Any connection between Sudan and hip hop?
Many times we are hooked to topics from books that, if we’re sincere, students do not care for. Let’s face it.: We need to be creative in order to catch their attention and involvement.
Some Sundays ago, I was reading a local newspaper and I found an article about an interesting young person (La Nación, September 6th, Enfoques Section), a man who threw guns away and started singing hip hop to fight for Peace. Does it make any sense? Yes, it really does.
Some Sundays ago, I was reading a local newspaper and I found an article about an interesting young person (La Nación, September 6th, Enfoques Section), a man who threw guns away and started singing hip hop to fight for Peace. Does it make any sense? Yes, it really does.
As soon as I entered the net I found amazing and touching stories about a young guy called Emmanuel Jal who had been a “Child Soldier” in Sudan Civil War,- by the way, I did not even know that the war in Sudan finished in 2006-, a guy who has suffered the worst family tragedies, and a guy who –as many other famous people- have found music as a tool to help the others.
Off I went into many sites that clarified my vision and I thought: this is what students may like, so I worked out the way to introduce the topic and there was only one question to ask:
How is Sudan connected to hip hop? Nobody answered.
Then, this is the time to play with the topic as a puzzle: divide the class and ask to bring data about Sudan (geographic data, war times, population, and way of living, government,. language etc), info about hip hop ( origin, relation to rap, famous singers, name of songs etc)
Next class, if you’re lucky, you’ll have some data to work with. You should have done previously a short and easy paragraph including the most relevant and tragic points about Emmanuel – remember students love battles, aggression and unexpected dramas- you may hand out the papers and start working on it, by highlighting the terrible aspects of his life.
Without wasting a minute you can play a video in which he introduces himself and gives some characteristics about what he is doing and how music and hip hop helped in his life and also the way music is a tool for Peace.
By this time, many words like Unicef, Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela and many more have appeared (remember the philosophical entry? Here you are!).
You may also listen to him singing hip hop telling his own story in the lyrics. So you can take advantage of the music too. There are complete videos in youtube,com, like the 60th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, “The prize of silence” in which you can find many artists including Emmanuel Jal , singing in different languages to honor the declaration, or the “ Lose to Win” Campaign that is being done by our guy today in order to have funds to create schools in Sudan.
By the way, do you really know the way Sudanese live nowadays? And if you don’t and students don’t either, why don’t we try something different?
If you want to expand the topic you can also enlarge the research by asking students to find famous people helping in humanitarian organizations. You will see that not only Emmanuel Jal, but also Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bono, George Clooney, Bill Gates, Patricia Sosa, Leon Gieco and many more are doing well for terrible causes.
Ok, I do not want to be a pain, but I bet you that if you take some time to investigate you will have a great topic to fascinate your students. And If you come across a traditional teacher who says: “I want you to teach Past tense”, don’t panic, I assure that you can teach any grammar point you need, past, present, conditionals, description, likes and dislikes, listening and writing; there is a huge variety of things behind this topic and the only thing that matters is that you will see your students flashing about the unknown and willing to know more.
Just think about it, this guy may have been anyone of them, just face the students into the reality mirror; they can find lots of values behind it.
I give you some links, just try, you won’t regret about it.
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1170901
http://www.linktv.org/silence
http://dotsub.com/view/23afd0b6-1aac-4e18-866b-f153e0b88918/viewTranscript/eng ( just in case you do not understand his 18-minute-speech)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_dHdNOgSA
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90283154
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4950821
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4950821 (very good)
http://www.emmanueljal.org/ Good video in Nairobi, just speaking in the streets with friends.
Meet Emmanuel Jal...
