Angelique Kidjo: Africa’s Premier Diva

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. According to Time magazine, singer an Joli Quijo is Africa's premiere diva. In addition to racking up prestigious accolades throughout her forty year career, Angelique has always leveraged her success to protect and educate young girls living in sub Saharan Africa. An Jolie Kuijo started out singing traditional music as a teenager in her native Benin, West Africa. In nineteen eighty three, she escapes the conflict riddled Benin for Paris, where she studied music and eventually married a French music producer. Angelique became one of Paris's most popular live performers, and in nineteen ninety one she signed her first record deal with Island Records. Angelika since released sixteen alums and won four World Music Grammys. Her latest album, Mother Nature, was released in June and features young African musicians like Sampa the Great and Burna Boy. On today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks to Angeli Quijo about the nature of African rhythm and why I can confuse Western musicians. She also explains how she lets her songs dictate what language her lyrics should be and how she managed to escape her home country despite being a recognizable national pop star. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondtin. Here's Bruce Headlam with Angeli Quijo. It is so nice to have you here. Do I need my headphone? No, I don't think so. You don't like headphones. I hate studios. I only like stage. You don't like studios. I mean I come from a culture where you want to play, just get drums out, and you have phoney people coming around. I start on stage when I was six years old. I was twenty when I first step step be food in the studio and I hated it. I was doing my first album and I have to record from ten am in the morning to eight pm doing all the songs. The producer was not there. I was just left alone with the sound engineer doing the backing and everything. Getting there and I get out there's no son. I'm like, what kind of world is that? I'm not a cave woman. I want to be out. I don't want to be singing to the wall. I want to sing to somebody that You've done fifteen albums at least since then. Yeah, do you try and record in different kinds of studios or you. Oh yeah, I tried recording spaces that aren't studio like the thing is. In two thousand, I decided it was enough of going to the studio and prepare editing. I want everybody in the same room. So when I have the musician with me, it is great and I like that now. When I did my album Ginging with Tony Viscountry, He's like, I haven't done this kind of album since the sixties. When you opened my voice, the drums and everybody, I said, that's if you want me to perform the album, you better get me the studio where I feel like all in my living room or out or something. I just can't do it like that. So we went to Electric Lady and he brought in lamp. It was like a souk in Marrakesh and the musician with all their people, benin his percussion players, Pugibell on drums and Fiddler on keyboard. It was like one of my best memorial studio. We had lots of fun to school. The album finished, I'm like, is it over? Yeah, it's over. Two weeks. I didn't see he passed by, so I loved it. And you know he'd produced David Bowie, he'd produced everybody. Yeah, never done it like that. He never just had all the musicians, he said, I didn't do it since the sixties. Yes, And I said, well, are you gonna follow me in that one? Because I was bringing the traditional percussional player from being in and we have to rehearse before in his life. Are you sure we need all this? He was a little nervous. He looked completely worried, as aid, Tony, Chill, it's gonna be all right, and he go okay, and he's not the calabash. I was explaining to him that we have a rhythm that we play with calabash in the water in the buckets, and when he heard the sound, this smight just lead up his face. I'm like, you're seeing possibilities and he goes, oh yeah. I said, where till we get to the studio, man, let them play the folded carbell for you. There's folded carver, I say, they have tons of different kind of carbell. So we're gonna make it easy for you. Just play the music and you do your arrangement, you do your producing. And that wasn't so you said there's a particular rhythm that's played on that cowbell. Can you explain what that rhythm is? The fact that the carbell is folded like a paper, so the rhythm goes both ways. And sometimes they put it on the head to played. Sometimes they put in the hand, but they can't keep their hand flat. They need the resonance. And it has distinctive sound, very clear, not too high. It has body and take getting and he has like I never heard a sound of carbe like this, But I'm like, hey that terms of them vers you have sainphonies of carbell in the village is where you have from the smallest one to the biggest one. It's huge and it's played on the ground and it's a wall of sound that you just get into the village. Stop playing, you go WHOA Okay? Why are there so many cowpels. Every village have their own rhythm. That's the complexity of my country, almost twelve million people. When you go from one village to the other, the rhythm is completely different, The drums are completely different. And there is a village in the southern part of Being where I come from, called a Jah, where from father to son they are taught how to make the drum. You pick the tree and in the back of tree and they do the drum you want for you. First of all, you said, you know, every town has their own rhythm, their own sense of music. What was and