Biography english

Gleam Joel (artist name), Joel Ogolla, 25, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and he grew up in a middle-class-family.

Because of his curiosity, he often hanged out with other kids from the ghettos of Nairobi, where he started to rap. At this time, he performed in discos and clubs, where he also made his experience with drugs and alcohol.

After he became a Christian, he decided to change his life, to make the rhymes in his music to something positive and to give hope for humanity.

Gleam Joel moved to Switzerland and in 2001, he spent one year at the Art Ministry School in Walzenhausen/Appenzell in Switzerland and graduated with a degree. This school is based on music, theatre and theology. Some of the lesson where, stage performance, public address, song writing, ethics of a musician apart from these he also learned a lot about how to effectively work with young people.

In the beginning of 2002, Gleam Joel started to work as a musicleader/youthworker in Zurich at NETZ 4/Methodist Church www.emkz4.ch. Combine with his work at this church, he started his rap school and he often gave courses for young immigrants and young Swiss people, many of them with a very difficult background. He organized rap concerts and events, which were well visited by many young people. From these events the idea to start once a month a rap youth service called extra life in the Methodist church in Zurich was realized. After three year of extra life the state church (Reformiet landes kirche), started a city project born from the same vision as that of extra life. Gleam Joel became the identification figure for the street church. By him being on the papers as a dark skinned rapper on the stage of street church, he helped to enhance the image of a multicultural church in the eyes of the public. He was given the responsible for the training of the rappers on the street church stage. From then on www.streetchurch.ch was born. The street church enjoys an attendance of 600 young people from every culture.

Besides these he was also working on his musical career and he did a lot of concerts in Switzerland. In 2002, he released two single CDs Second Chance and God speaks, which sold well on the Christian market both in Switzerland and in the neighboring countries.

In the spring of 2004, he began to work with the chart producer Sergio Fertitta (www.sergiofertitta.com) on his first album Deeper. He released the album at the end of the same year. The response to this album has been, and is, so great. In the album he has a song called feel the pain. In this song, Gleam Joel talks about the loss of his father. Sergio, who is also featured in the song, lost his mother in the same period of time. This song is not only a lamentation song but a song which offer hope. It is dedicated to everybody who lost some one they love and especially after the death of many in the tsusani catastrophe. A video clip was produced for this song Feel the pain, this clip has been often shown in VIVA Swiss the music channel of Switzerland and many other TV channels both in Switzerland and Germany: Gleam Joel wrote all the lyrics in these CD productions

During the year 2004, he performed as pre-artist for Black Eyed Peas and D12 (Group of Eminem) and he made an interview with Kanye West .  

Last October, he rapped for the project Vision for Switzerland, in attendance was the President of the Swiss Confederation, Mr. Joseph Deiss and many other politicians, ambassadors and leaders of different organizations. The main topic of the evening was Immigration.

Gleam Joel featured in DJ El Dragon and Jomar and got into the top 50s Swiss Charts with the title Pure. The music video has been shown in different music TVs in Switzerland (VIVA and MTV). At the End of 2004, he featured in Murmi dance a single CD produced by Universal. Murmi (www.murmi.ch) is a very popular TV program for children. Gleam Joel had his first experience with a TV-advertisement for the famous Swiss cheese Appenzeller, which was shown in the music channel VIVA Swiss, VIVA Germany, and MTV Germany. Many articles have been written about Gleam Joel in the news papers and magazines.

At the moment he is writing a Rapmusical. It is about the mutual respect and peaceful living together between Muslims and Christians. These musical will be presented both in Switzerland and Germany, presented by young students who Gleam Joel will train.

Many projects are in plan for the year 2005. One of these projects are starting of his own Gleam Talent School, Deeper promotional tour in Switzerland and abroad. In April he will be in Norway and end of July in Rock on the Rock festival in Italy, plans are also been made for a couple of concerts in Germany.