Our conversation with Angélique Kidjo takes place a week after she was honoured as the first Black African artist inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It’s a momentous achievement for Africa, and a ‘pinch me’ moment for the legendary artist who has shifted global perceptions of what African music can be.
Fluid and receptive to different forms, yet centred on the soulfulness of her identity and heritage, Angélique’s music transcends the limitations of the “world music” categorisation that has attempted to box it in. She approaches music-making and collaboration with a freedom, curiosity, and openness that reveal the expansive magic and gifts of music. The precision and power of her voice command the heart and spirit.
“Music is a tool that has been given to me to use to build bridges. To awaken people’s conscience that we are each other’s keepers. And that our shared human story is greater and bigger than us. We owe ourselves to tell that story. Music is my way of writing and inviting people to write their own history next to mine,” Angélique says.
A Foundation of Freedom
The bitter part of the sweet celebration of her latest achievement is that her parents are not there to witness it. “I felt the void of my parents not being there. I get emotional because they put a lot of work and effort into my career from the beginning,” she says, a sadness flickering beneath the infectious effervescence of our Zoom meeting.
Angélique’s parents laid a fertile foundation of education and freedom of self-expression in their household. Her father was a musician, while her mother, Yvonne, of Yoruba ancestry, was a choreographer and theatre director. By the age of six, Angélique – born in Ouidah, Benin (then French Dahomey), and raised in Cotonou – was proficient in the artistic and traditional forms of dance, music, and performance.
At 11, she invented the word Batonga, encouraged by her father after being bullied at school. The word, meaning “Get off my back. I can be whoever I decide to be and do what I want to do”, became the affirming ethos of her artistry and activism. It is the title of a song on her 1991 album, Logozo, and the name of her foundation, which empowers vulnerable girls and young women in Africa.
The Spiritual Power of African Music
Brought up on Beninese and Yoruba traditional music and influenced by idols such as Miriam Makeba and other musicians of the continent and the diaspora, Angélique is a fierce protector of the spirituality and heritage of African music, putting both to political effect. The themes and visual aesthetics of songs such as Agolo and Wombo Lombo echo this.
Drawing parallels between the political voices of Miriam Makeba and Angélique Kidjo, University of Cape Town research fellow at the Institute for Humanities in Africa, Sanya Osha, writes: “ …Rather than directly targeting established political institutions such as the United Nations to effect social change, as Makeba did, Kidjo aims for a revolution of the mind and spirit.”
From Grief to Hope
The way the five-time Grammy Award winner melds her musicality with pop, funk, jazz, gospel, classical, rock, Afrobeats, and other genres is also a political signature. This continues in her latest album, Hope!!, whose two exclamation marks represent a high frequency of emphasised optimism. Created to mourn and honour her mother, the album turns grief into an affirmation of joy, love, pride, and promise. It features collaborations with Pharrell, Nile Rodgers, Soweto Gospel Choir, Dadju, Davido, P J Morton, and others.
“When I started this album, I was in mourning. I didn’t plan any collaboration. It started with the song ‘Sunlight to My Soul’, written for me by Diane Warren. I felt it could not exist without the Soweto Gospel Choir. They remind me of the power of song and sound that influenced me. I learnt how to harmonise listening to Ipi Ntombi and Miriam Makeba,” says Angélique.
“The writing process was prompted by a friend who encouraged me to reckon with the notion that I am now an orphan and dared me to come up with words that encapsulated the values my parents instilled in me. Some of them included kindness and hope. My mother used to tell me, ‘You cannot let people define who you are. You have to do that for yourself’. I think she guided the making of this album. Songs such as Superwoman and Malaika are dedications and promises to her.”
Angélique is headlining the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz in September. Her inclusion is a reminder of her advocacy for the authority of African music. In 1983, she fled Benin with her father’s help, escaping pressure from the regime to write songs praising the revolution. She went to Paris to study jazz.
“What we don’t understand about jazz is that it is a form of traditional music from Africa with different notes. Jazz is music of improvisation, and we improvise all the time. It is music of our ancestors. We need to start to reckon with the heritage we give to this world. It is on us to invite people to see the spirituality of Africa,” Angélique says.
The Standard Bank Joy of Jazz takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre on 25 and 26 September.