your town was got I grew up in the economic capital of Beling. What was your town's music? My town with music was a cosmopolitan music town, because that's where you have all the band, the Belines band, Polyrithmo or elrego Na Spedule, all of those guys. But the thing that is interesting for when it comes to rhythm is that you grow up in it. Everywhere you go there's rhythm. Not one person in Africa will tell you I don't know how to dance unless they don't want to dance, because they know how to put the time on. Our body was an instrument too. The men are a naked from the shoulder from the head to the waist, and they have buckets of water so they play. It depends, it depends if they want difference sown. They put the water on themselves and they play. Is an amazing rhythm is called a chown. And the way they just go and doing the singing at the same time, you just you mesme, can you just clap out? What that rhythm would be? Like the corbell is doing this to bo bo boom boo. All the bodies just play and then you go. And when it is that they start spitting is because somebody's dancing the word. One thing that is really interesting in the traditional music in my country, and I think pretty much everywhere in Africa you're playing, the rhythm you dancing is always in a circle or semi circle. So you have somebody start the song, the people start answering, the carbir comes in, and the drum comes in and the rhythm is set. Then when the dancer comes into circle, then the drums start looking at the foot of the dancers. The dancer that dictates if the rhythm is gonna be faster or slower. You tell a very funny story in your autobiography, and this is years later after he met your husband. You would be singing traditional songs and talking about rhythm and he just kept saying, just tell me where the downbeat is and you're like, yeah, it doesn't work that way. How did you guys ever figure that out? I mean, the thing is till he arrived and start digging deep in the traditional music. He had hard time because he's come from a cultural one two three four one two three four, you count the time, all right, And then finally he goes, actually is a cycle. It's always a cycle. It's going on around and around. That's what creates a trends. And it's a language also that you have to learn. Because he witnessed that. So the person that is playing the carbell, he wants to go to the restroom. Somebody picked up the carbell exactly where he stopped and it goes. He continued, we are fed with that, we're living that, it's in our breathing is everything because music is an essential part for being and he has to understand it. That's a different mindset from the Western world and us in Africa. It's all about the instinct. It's all about how we feel from the bottom of our feet all the way to the head. And my husband when I used to explain all that to him, that we are not a tradition of recording. And when we were traveling and recording rhythm, I said, one day you're gonna get the question. Is that now everybody's used to recording? I said, nope. So when the guy came. The guy was standing up looking at us like, these white people are crazy, man, what is all this thing? And we didn't have electricity most of the time. We plug the instruments on the car battery. It's crazy, right. So the guy came in and and tap the shoulder of my husband and said, what are you doing? What is the green? What is the red light? I saw sometimes you put in green, sometime it's red. And John said, when it's red, it's means to be a recording. And when he's green with listening, and he's stayed back and look at him, saying, why you want to record something that we can play for you endless see that you can listen to all the time. And I look at my husband. He looked at me. I said, I told you so, Yeah, you thought I was making it up. That's it for you. I mean. And people have to dress, they just they just cannot take the dress the drums start playing. They have to be ready. I mean, there's no question asked about it. Why you have to be clean and sharp dressed to play the drums. It is because you are giving something. You are talking to people fo the drums and the drums are inviting people to be part of something. It's the moment, because we believe deeply that every moment should be leave to the fullest because we don't know if we're gonna be here tomorrow. So every time we bring the drums out, whatever the circumstances, so I can't be baptism. Even when somebody passed away, we sing the person to the grave and we celebrate the memory, the good memory and the bad memory of the person, because it's like a part of us that is gone, but that partly we're gonna keep it. So we're gonna celebrate. And when my mom passed away in last June, she always used to tell us the day I die, and I want you to sing my Lika for me. I said, Mom, I'm gonna do that. She said, even if you're crying. I want that in my ears before you put me in a caffin. So I did, which was really hard for me to do. I didn't couldn't even finish the song. But she really summoned us and said, I don't want anybody to wear black, and I don't want you to be crying. I want you to play music all the time. Play me some fune some R and B, some hip hop, all kind of music that she dares to. People are looking at us, like, your mom just diing, you're having fun. You guys are crazy. Some people make comment saying that I lost my soul because I was dancing, and I'm like, that's what my mom wants. We liked it or not. As hard as it was for us her children, we didn't have the choice but to do what she asked us to do, even though we were all in pain or on tears and crying. We did because