Tony Cummings - sorry about throwing that egg at you some long years ago.
This review rocks. Far better than mine which I stumbled into - one line reprinted here first.
Emanuel Jal sung about it from Main-stage. He had been a War Child, fighting with guns before he experienced adolescence. And then a young woman, who didn't stay safe in leafy suburbia, went as a Missionary and snatched him from the rebels. He had us all dancing hip-hop sty-lie, as he told us about his old and new life.
Then Tony Cummings - it was was a fantastic gig
at The Greenbelt Festival
be there
get there
next year
If you are poor - I will pay.
EMMANUEL JAL - Mainstage - 8.10pm
The lengthy soundcheck ate into the performance time, presumably the deejay/technician providing most of the accompaniment was having trouble with his samples.But when Emmanuel announced to the restless crowd "we gotta go with what we have" it was worth the wait. The one time Sudanese child soldier has grown into a powerfully passionate rapper and his songs, largely taken from his latest 'Warchild' album, made their point with pulverising power.
Emmanuel's voice rang out with the authority of an Old Testament prophet. Phrases and images poured forth to lodge in the listener's grey matter. "I stand here because somebody cared," "50 Cent is being played by The Man,"
"I'm in a different war fighting for the children of Darfur."
Sometimes his images were so shocking that they stunned even the libertine Greenbelt audience; like his breathtaking attack on the oil and mining companies' brutal exploitation of Africa.
"To Mr Oil, Diamond and Gold Miner/Stop treating Mama Africa like a vagina/She's not your whore, not anymore/You take your riches and leave the people poor."
One of Emmanuel's two backing singers, a rotund chap from the Bahamas, talked passionately about the need to resist gun and knife crime on our cities streets.
Then Emmanuel explained he wanted to "take us deep." He launched into a breathtaking, unaccompanied version of "Forced To Sin" which was the most powerful piece of poetic militancy since I heard the Last Poets back in the '60s.
Emmanuel's searing images of eating the rotting flesh of his comrades in a senseless and savage jungle war were gruesome but demanded attention.
He closed his epic by explaining, rather unnecessarily, that "That is my story, God bless you." After the stunned applause the rapper continued by explaining he liked to close his set with some faster songs because,
"Normally I dance my pain out."
And dance he did, careering across the stage to the phat Afrobeat rhythms after he brought some folk from the crowd onto the stage including a cute little girl aged about nine. At the close Emmanuel had the crowd at the front of the stage close to dancing delirium as he took giant steps like he was stomping on Satan's head.
I'm sure that's just what he did.
Tony Cummings
