child soldier music1 alice seo

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Music, unlike other media, has a unique feature of its own. Music is involved in many areas of the media. For example, TV and radio are affected by music more often than not. When attempting to send a message to the audience, simply reading out the facts can be done, yet it does not successfully grab the audience’s attention. Therefore, there are times when music is involved in media use. There are several songs related to the theme ‘child soldiers’. People often think that it is a faraway story that can be seen only in the news and the newspaper. Yet, a Sudanese rapper ‘Emmanuel Jal’ raps out his experience through his music. Singing or rapping about such issues has been done numerous times, but since the story was a true experience, the music approached to the audience’s heart differently than other music that was made before.
There must be some kind of bias behind the lyrics or the emotion that Jal carries out from the song. Emmanuel, a Sudanese rapper who has been forced to be a child soldier when he was young, confesses that he didn’t know why he had to fight. He had no power to resist. Luckily, he survived and had a great chance to travel to America and he then started to send out messaged how serious the situation in the Africa is. He says that there must be a reason why he was able to get to America, obviously privileged than other African children who are forced to fight in the army.
In the lyrics of his songs, Emmanuel claims that he must have survived so he will be able to tell his story. Then, he goes on to tell about his story in Africa. Although Emmanuel was too young to understand the politics, he felt that something was going on due to the tension created between Christians and Muslims. His father was serving the government as a police officer and his mother was in depression. Tragically, because of the conflict that was ongoing in Africa, Emmanuel lost all his family and was forced to hide in the jungle in order to survive.
Listeners, who heard the song, state that the lyrics are extremely personal, thus making it even more powerful. Many African Americans admires his song and cry after becoming emotional by the music. Andrew Natsios, a Special Envoy for Sudan, said that he never listened to hip-hop music but he felt that he wanted to listen to the hip-hop music just because of Emmanuel.
One of the videos about Emmanuel on YouTube says, ‘before Darfur… Civil War raged in Southern Sudan leaving 2 million people dead. 10 thousand children were forced to fight. Emmanuel Jal was one of them. Emmanuel came to America to share his story…’
He wanted to spread out the story about serious issue ongoing in Africa. People in Africa are extremely struggling and that the story should be heard throughout the world.
Since the form of the medium is music, it attracts people’s attention through melody and convinces people’s logic through the lyrics.
Even I was greatly emotional about the fact that people used children to maintain the army; it became more extreme when I listened to the music. The music speaks much more than the fact itself. People surely are greatly influenced by the music they listen to.