that's the person my mom is. She's very artistic. She loved theater, she loved music. She taught me how to sing, how to dress all my stage outfit. When I was a little girl, she would go to the extent of finding different fabric, telling me, well, you can't wear your everyday clothes. People wear them all the time. When you're on stage, not only you singing, you are performing, you have to see you in different gowns. We should say, your mom ran a theater. Yes, yes, she ran the largest theater in West Africa till today. And what was interesting in my upbringing is the fact that my parents the love of music, for art in general, and their passion also for sport were combined because they always said, whatever instrument you play, even with your voice, you anybody, your body needs to be in fit. You need to work out to be able to to have a healthy life. And me, I was born with asthma, so so I start running fifteen meters in athletic club in Benin and start swimming. People are telling my parents you're Chris. You're gonna kill your child and my mom dad said, no, she has to strengthen her length. I step by steps, she's gonna be able to have a normal life, not being crippled by asthma. My mom and dad also we bring us all kinds of music. If the music is this, someone on this planet, they find it and they bring it. Is it true your dad bought a bunch of instruments because he wanted your brothers to be like the Jackson five. My father managed to take a loan to buy the instruments and didn't tell anything to my mom, no to my brothers. My mom was pissed off. He said, how are you gonna pay for this? My dad said, don't worry about it. We'll find a way to play it. And while my older brother was a nasturale musician. He taught himself to play all the instruments he can play, keyboard, guitar, bass, drum, whatever you bring put in his hand, he would play. And my mom and dad loved me. Basically, my mom used to play when she was in high school in the band where she played the clarinet and sayings too. But the thing is, my father was that kind of person that believe that the world, as big as it is, he can bring part of it to us through music and culture in general, and always urge us to think beyond the door of the house, saying to us, when you get out of here, you're a citizen of this world, and I hope I've given you enough tool for you to live in this diverse world and challenging world we're living. So music was part of that too, because sometimes he would bring some stuff, weird music sometimes, But when he started bringing classical music, were life that what is this? Especially me? I said that music has no reason to us. I think it was Beethove, and I don't know which one he brought them, Like, man, Dad, we can't dance on that now. How did you discover that you had this powerhouse? Voice, because you know, one of your heroes growing up was Aretha Franklin. You had the amazing Grace record. You know, she at the church. That's where she found out she could sing like that. How did you find out that you had this booming voice? My father used to say to me when people asked that question, how come your daughter is singing? My first? I can't tell you what I remember when she starts speaking, she would be talking to me singing. I started singing before I started making phrases, just because I was surrounded by song. There's always ceremony somewhere, and I'll be sitting on the lap of my mom and I'll be clapping my hand. When I was two or three years or not understanding anything about anything, and I developed that musical memory, not knowing that I was gonna be a singer, because till I make the leap to be a singer, I wanted to be a human right lawyer or a surgeon. Your country was under a communist dictatorship, and in a strange way, it almost helped you in music at first, because they declared everybody had to have like a cooperative they called it at school, and so you formed the band that was called the Sphinx. So we start playing the thing that was not clear about that we were making. The head of the high school allowed us to do that because it was imposed by the government. But what does the money go? Because they sell tickets and we were not paid, why does the money go? So we don't know what the money goes. But we figured out that the head of the school was taking the money to build his house nice and I'm like, okay, enough for this nonsense. I mean, two years before I finished high school, I'm saying, I said to myself enough, I'll do my own stuff and I'll be paid. I don't want to do this anymore. We'll be right back with more from Angelique Kijo after a quick break. We're back with Angelique Kijo. When you were listening to Western albums when you were a kid, because you always had music in the house. You mentioned James Brown, you really liked Curtis Mayfield. I think did it sound stilted? You did it sound like one, two, three four? Did it sound western? Or did you hear your music in it? Africa is the James Brown is the first one that put the beat first beat on there. He changed a lot of things. And for me, as an African young little girl, when I first heard James Brown like, it's not only the rhythm that attract me to him, is how he plays his voice. He made the English language rhythmic for me. Till then it was another language like others, and I was not paying that much attention to it in school when I was learning it. And from the moment I started hearing James Brown sing in English, I'm like God, singly like this guy because I love rhythm. You speak and sing and I think at least five languages. Yes, Indeed, is English a harder language to be rhythmic in? No, it's easy. It's easier