Angelique Kidjo 2010
Interview by Banning Eyre
Brooklyn, NY,2011
Angelique Kidjo’s 2010 album Oyo looks back at the music of her youth in Benin. Afropop visited Angelique recently at her Brooklyn home, for a wide ranging discussion of her life and this fabulous new album. Here’s her conversation with Banning Eyre.
Banning Eyre: Your new CD is called Oyo. What does that mean?
Angelique Kidjo: Oyo means beauty, beauty of arts and beauty of the essence of human beings, so that’s why I call this album Oyo, ‘cause I went back to my childhood.
BE: Give us a picture of what your home life in Benin was like?
AK: The Benin at that time is no longer the Benin that you have today. And it was after the independence in the 60’s, when things started happening—new stuff. Everybody was trying to open up to the rest of the world. Me, I was born in the middle of that midst. I was born two weeks before the independence of Benin.
I was born in a house where music has always been the thing, the ultimate thing that everybody gathered together for. As soon as a new LP comes in, the house comes to a stop, and then we all start doing: “This is what? And this is what? And this is what?” So I grew up looking at them…for me as a child they were weird. I mean why do you all gather together and look at the cover of an album and get excited about it? When I was three or four years old I was like, “Hey, I’m gonna go play.”
BE: So, these were your older siblings?
AK: Oh yeah, we were ten kids together. I was number seven, and my older brothers and sisters were the one bringing the music home, and my mom started a theatre group when I was around six-years-old, and I started seeing different things, right? I started to see masks that some people put on their face, on their head, to do their thing, costumes, raffia skirts, all this kind of stuff, and I said, “Whoooo… this stuff is kinda fun, this is my playground.” So I would be going inside and everything, trying to smell some of the raffia that was not dry, and I was like, “Ooh, how can people wear this?” I was just being a kid.
My brothers also decided to do music at that time, and they bought the instruments. The whole house was filled with people 24/7. I mean one of my brothers was the captain of the national table tennis team, and champion of Benin, and so he traveled all over the place. And then you have sports, you have music, and you have books, people that read books, because my father was a reader. For me, he doesn’t read; he eats books. All the time his nose was always in a book.
I grew up being interested in every little bit of every thing. I would take a book and read it, and go to the theatre, and I play and sometimes I would learn the lines of the actors, and I would stand in the middle of the house trying to have a male voice, talking like a male, and my mom would be looking at me like, “What is wrong with you?” I’m like, “I just wanna play,” so everything for me basically was fun, all fun, all the way through from the beginning till today, so that’s the household where I come from, where music is always there.
There’s something that’s really important for me to touch on here. At that time, there was a store where they sold albums, and a store where they sold instruments. It was owned by a guy called Al Barika. Al Barika’s store had LP’s from all over West Africa and the world because he did imports. All this was happening way before the communist regime change that changed the whole country. So when I was growing up, I always remember that every time, everyday, I wake up, and there is some new song in my life. Something else comes in the house. And its either traditional music that one of the siblings from the village comes and starts singing, or I will hear the drum beat a couple of blocks down there, and before my mother could say, “Where are you going?” I was [whoosh]… And I would come back and I was the reporter of the house. You know what I heard…. [blah-blah-blah] And my mother was like, “Can you take a deep breath before you start talking? I didn’t understand anything.” And I was sad now, so I said ok, now let’s start again. [blah-blah-blah] I heard everything… ‘cause I was like, if you don’t hear me out once, I’ll tell you twice or ten times the same story. So that was my background. All that music from everywhere in every different language you could ever imagine.
BE: What did your father do?
AK: My father was the head of the Post Office. He’s the one basically that controls that all the mail is sent correctly, all the machines, everything that had to do with the functioning of the Post Office, because he was the principle of the main Post Office. So he sometimes he had to get to work first to check everything and to check that people are coming on time. So sometimes you ask Dad to drop you at school, and he would tell you, “You know the rules. I can’t be late. You wanna be in school? You gonna be before everybody. You gotta be on time. So sometimes I would say I’m not gonna be on time, and I’d see the back of the car leaving and I’d know I’m in for walking. Man, and I hated that. I’m like, “Damn, Dad leave me again… I should have been on time.” He always said to us that being late is not OK. “If you want people to respect you, you have to be on time. You can’t ask people to be on time and not be on time. Me, I have a job to do, and if as a boss I’m not on time, then I cannot ask the people that work for me to be on time.”
BE: I understand that you got your first experience on stage at age 6. You actually do that first song you sang on this record “Atcha Houn.” Tell us about that song.
AK: My mom had passion for theatre. My mom used to play clarinet and my father used to play banjo. But when she did theatre, she got into one king in our history, the king Akaba, whose story was really compelling and very interesting. He was a very, very jealous and possessive king. And he had the most beautiful girl. The princess Nagazi and he’s like, “No man is comin’ to my girl here. You look badly at that girl and you just end up [decapitation sound].” So it was the whole process of how a father even loving a daughter can be a weight on the future of that child. And the thing that my mom did was she traveled, not just inside Benin, but on the west coast of Africa and central Africa and different places. Because the piece was so long that she in the middle… she didn’t want people to lose attention or to leave, so she built into the piece, a ballet, different type of dancing and singing, so that’s where the raffia skirts come in. where you have people wearing all those different costumes to sing and dance, and I would listen to everything. She did everything: she wrote the thing, she did the costumes, because of course, there was no one to help her. If you wanna do theatre in Africa, then good luck.
