mind: music for peace."

"In Kenya I got into rap. I didn't understand the history, but I enjoyed listening to rap because it was shocking. The problems, the issues; I like the hip-hop that talked about the neighborhood going through issues; and I identified in a different way. Music is a form a communication..soul and heart and art. This is what spoke to me as a young man and what I am speaking of now. Musicians are prophets and music is the only thing that can speak to your soul without your permission."

"What I am doing with this album, the content, the message..." Jal pauses. "My country is at war. My people are dying. I want to create awareness... for my people, for the world. This is life, this album; and the issues - it's ready, it's powerful! I hope to inspire people and have fun as well. This album is serious about people's lives and this is why I have to talk about this. It's actually helpful because I feel better now."

Emmanuel began performing around Africa and eventually made his way to England where, following a number of notable live performances, he earned a record deal. His music can 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 more recently in the feature film “Blood Diamond” starring Leonardo DiCaprio. As well as on John Lennons ‘Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur’ amongst the likes of U2, REM and Lenny Kravitz.

Jal recently performed at an exclusive gig for Oxfam with Fat Boy Slim as part of Oxjam 07; he also took part in his charity, Gua Africa’s, Mixed Jam event with Blak Twang amongst others in London [all footage can be found on www.youtube.com/emmanueljal ]. Jal has also performed with Razorlight, Supergrass, and Faithless in Europe. Last October he toured the United States as part of the “National Geographic All Roads Film Festival,” performing in New York, Washington D.C., 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 [ www.concerttoendslavery.com/trailer ]. He is a spokesman for “Make Poverty History, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and the Control Arms campaign.

In addition to the release of his album “Warchild,” Emmanuel is the subject of a documentary on his life, also entitled “War Child.” The documentary had its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2008, receiving a rare standing ovation, and will appear at other prestigious film festivals this year. Emmanuel is also at work on his autobiography that St. Martin’s Press will release.

"Now I'm working on building a school, and we are trying to get people educated. This is what I've been able to achieve by leaving the anger behind and embracing music, and education. We're helping an orphanage in Nairobi; bringing aid to children in Africa. We are putting people in school and one person is in university..."

And while the future looks very promising for the young Jal, he remains steadfast in his soldier mentality. "Before I was focusing on making African sounds completely; but I stayed in England to improve my skills to get my message out. For me, home is where your love is. I still think like a soldier; I don't want to move to a place where something happens and I start missing people again. I'll get comfortable but I won't stick myself down. In my mind, I'm not yet settled. I just want to keep making my music, that's most important. But for right now... I'm cool!"

--re-printed from the website for Emmanuel Jal's record label Sonic 360