than in French. French is more, much more complicated. The difference is how can I say this? The English language you can say things with one word, and the same thing you say in one word in English you need two or three. In France it's more descriptive the French language, and the sounds are not the same. The vowel or constoms are not pronounced the same. How does that compare? Then, your father was so you spoke that language, yeah, and your mother was Yoruba and phon both. It's absolutely not the same sound at all. How do they compare in terms of singing in those languages, it's different. For example, if you want to say good morning in Yoruba and in font it's already it's Ecaro, it's already singing. And Phon is the anguage of the Amazon, so it is a language of power. Every time I go back to being in and I start speaking, people turn around and look at me, like, you've left this country for how long? And you speak this long better than us? I said, because I live in the complexity of this language. Time I'm trying to write a song, as you're writing, does it naturally occur to you? It fits this language? You know? Sometimes I'm inspired to sing something in all the language. I mean, when I was prepared the album Modern Nature versus song on my demo that didn't make it to the album, we were composing it and I was writing it. I said to me, it comes like had to be Portuguese. No other language was fitting into this. So I wrote my stuff and I put in Google Translation and start singing Portuguese. And I call my friend and say, is this right? This is what I'm trying to say. So she corrected it and it fits perfectly, So I just follow what comes with the song. I don't know what it's going to be. I don't have any control on my inspiration. And that's something that I realize and I learn hardly. When I'm in spiled to do something that I will record it and I'll put it aside and I try to make something beautifully fitted to it. It doesn't work. And when it hits me that less is more, that's when I realized that the thing that comes first, the thing that burst out of you, you gotta keep that. You gotta keep it into that integrity of the thing, otherwise it doesn't sound right. When did you learn that? Lesson? Oh, I was writing music since I was eleven years old. I read Verse and I'm like, something not working. I'm trying too hard. It's not what I wanted to say at the beginning. Then I'll go back and say, let me try what I say. And when I when I close to it, then I find my lyrics and I find my melody in my rhythm too, because the rhythm is there in the world. The rhythms are there. Everything comes if you listen carefully to your furation. Everything is already lay out for you and all the rest. It's just ornament. When you were growing up, you were teased for singing? Was it? It was mainly men who sang and boys, men and girls. I mean what was hard was when I arrived in high school because I when I was when I was in primary school, it was girls because of jealousy because I was singing. I will tell them, well, last night when I was out singing in the club, this disc happened. They look at me, you lie, you no way you can get I'm okay. So I stopped talking about my concert because they were annoyed and they didn't like it at all. And I have many friends either. And when I arrived my first year in high school was her on nerve. The first day I arrived, I saw a couple of guys at the door seeing nonsense, insulting people. I'm like, okay, funny whatever, and they will say, you don't be along here, you already finished primary school. What the hell are you doing? You should get married and get out of our way. I'm like, really, don't dare? I mean, I grew up you seven brothers. The next step was to try to humiliate you so they will find a stick of wood, and I don't know how they do that. They put mirror on it and you're walking. They tried to look under your your dress and that I get mad. And I remember getting back, coming back from schooling, telling my dad, you say not to fight physical fight a couple of boys. I want to just crap the teeth of My father said, no, you aren't doing that. I didn't teach you violence. My father's aren't too smart. They think they're smarter than you because they've been into high school before you came in. I'll smother them, find something they can't understand, invent a world that means something for you that they don't know. I'm like, gee, that's hard. Oh I'm gonna do this. So I came up with the world batonga, which means care off my bag. I will do whatever I want to do and whoever I want to be. How did you come up with that word? I don't know. I woke up one day, was there in my mind? So I go ba tonga and the guys go, is she crazy? What kind of language is that? Oh? She crazy? This man is crazy. She wanted last in school. That's how they let me. That became a big song. For you, it's your foundation. Yeah, that stays with me because I realized that when you outsmart people in a good way, even if there's no conversation after that, you have escaped fight. We underestimate our ability to talk people out of nonsense. And from that moment on, for me, it was obvious that fight wore all those things our incapacity to come to understanding. Everybody want to win. It's not possible. What do I care about what people think about me. They a'n't paying my bill, They're not my family, they're not my friend. If you can say whatever you want to give them. I learned that because of school, you're pretty fearless about going in the countries in Africa. You know, you got it up in front of pretty hostile crowds and talked about in general mutilation of girls and all kinds