Angeliqu Kidjo Interview

An interview with Angelique Kidjo by Seth Jordan (March 2003)

Having recently completed an Australian tour with rave reviews from her Blues & Roots Festival and major city performances, Angelique Kidjo performed new music from her latest CD Black Ivory Soul (SONY Music). Seth Jordan managed to pin down the busy Benin songstress for an interview on his programme Radio Babylon late last year about this latest release.

SJ: On the line from LA I'm talkin' to Angelique Kidjo who just stepped off the plane from Japan. How you doin' Angelique? Bonjour to you.

AK: I'm doin' good!

SJ: You've been everywhere over the last little while. How do you keep the adrenaline pumping?

AK: The music just does that. Music is a very,very powerful drug and I am addicted to it ... since I was a child!

SJ: Great stuff. Now you're out there promoting Black Ivory Soul. Brazil was your inspiration for this album. When you grew up in Benin I believe you had some Portuguese speaking kids right there in your own town?

AK: Yeah, the Portuguese were the first group to colonise Benin and to start the slavery trading before the French. There were huge fights between the French and Portuguese and the French won... the Portuguese burned everything that they built up...the headquarters. And the French took over.

But the Portuguese people were still there because some of them were the ones leading the country. They settled down up there and married Beninese women so there was a huge community of mixed groups between Portuguese and Benin people and my mother is one of those because she has Portuguese blood.

Her maiden name is Fernando so I have always grown up among the people they call in Benin "aguta", which is people who are mixed or creole and the music of that community is called "bunina", which is really close to samba. So I have always taken that for granted before I even read about it.

I believe that music is the best way to get to communicate and to get down together and accept each other's differences and to know each other and to avoid the same things to happen in the future.

SJ: So when you moved to France originally and heard some Brazilian music being played in Paris you could relate to it right away because you had the background from your childhood.

AK: Oh yeah, when I was in the jazz school (in Paris) I used to say that and the people would look at me like "yeah, right what do you know about it?" I'm like, "you guys don't know anything about my country so why don't you let me tell you some stories? That music is part of my tradition and background."

SJ: Now when it came to writing the songs for this Black Ivory Soul CD you bought in some fairly heavyweight Brazilian songwriters didn't you?

AK: They were interested in the project because it meant a lot to them. You have to realise that half the culture is from Africa, especially in Bahia. The music in Bahia has a lot to do with music that comes from Africa in general and they are always about the drumming in Africa...especially when we're talking about Carlinhos' drums. He knows rhythms, a lot of rhythms that come from my country and their names also.

So, beyond the writing we have a lot of interesting discussions. He's a typical example of the mutation of those drums that come from Benin. He is a mix between black and Indian and the rhythms that come from Brazil that you listen to today has that Latin American Indian influence on it. The sharpness that comes from Africa meets the nonchalance of the rhythms of the Indians.

SJ: Although you've taken the influence of Brazil in this, you're not singing in Portuguese are you? You've chosen your own languages... the languages that you use most often - the English, the French, the Fon and Yoruba.

AK: Because people in Brazil sing in my language also. They sing songs in Yoruba. When you go to a Candomble ceremony all you hear are songs that I know.

SJ: I see you've teamed up with my favourite producer in New York these days, Mr Bill Laswell to do this. His production on this album is actually surprising..he's pretty unobtrusive in this. He wasn't radically changing your sound was he?

AK: No it was a collaboration. It was a co-production I should say. Because he came on this project after the first producer resigned from it. It was not an easy thing for him to come on board to make it happen. He needed my input more than anything else. He let me do what I wanted to do which was a good studio experience for me also because I hate the studio most of the time.

SJ: Now you're quoted in here as talking about wanting to inspire people to think about the concepts of poverty, freedom and family on a deeper level. These themes have continued throughout your career, haven't they, in trying to alert people to these concepts?

AK: Yeah, it has to be. Look around you and tell me that what I'm talking about is still not accurate. And I won't stop talking about it til we realise that we really do have to do something. A few people do a lot of things and keep me going on doing what I have to do. There are many people who have devoted their lives to enlightening the human race so those people give me a lot of strength and I don't feel alone in the struggle but gee...it's hard.

It's hard to stop and think that human beings aren't all about money. It's about our survival...it's about the survival of the human race. The worse thing on the planet...how we destroy as much as we do...people are always in war or in killing. I don't know why we human beings are always attracted to the negative part of what we have in ourselves? Why don't we just rise up the good part of us? It's just endless. Every time you put the TV on you feel like crap and you wonder...what are we here for?

SJ: A lot of people, individually, totally agree with the concept but in reality when we look around it doesn't seem to be the dominant attitude does it?

AK: If a lot of people say that... we are the ones that can make the difference. We are the ones voting for the politicians. Do you think there is going to be any democracy if we don't vote anymore? If we vote and pay taxes then we have a lot to say. We have a lot to do. It's in our hand to do the change.