»Kidjo’s Kitchen Talk«: Angélique Kidjo
in conversation with Musa Okwonga at M.Bassy

The acclaimed Grammy-winning Beninese French singer-songwriter and choreograph Angélique Kidjo (b. 1960) was welcomed at M.Bassy on March 7, 2023, for a music and culinary conversation about her music career, African life in the diaspora, culture, racism and gender with the British-Ugandan writer, journalist and musician Musa Okwonga. The evening was musically rounded off by the Hamburg musician Saliou Cissokho who learned the tradition of playing the kora from his father in Senegal. The event was part of the »Reflektor« Festival at the Elbphilharmonie from March 9 until 12, 2023 curated by Angélique Kidjo.

Excerpt of the talk:

MUSA: Angélique, this evening is a celebration of music. When did you first discover your love for music?

ANGÉLIQUE: Well, my father said that I started singing before speaking, because every time they asked me a question I was singing. As a baby I was singing for my supper. When I then started talking, I was unstoppable, that's what it is. And I have an auntie that taught me many, many songs before she passed away. She would come and put her mouth on the belly of my pregnant mom, sing and say: “This one's going to be a girl!” So here I am, just singing!

MUSA: Your live performance is one of the best out there. I've seen the gigs you play, the venues, the big events. What is the most intimidating venue or audience you played in front of?

ANGÉLIQUE: Well, when I'm singing in front of my family. Because everybody's a critic. You know, when you start singing in a family where your father plays the banjo, your mom plays the clarinet and does theater, your brother has a music band… My father always used to film my concerts and then he would sit down with me with notes he made. That’s where I started really understanding that the people that love you will tell you the truth. And this can be painful. But the only way you can excel in anything you do, is to trust the people that love you and tell you things. But people that don't love you and that you don't know, let them talk.

MUSA: Going back to the roots of things, talking about inspiration, about culture and where you're from, how much does your home country Benin influences and inspires the work you produce?

ANGÉLIQUE: It's everything. I'll give you a couple of examples. When I was nine years old, I heard about slavery. I didn't know what it was. My grandma started talking to me about slavery, and I told myself, she's cuckoo. Because my mom and dad, the household I grew up in, there's no day that pass by when my mom and dad tell me, they tell all of us, a human being is not a matter of color. “You can't come back here and tell me you failed because you're black, because that's not an argument we're going to accept here. Talent has no gender, has no color, just go for it.” Then, I turned 15 and for the first time, I was mad at my parents because suddenly I realized that my color, my skin color, can be a liability if I get to the wrong place at the wrong moment. I said to myself at that time, that if I'm not the human rights lawyer that I want to be, or the surgeon that I want to be, and if I'm a musician, I will use my music to create bridges between cultures. You must understand that once you hurt one person, you hurt yourself, and the wound that you create is a collective wound that we all may rotate around if we don't talk about it in a good way. Thus, I started a trilogy of albums in 1997. And the whole point was to do the journey back towards the Black diaspora. The first part was in America. And I went to America, and I worked with Cassandra Whitsun, Bronfond Marsalis, many other African Americans, and white Americans too. Then the second part took me to Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. And I arrived there, and they invited me to the Candombé ceremony – the ceremony of the Orishas. As I arrived, people were singing in Portuguese. I was speaking Yoruba and I was thinking: “I know this song, but I don’t know the language!” That's what memory does. Slavery was all about dehumanizing us and removing our culture from us. And you see the resilience of people that have already formed their new identity. After that, I went to the Caribbean, to Cuba. So, in the journey of doing this free album, what did I realize? There's not one music on this planet that doesn't have African rhythm in it. Call it classical music. It's in there. (Johann Sebastian) Bach’s »Sarabande« is based on the death of the slaves of Panama. The rhythm comes from Africa. Because we are all, all of us here, we are all Africans. Africa is the cradle of humanity.

We cannot fix the issue of women’s rights if men don’t start pulling their pants up and being courageous. Be there. Fight with us for our rights

MUSA: You’ve worked with all these incredible artists and seen so many — but there are always those artists (people) that may not be on the headlines, but are anyway influential, right?

ANGÉLIQUE: There are many – especially in the women world because the music world is so male–dominated. There’s not one field on this planet that is not male dominated. The only field that we dominate is being pregnant – because men can’t be pregnant. Each one of us comes with a purpose. Each one of us is unique. And thank God we don’t all do the same thing – we are complementary. No one person’s life is meaningless. The ones that are not “up there” - on the stage -, I anyway look up to. We don’t tell our story enough because we are afraid sometimes of the label others can put on us.