of issues and slavery and sexual abuse. You don't seem to have any fear about talking about stuff on stage. Well, you know, fear is the beginning of the end of all our humanity. I, having wrote the song and this new album, said we are our own enemies. Fear work hand in hand with violence and hate. So unless we decide that we are all equal, free and equal, as the first article of the Human Right Declaration, and we are not doing it. There are problems in this world and lots of them are created by our complacency, our silence to accept that if it profits me, it doesn't profit other people are okare with it? So everything down we make your choice off. Saying being silent is more comfortable for me, you are putting over other people in danger. You're allowing people to abuse, to rape, to kill and to profit from it. Where if I live in fear, I won't be here today as a union step would be an ambassador. I've seen so many suffering for children. That's what makes me mad. Does that not the rage, but the lack of fear? Has that always carried over in your art as well? I've done You've done a lot of big projects all the time. Have you never said I'm a little worried about this, or I'm not sure I'm getting this right, or you know, you did a very ambitious set of albums which is really all about the spread of West African music through the world. We should mention for our listeners. You know where you come from. Its basically the cradle of so much Western music. It's kind of the vienna of pop music. You've never been afraid as an artist to put something out at the end of my day on this earth, I want to be able to die and said I've done my best, I've done my share. I don't want to die as thinking well I should have, because if you look like live like that, you become bitter, You become a person that you don't want to be. But that's helping other people. Are you as confident You've written so many songs, you've done so many albums, you don't ever question yourself. You always feel you're giving your best always, Especially with my music. There's don't lie in it because I can't live with it. My inspiration is what I follow. There's not one song in my repertoire that I won't see with pleasure today, all of it, because it's right to say what you have to say. I come from a culture of orality, where the story of my ancestor the story of little have been told to me by elderly people, and it's different from anything you can read in the book. That interested me in reading your book because you said you got a great education, but they didn't teach you about slavery, and you didn't. You learned about slavery when your brother brought home a Jimi Hendrix album. Can you tell me that story. What was interesting on that album is two things. That two things the snake above his head. I've never seen snake on any album that much, right, and the Afro For me, those two things you gotta be African, especially from Benie, because we worshiped the python in my family and I'm scared of it, so I don't like snake. But then I see my brother that was my brother was born with no hair, and he never had any hair. He would wear a long tunic and we put Afroweek on every time he put that album on. And I went to him, I said, what I was nice? I said, explain to me, do you need enough frow week to play the guitar of this guy? And by the way, he's African, right, And then he goes, well, he's African American. I said, are you trying to pull my leg? Because I'm nine years old? You think I'm stupid enough not to understand you can't be African and American at the same time. It's two different continent. I know that so far. And he's like, well, if I start answering you, I'm not going to practice my guitar, right, So go ask go ask a grandma. So the only grandma can put my hand on was my mom's mother. And she starts telling me the story of slavery. And I look at him like she's having a dementia. Man, this is not right. She's losing a mama. Because my mom and dad we always say to us before we leave the house, a human being is not a matter of color. Don't come back here tell us you felt because you're black. And I'd be just like I grew up with that, So I brush it off. I'm like, yeah, well, I guess nobody's gonna tell me anything about slavery. Then I turned fifteen and I learned about apathey in South Africa. It's just like I was hit by a twin running, I mean a fast train boom, and I just lost it. And did you learn about that in school? No? No, they didn't TV, they didn't teach apartheid. No, I just saw it. I just thought we did in Mandela talking about Nelson Mandela just and I lost it, literally and I turned around and see my mother for the first time, I said, why are you lying to me? And I never scream at my parents. You're not allowed to disrespect your parents in Africa, And I smashed the door, walk into my room, starts crabbing. Lie. I was mad and afraid at the same time, because suddenly I realized that being black can be a death sentence for me, because what is going on in South Africa. And then slavery come to my m J and I start panicking. Then I wrote a song and my first draft was so hateful. I'm going out they kill everybody that is getting black people. And my father said, hey, I listen to my song and go, are you serious? Did I teach you hating this house? Didn't I tell you that they're never gonna be hating. Violence allowed here. There's no platform for this, no outlet. If you want to sing, you want to be an artist, you better think again. I say, what do you mean? He said to me. I understand you're mad, you're afraid everything, but that reaction that you have it's not from the smart girl that I know. You better