With Kenya offering Emmanuel Jal a refuge once he escaped the war in South Sudan – the country and its cultural offerings have always influenced his artistic direction.
Rakaboom is a playful love song, which brings together influences from South Sudan and Kenya with the track sung in Emmanuel’s mother tongue Nuer, recorded in Nairobi with Kenyan producer Jesse Bukindu and the visuals shot in Lamu, the oldest Swahili settlement in East Africa.
The video, sponsored by ethical footwear brand Twins for Peace ignites the relationship between music, fashion, and afro-centric heritage. In the same vein as ‘Hey Mama’, (released in November 2021), the visuals highlight South Sudanese beauty, its prominence within the fashion industry, and the mark it’s making on the international cultural landscape.
To highlight this, Emmanuel worked with Kenyan film director Ogega Andere, to intentionally frame together exceptional modeling talent from South Sudan with eye-catching Swahili details, as they set the visuals amongst the people and treasured backdrop of Lamu and its stunning UNESCO world heritage site.
Emmanuel Jal is an established South Sudanese-Canadian World Music/Hip-Hop artist and global peace ambassador. A former child soldier rescued by a British aid worker, he has gone on to share his story through music with the release of six studio albums that have included such notable features as Nelly Furtado, Nile Rodgers, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and Peter Gabriel.
Emmanuel’s album ‘Shangah‘ will be released in May 2022. Compositionally the album is a mixture of Afrobeat musical influences that have increasingly crossed into the Pop music sphere in recent years.
Conceptually it continues Jal’s mission to tell refugee stories, both his own and that of other refugees facing similar struggles upon arrival in new and challenging lands. While primarily sung in English, songs also infuse elements of the Nuer and Dinka dialects that originate from the South Sudan region.
Incidentally, this will be Emmanuel’s first album he has released since obtaining his Canadian citizenship.
As Emmanuel puts it “My music is bringing the village I grew up in, into the mainstream; modernizing the South Sudanese sound, with East African influences and authentic Hip Hop. I love to tell stories through music and I love music I can dance to. In Shangah, there will be love songs sung in Naath language from South Sudan as well as catchy beats and influences that can be interpreted internationally. Since I grew up in different parts of the world and have travelled as a refugee I mix up languages from my Mother tongue ‘Nuer’ as well as Arabic, Dinka, and English.“
Over the course of his career Emmanuel’s music has found another audience through Electronic/Dance music remixes such as Henrik Schwarz’ Kuar Remix and the latest EP “Hey Mama” with Da Capo, FNX Omar, and Suraj, Kenya. While these are separate compositions from the album versions of his songs, they have proven an effective marketing vessel that can extend an album’s campaign far beyond the initial release window.
Reputable labels and collaborators such as Pete Tong have gravitated toward these remixes leading them to be entering rotation on national stations like BBC Radio 1 (making Emmanuel the first South Sudanese-Canadian artist to be broadcasted on the BBC). As such, new songs are now crafted in a way and stems are produced in order to expedite remixing possibilities and make that process as frictionless as possible.
Twins Maxime and Alexandre Mussard founded twins for peace in Paris in 2009 with a mission to
promote humanitarian values through their sneakers.
In 2018 the brand was incorporated into the NVH Studios family to make it a lifestyle brand founded and led by Nana Baffour a Ghanaian- American global lifestyle and technology entrepreneur. The brand is inspired by the Ethos of African culture and the contributions of the Afro-descendant Diaspora as they develop premium products that celebrate the common humanity of the world and invest part of its profits in improving the lives of children in situations of vulnerability.
The Twins for peace vision is to make the world more just, equitable, and peaceful by helping vulnerable children, prizing diversity, and respecting all.
Twins for Peace are pleased to announce a new partnership with Emmanuel Jal, which will see the emergence of a conscious collaboration for creating change and opportunity through music, fashion art, and technology. The fashion house will sponsor three music videos set in London, Nairobi, and South Sudan demonstrating how fashion, music, and culture can fuse seamlessly to foster conscious consumerism and ultimately create a meaningful impact across the globe.
