- By DJ Edu & Catherine Fellows
- This is Africa, BBC World Service
image source, Fabrice Mabillot
Music icon Angélique Kidjo celebrates 40 years in music this year – marking the occasion with a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
When we caught up with the Beninois superstar, who has released 16 albums and won five Grammy Awards, she told us that since childhood she was driven by curiosity.
“My nickname was ‘When, Why, How?’. I want to figure things out, figure out my place in this world… And I hate being bored,” she said.
“If I’m bored, God help you, don’t be with me! I’m hungry and bored, you don’t want to talk to me at that point.”
This Friday, the 63-year-old will be joined by other world-renowned artists including Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, Grammy-nominated Franco-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Malouf, Stonebwoy, one of Ghana’s most popular dance stars, and Brit. Laura Mbula.
Significantly, Kidjo also chose to be accompanied by the first majority black and ethnically diverse Chineke in Europe! Orchestra.
Seemingly everything Kidjo does is driven by her passions, one of which is tirelessly correcting negative perceptions of Africa and challenging Eurocentrism.
“The classical world is not really a different place and I chose to play with Chineke! because we can do whatever we want.
“It’s proof that if we put ourselves in the ‘nothing is impossible’ mindset, we do. These kids who play in the orchestra, they’re second-, third- and first-generation immigrants from Africa, and they’re outstanding.”
Apart from her amazing energy as a performer, one of the most remarkable things about Kidjo is her appetite to engage with music and musicians of different genres and from other parts of the world.
Talking Heads and Cuban Salsa singer Celia Cruz have both guested with Angélique Kidjo and recorded a wonderful version of Ravel’s Boléro in 2007.
He said that when he first heard Boléro in Paris and commented on how African it sounded, he completely scoffed.
“I’m fine, go ahead and talk – I’ll prove it to you.”
She went on to record a cover doing most of the instrumentals with her own voice.
“I am the only artist today who has been authorized by the Ravel family to do this,” he says with obvious pride.
Kidjo’s latest collaboration is with cellist Yo-Yo Ma – and they’ll be playing a version of JS Bach’s Sarabande in Paris in December.
“Diversity for me is never a threat, I see it as an opportunity and a challenge.”
image source, Getty Images
Angélique Kidjo’s father encouraged her to write a ‘peace anthem’ instead of lyrics about hate and violence
The singer takes every opportunity to use her voice and her platform to campaign for the betterment of humanity as she sees it.
She is a goodwill ambassador for Unicef and Oxfam and has her own charity, Batonga, dedicated to supporting the education of young girls in Africa.
He regularly attends the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, hoping to influence world leaders.
Kidjo recalls her surprise when the UN asked her to perform a concert in 2012 to entice African leaders to sign a resolution banning female genital mutilation (FGM).
Kidjo agreed and, as the organizers had hoped, the leaders showed up in their numbers. She used the example of her father to appeal to them:
“I told them, ‘I grew up in Benin, my father was African. He fought for us, his children, his boys and girls, for our right to choose to be respected, and any traditional ceremony out there that might harm us stood against him, he said, “That’s my job, I’m the your father.”
“And I said to them, ‘If my father was able to speak out against his society, none of you sitting here can tell me that you don’t have the power to stop the stupid, painful [practice] that you impose on your girls. Why?’
“In December of that year, Nigeria was the first country to sign this resolution in politics and all countries signed it.”
She also credits her father for believing so strongly in the value of his children’s education that he was willing to go into debt to pay for their education — and the schooling of friends and neighbors’ children.
The home in which Kidjo grew up was a haven for free speech. Her father refused to have a bell because he wanted anyone to feel free to enter at any time.
But Kidjo’s idyllic childhood was interrupted by a coup in 1972: “The moment the communist regime arrived in Benin I realized that the freedom we enjoy can be taken away in a second.”
Kidjo says this realization made her who she is, as did learning about the transatlantic slave trade and apartheid in South Africa: “It was like a huge wake-up call.
“In the middle of the communist dictatorship in my country it was too much for me to stomach, and I wrote a very violent song. My father said, “I understand how you feel, but we’re not going to write about hate in this. We never raised you to think that hate and violence is a good thing.”
“So I wrote the song again – I was 15 – and it became a peace anthem.”
The song became Azan Nan Kpe, released in 1994 on Kidjo’s breakthrough album Aye, which also contains Agolo, perhaps her biggest hit of all, written when she was six months pregnant.
“Agolo in my language means ‘Please pay attention, I have something to tell you.’
The song was inspired by Kidjo’s shock at the amount of trash she and her husband produced while living in rural France.
It reminded her of how her grandmother, who was a herbal healer, had taught her to appreciate nature, and she realized that she needed to do better to protect the planet for the next generation.
“When I wrote that song, that’s when my commitment to climate change began.”
When asked what she considers the greatest achievement of her 40-year career, it is not one of her many awards or one of her many great songs that Kidjo chooses: “The most important achievement for me is giving birth to my daughter, that is beyond any Grammy.
“I mean having a career and a family, being married for 36 years.”
But she admits it was a challenge with all the travel and she was pressured by her relatives – her mother, mother-in-law and sister – to let them raise her daughter.
“I said, ‘Hell no.’ I never left my daughter behind. By the time he was three…he had already been to at least 45 different countries.”
One of Angélique Kidjo’s recent Afrobeats collaborations was with Nigerian star Yemi Alade.
So what about the new generation of African musicians? Does Kidjo feel like a parent to them? Does she feel they are following in her footsteps and using their influence for good?
“I’m so happy that technology has arrived at the right time to unleash the potential of the new generation of musicians. Throughout my career it has always been a struggle for me.
“People try to pigeonhole us and always expect the worst from us,” he says of how African musicians are treated.
“I’ve faced this throughout my career and I’ve told people all the time, ‘For all these 40 years and more you’ve been underestimating my continent, so you’re not prepared for the change that’s coming. It’s going to come like a tsunami and it begins with music.”
Young African artists have an opportunity to bring about positive change for a continent facing many challenges, he says.
So is he mentoring any of these younger artists?
“We’re talking,” he says. “Like in this concert. Apart from the music, I always tell them, ‘You have a responsibility. It’s not all about you. They were never about me, ever, ever.
“So if I’m able to do it, you certainly can.”