think about it again. You can write about this situation, but you have to write in a way that go toward solution. My father said, you can't find everybody on this planet. You don't have the power to as an artist, as you've told because they told me that my musician, the traditional musicians say it's a gift, and that gift you use it to bring people together. So how do you do that? So I went back and rewrite the song and it become an anthem for peace. And then he said, do you feel better now? As he yes that. He said, as long as you understand the purpose of what you're doing and why are you doing it, and you understand that you are in a position where you hold keys to open doors that are closed that I've been closed forever through your voice for what you write, then you can be an artist, the full artist that we go into the world and work with everybody. It stays with me. When you learned about South Africa, was that when you started listening to another one of your heroes. I was listening to her without knowing anything about it. You didn't know this is Miriam mcabe. Yeah, I wanna start listened to Miriam mcabbe. Was I was a little The first song of Miriam mcabbe that I sang I was eight years old, and it was the retreat song that my mom and some of her friends have chosen to march in the street asking for women's rights to vote to this no more arranged marriage. Their body belongs to all those those things we're talking about. They were talking about it at that time in nineteen sixty eight. My mom said, come. Her friends said, we can't sing. You're the one. You one. They tell my mom, you're only one that can't sing. We sing like, oh it's bad. Bring on your little girl. She sings good. We're gonna put on the front and she can sing and everything follow. So I started singing that song that they use. They use the music and they put the words of their demands in fun. So I was singing that. I mean I like it because I was on the supervision of my mom. I was all doing my homework and I was like having fun. And I didn't even know what the power to message that I was singing it. At eight, I was there among all those people singing. But never thought of South Africa because it's not told. TV came to being in very late early eighties, so none of those information comes in. My father will listen to the news on the radio. It's a different thing. That's seeing images you hear from far and you don't pay attention to it because when he's listening to news in the morning, I'm running to get ready to go to school, so I don't pay attention to what he's listening to. And and it's it's really take its toll on me. How do we manage to convince ourselves throughout centuries that harming another person and profiting from it is good. We haven't dealt with the scope of the damage, the damages of slavery. It doesn't matter we concincolor you have because we're still living the truma of it today. We'll be right back in a moment with more from Angelique Keijo. We're back with the rest of Bruce Heathlam's conversation with Angelique Keijo and with politics eventually that made you have to leave your country. You know, one of the things that interested me so much on this new album is how many young artists you work with and established artists too. You know, you've got burned a boy on this sample. The grade and different artists. They no longer have to leave Africa, but you did in order to pursue your art and do what you wanted to. But they have the technology to stay. I didn't have that at that time. You said your family couldn't talk politics anymore, that there was I mean censorship, and there was fear. Well, the thing is today, I when I listen to people talking about addictatorship, I look at them outten myself. You don't even understand what it is. You don't know what it is. But what was it for you living in a home that become a jail cell. Well, you don't trust anybody that walked in and you always have to look over your shoulder when you when I call your dad dad instead of calling him comrade, he's my dad. Somebody coming in and you're calling your father dad. You can't help in jail. I mean people crazy. Mean you used to take to get out of your house to do whatever you want to do. You can't take your car and go anywhere you are. Somebody can come anytime in your house and check you out. The man are like something you say, Well something where you put something, You end up in jail and sometimes people disappear. And how did you get out when you left? I mean it took a year to for my parents to organize me living because you don't trust anybody, so you got out. Really be careful. No one knew I was living. My mom and dad were witnessed at a wedding of one of our cousin and they live not far from the airport. So we make sure that everybody in the street where I grew up knew about that wedding that we were gonna go to that wedding. We played a game like that, addressed like I was into the party. While in the car, my father put the car home in the trunk. I put all my stuff. So when my father and I left after the dinner, because I took the flight that was living at fifty five, I have to change my clothes in the car of my dad and pray from the women he dropped me. I was my hours on my own. I was over twenty one, so if something happened, I'll go to jail, not my parents. So I would die to protect my parents. I won't say anything, but I was lucky enough that the custom agent that I saw was a friend of my brothers, and he just asked me to just run, and I run. That's how I left my country. You were already a pop star. Yeah, that's why. That's why I couldn't say I was going because I was already on the