....... and I am too braindead to blog tonight ..........
I feel
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd is to risk their love.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The one who risks nothing does nothing and has nothing – and finally is nothing.
He may avoid sufferings and sorrow.
But she simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitude, she is a slave, he has forfeited freedom.
Only one who risks is free!
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.
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
The new iTunes just released - iTunes 8, has a feature on it which is interesting and refreshing.