MUSA: What honors have you received that mean the most to you?

ANGÉLIQUE: Well, I will say that the award that is most important for me is the public. People from my continent. The support never ends. Never ends. It’s still there. And everywhere I walk, I walk with my continent on my shoulder. And sometimes I feel lonely — it’s a lonely place to be. Because there are people still today that think that Africa is a country. I think awards are responsibilities. The more you get, the more the load of work goes up. You always have to live up to that challenge. But at the same time, awards mean that the work I am doing — in music, in my advocacy for women’s rights, children’s rights, human rights — is acknowledged.

MUSA: When I told some friends last week I was coming to this interview — a group of African women who work on behalf of refugees, migrant rights called International Women’s Space — they were so excited to hear I was going to meet you. They look at you as someone who really is doing work that connects with them — really strongly. And tomorrow, as many of us know, is International Women’s Day. And I am wondering: looking at the situation globally, how do you see the biggest challenges for women and girls in relation to the work you’re doing?

ANGÉLIQUE: Well, the pandemic has brought back a lot of achievements. And we have to rebuild. During the pandemic, a lot of women suffered — not only in Africa, but here too. The issue of women, as my mom put it to me, started with Adam and Eve. She said: “Everything we heard is the account of Adam. We never heard the part of Eve.” She surely gave him an apple — but he has a brain to think. Did he take the apple and purposely eat the apple and then blame the woman for it? That’s the question we have to find. Everything that goes wrong — men blame us. But there’s no society, there’s no anything, without women being at the center of it. We all know it. So how do we move forward and see the importance of women’s rights as human rights? As long as the justice systems around the world keep protecting men that abuse women and send them back to do more harm, we have a problem. There are no women without men, and there’s no men without women. This is a reality we live in every day. So how come we are stuck in the limbo or in a no man’s land where there’s no way we can come together? We cannot fix the issue of women’s rights if men don’t start pulling their pants up and being courageous. Be there. Fight with us for our rights. Be there for every young girl born today — for them to have a different future than we had. Anyone that’s a pedophile has to get a maximum sentence. Anyone that’s a rapist has to get a maximum sentence. Women are not objects. We are the mothers of humanity. We give birth to boys, girls, twins, and more. There is no man on this earth who didn’t come from a woman. So, if men don’t start respecting the place where they come from — they are doomed. And so are we.

MUSA: While we’re on the subject of these concerns that are so close to your heart — we can’t continue the conversation without talking about your concern for another parent: Mother Earth and the environment. That’s something you’ve talked about consistently from the very beginning — culminating in a brilliant, Grammy–winning album. That concern for nature was so far ahead of the mainstream conversation. Where did your desire to protect nature came from?

ANGÉLIQUE: It comes from my mother’s mother. She was a healer. Anything that happened to me when I was a kid — headache, stomachache, anything — she’d put some plant in something, boil it up, give it to me, I’d drink it — boom, gone. I remember my memories with my grandmother. She would always wake me up around 5 o’clock in the morning, before the sun rises, take me to the bushes to collect plants. She’d talk to the plants: “That plant is poison in every way, shape or form. Don’t use it. It protects the land and nourishes the land but for a human being it’s poison. It kills you.” She would plant this, she would clean that. I’m like: “I want to sleep! I’m six years old, man. I don’t care about this plant business! I want to sleep!” She always told me: “We are part of Earth. Every atom in our body comes from the Earth. You cannot call yourself a human being if you don’t respect what is feeding you and has been feeding you for centuries.” When you travel as much as I do you see a lot of climate change. Africa as a continent is going to pay the biggest price for this. And we’re not the ones polluting the Earth. We are nothing without Earth. And I hope it’s not going to be too late — because when Mother Earth comes sweeping, nobody stands.

MUSA: Well, we’ve got one last question. You said in an interview: “Live every day like it’s your last.” That’s going to be our last one. So, I suppose my question is: What collection of songs would you write if you knew you could not write any more songs?

ANGÉLIQUE: I don’t know because I don’t have any power over my inspiration. What I mean by that is: When you wake up in the morning and you can stand on both your feet — it’s already a miracle. My mom taught me something: When you wake up in the morning, greet your body – because your body is carrying you. We take it for granted all the time. And when our body starts leaving us, we start complaining. Don’t overuse your body. Be mindful of what you have. Every day is a new beginning. Every breath you take is a miracle. Five minutes after you die, none of us knows what’s going to happen. None of us. Let’s be humble.

MUSA: Wise words. There are no suitable words that can follow that — only music!

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