radar. Because when I did my album, I didn't I didn't write any song about the regime. I didn't write any song saying ready for the revolution to fight country. I refused that. I said, I'm not gonna say about an idology. My father had taught me that don't use your music for any political party because they come and they go. You want to have a career, don't be linked to it. So then went to Paris. You had to start all over again. You went to school, you work. Oh that was much more exciting than anything else you like. Oh yeah, I mean what I love was that I realized that now every decision that I made for myself can be a good one or a bad one, and that I have grown up. Now I'm an adult because ford my dad, I have to pay a rent, I have to find food, I have to work. I mean, the fact that I have to start from scrush was really exciting for me. Nobody knew me, nobody knows so for once I wanted to be a backing singer. I couldn't do it. Because I was a phone runner. Also, around this time in Western music there were artists like Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel and later Paul Simon, this was in the eighties who started embracing a lot of African rhythms, African sounds. You were not struggling in your career but working on your career, and suddenly you hear these people come in and start using these sounds. What did you think, Well, the thing is, when I arrived in France, that's when I discover all those things, like the Talking Heads. But the thing was, I didn't know anything about the talking Heads at all till I get to Paris and here with a friend, we were at the students place, and then they started playing the cassettes. When I arrived in nineteen eighty three, I was in music junkie because I have the feeling that the world the ten past years, the world have just left me behind, and I wanted to catch up so bad. And when I heard the song once in a lifetime, I was so happy and I was like dancing, And then of course you always have some stupid racist person saying, what are you doing atally, this is not African music. I'm like well, sorry for ignorance. This is African music man, And he looked at me and go no, I'm like, just get off my bag. But let on, I realized all those things. But the African rhythm have always been in every music. As I said before, recognizing it or not recognizing it doesn't go away because it's in your DNA. So later, of course you covered the whole album remaining light. What made you want to do that? Because here you are taking songs that were written to African rhythms by these by this band in New York. What made you want to do that? Well? Two things. The first time I heard the song once in a lifetime, I was seeing my period in France where I will cry every day because of the ignorance of people in the hate that I have to go through, the racism stlure that goes on. The time I opened my mouth to speak, why can't Why can't you speak? From time you understand? We need an encyclopedia to understand you. I'm like, but it's your language, That's what I learned in school. What do you want me to speak? What to pay a tribute to that song? That that day with all those students around me when we were ready in the fridge of one of them, because he invalied all of us to see so many young kids so ignorant about about the culture. And that song like that that day when I listened to it, it brings it brings miles to my face, and it made my day. So I've been looking for because on the cassette there's no name you. I look everywhere to find the name of this. I didn't know it. Oh you didn't know. No, I didn't know because cassette, I mean students were doing cassete. They would let the stuff they put on the cassete, they don't put the title of the stuff. So from time to time, the melody you come back to me m mmmmmmmmm. And that's that's the only thing that I remember till I start talking to my friend of mine, Danny Capillion, my husband management, and I was like, there's a song. I mean, I don't know where it comes from, but I love to listen to it. And said, I said, I don't know the title. I just remember the melody goes mmmmmmmmmmmmm. And then they go, what that's once in the left, And I said what? And I listened to it I said, I have to cover this album. They're gonna actually let you joking, right, I said to my husband, let's get to the studio. There are a couple of songs that we record with the traditional women when we were recording because for me, bonn on the Punches when I was I would listen to it. I'm like, this is talking about corruption for me. Corruption. Imagine the amount of money that corruption take away from investing in education, roads, health. And that's what you were hearing and in remaining life. That's why I started, when I started with the world that I started started is z we oh z zoya daza, which mean when you start a fire and you don't know how to stop it, the fire gonna eat everything up and even you to start the fight. And that's what corruption is doing to our system. When you finally met David Byrne after you recorded it, did you talk to him about how you interpreted his album? Yeah, he knows I told him that about it. Yeah, you're like, well, okay, I do have a request, but could you just say one line when you sing the shotgun shot line? Yeah? Could you just say that for me? And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shock, And you may find yourself in another part of the world, and you may find yourself behind the wheel of a logo to mobile, and you may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? Let him do days go by? That is so fabulous. Oh, you just made my day, So you know you did. You started putting out albums and then you did your big album which was Legozo. Did that have Batongo on? It was that on that and it was it was your first album for Chris Blackwell in Island, and it was produced by the Think the drummer for Miami, Sam Michies exactly, and a lot of people, if they don't remember all the songs, remember the album cover. Yes, because you in that strike kind of look you look like, kind of like the world's coolest superhero at that point. Well, you know that album. I called it Logoso, which mean tortoys. For me, it was my experience when I arrive in France. The Westerner were looking at for me, My image of them is tortoys. They're all going around by business. Something happened. Nobody want to be involved to come back in the show. So that's why you have the three The logo I put is here, And is that how you felt like a tortoise? I was living in a tortural society because nobody just cared about you unless they want to give you some racist comment. And that zebra suit was really interesting because I just didn't want somebody to put me in the outfit that the thing is okay for an African person, because I've heard that all the time. Well, African people, they work around with their breast naked. Why don't you do that? I'm like, really, I live what jeans in BENI I grew up wearing versus modernity. I never wear aune and I'll never walk around with my TV up out. So I went out and bought my own stuff. I bought my chump suit, and I'm not wearing it. You don't like it or not, that's the way it's gonna go. Man. And you became friends with Miriam later. Yeah, she did not like the phrase. She didn't like the box she was put in, which was world music. You have want a lot of the World Music Grammys. Do you feel it just puts you in a kind of disadvantage. Yeah, the thing is when we're talking about our music in general, and we call music pop this and that, and we want if we just forgot that the blues will not exist without the slaves here and from the blues, how many forms of music come from the blues? Tell me all of it? So why should African artists, let alone, or the artists that are not speaking English or French or Portuguese or whatever it is, have to have a category that is kind of a ghetto category. I mean, we want we want everybody to be music, to be set telling the truth or not, because when it comes to music, there's no genre for me. As long as you can speak the music, language doesn't matter what you do as a music We are the one that put artagory on music. So we like to divide things. We like to put things in category to be able to leave our set with ourselves because we don't want to even face our own complexity. A human being is not simple. In your autobiography you talk about this. It is so fascinating that the music you grew up with, you know, which was voice and rhythm, was split up by slavery, which is why the blues came out of North America. Because the American slavers, they took away the drums. Yes, indeed, the ignorance make them believe that with the drum from cotton field to cotton field, they can slaves can come quicker when they can speak through the drum, because for a long time, drums has been the medium that was used by the king to rally the people. What interested in musically is, of course, what happened with the blues is it's a it's a West African scale. Yeah, absolutely, it's a five notes or six five notes scale. And when you were first you met your husband Jehan in Paris jazz school. In the jazz school, you started working together. You were singing traditional songs, traditional melody lines, and he was sitting at the piano trying to sort of figure out how to put harmonies underneath it. Yeah, what was that exercise? Like? It was great because we come up with our own ammunization. That is kind of a little weird because I would ammonize and then you go, I didn't hear that, and then you go, can you put it here like this? I'm like, yeah, let's right. And it was never shy to try anything as long as it serves the song. So it was easy. I would say easy because he knows the blues. He was in a jazz school. He has master degree in philosophy, but he has listened to a lot of blues. It was easy for us to start a communication in the musical language from that blues. Actually that comes. I mean, there are songs in my village, in my family. When they starts singing it, you just want to cry your heart out. Can you just give me one of those melodies? There's one of them that I really um, that really touches me. Is this one. I'm gonna Ammy Wilo, I got damn in jail a quay, I'm gonna Amy Wailo, I got damn in jail o quae Coca Nada. Yeah, name, I'm gonna amy, I got damn in jail oqua Cooca nada. Yeah. That song is spite time I sing it's just and what's that song? What's it song? For sure, it's talking about vulnerability in the face of death. There's nothing we can do when death come knocking, and he's talking about what have you done so wrong that every year death come back come by and take its too, take the good or the bad, and mostly take the good people. How do we can we leave? We've dev always not giving us a chance to breathe. Wow, that seems like a great song for the last year. Thank you so much, Thank you for doing this. It's just been a huge treat. Thank you. Thank you to Angelique Kijo for talking through our history and career with us. You can hear a new album, Mother Nature along with our favorite Angeli Kijo songs at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Miolbell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. Please remember to share rate and review us on your podcast. App Our theme musics by Kenny Beats on Just Much