Before that she used to have a store where she sold African fabric, but also silk, and linen all those fabrics that she traveled to go get. So instead of investing the benefits of her business she put it all back into the theatre. Then after three years, the theatre just collapsed because she could not financially continue and the store also closed because there was no new stuff coming into the store. But while that theatre was going… there is no place, first of all, where you can put 40 people to rehearse in Benin at that time. So everybody would come home and the day of the rehearsal, we all knew you’d better eat and clean the whole place, because when people come, they’re everywhere. There’s no space really free in the house. So I learned everything, the singing and everything.
There was a show one night at the Palais de Congrès, and the little girl was sick. The little girl who sang for the king, because the king loved the voice of that little girl, in order to calm his rage down. So before we can start anything she would sing, and when she would start singing the king would just relax, and he would just become someone you could manipulate easily. So the girl didn’t come, and then my mom said…. Look, I’m so tiny that I can go everywhere. Sometime I’m there and people are talking and don’t even notice I’m there…. I be hiding behind the costumes and everything, but she knew where I was because I couldn’t stay still and I was moving my butt and everything and she said, “You are singing.” I’m like, “No, I ain’t singing.” But she just cleaned me up and put on the clothes… and I’m like, “Is this real or is she just trying to scare me?” Mom is like, “She go. Now you go.” And I was like, “I ain’t not going anywhere,” and she was like, “You’re going on stage.” “Nooo, I can’t go.”
Next thing, poof, she pushed me on stage and the spotlight was right there in my face, and I couldn’t see the public. I was like so scared I could hear my heart pounding and all the bones in my body going [glug glug glug glug] Cause I’m never gonna be able to sing. How in the world am I gonna do this? And I knew the place was packed. Everybody thought that it was part of the show for me to be so scared. So everybody started laughing and I’m like, “Hey, that’s kinda cool, I can make people laugh without even opening my mouth. I’m singing now.” So I start singing and then I never stopped. I never stopped. So that song is there. Unfortunately, at that period the radio couldn’t move and record things. We didn’t have such a very big radio with recording equipment that could allow them to come and record. So basically they took everything for granted. They didn’t care about it at all. So they didn’t come to record anything, so we never have that song anywhere. But I recorded it now for my album.
BE: And you recorded it very simply, just with guitar.
AK: I wanted to do it just acapella, just like I used to do it, but then I said, “Let me add some guitar to it.” There is one person on this planet that can understand that. That is Lionel (Loueke) because we come from the same country, though he was not even born when I was singing that song basically. So he didn’t know the songs, but he listened carefully to the words. He said, “There are so many songs, traditional songs, that I don’t know the words. But I know the song. I know a few words, and you start singing them and I understand everything. You know all the words. How come you know all these things?” I’m like, “Because I was Miss Question. I asked questions, and I learned it, and if I didn’t understand, I go back and I ask, ‘Why you sing this or why not this?’” Even now, when I go back to my village and start asking questions, they say, “No, no, no, enough of your questions.” Because I never had enough answers. But if you don’t ask… That’s what my parents taught us: “If you don’t ask, then you’re stupid. Pretending you know something that you don’t know, and you make the wrong answer, that makes you more dumb than anything else. Why don’t you ask in the first place?” So I asked. And if you don’t answer then I wont leave you alone, I’ll keep asking until you give me an answer.
BE: Okay, so I’m going to ask you about some of the pictures in the notes for this CD. Let’s start with these pictures of you as a girl.
AK: I used to have a lot of hair because my mom always say, “A woman should have hair.” You see the picture on the left?
I was like 14 or 15. And the picture in the middle where I have short hair?
Short hair comes in way before this one. I grew my hair, I made the mistake of cutting my hair when I was like 10-years-old. My mom was mad at me. I said, “I don’t want this hair, I don’t wanna be a girl, I wanna be a boy.” Because I only had brothers to play with… I mean I had three brothers after me… I was a tomboy so I didn’t want to become a girl for nothing in the world. So I cut my hair to look like my brother…My mom was mad, and my father was like, “Hey, that saves me some money. I’m not gonna pay for a hairdresser.” So then I grew my hair back, because my hair used to grow back very fast. And the picture next to it is the year I left Benin.
And my hair at that time was all the way back to my butt. That long! Yeah. The one on the left side. And the picture on top is when my daughter was born, and she was two-months-old.
And that’s my grandmother, the mother of my mother, so that’s four generations of women. So Naima is the fourth generation. My grandmother used to always worry about me because I always used to say, “I don’t want to get married because I haven’t done anything.” I’m a singer, and already they’re calling me a prostitute. “I ain’t getting married first of all and I ain’t serving no man.” And my grandmother was ever so determined. She tried to talk me out of it. I’m like, “Why should I marry a man? What for? What is good in there for me?” She was like, “You’re gonna change your mind one day.” So, I said, “You know what? I will have a lot of nephews and nieces, I’ll be a good auntie and I’ll spoil them rotten. I don’t want any kids.” Before that, when I was like 10, I was making all my plans and telling my mom, “OK when I will turn 21, I’m gonna be married already and I’m gonna have two boys and two girls.” And my mom is like, “Yeah, so you’re god?” So I said, “Wait and see.” Then after awhile, I don’t want that anymore.
And this last picture down here...
I don’t remember who this lady was…. I was doing a concert and they were giving me money, and my hair, its long now. I was like 18 or 19 in this picture.
BE: What about on the next page?
AK: That’s my mom.
My mom is on the left here. And this is my mom younger, the year I was born.
Then this next one this is the period where I was growing my hair back. When I spent most of the time in the swimming pool because I was born with asthma and my parents said, “You have to do sports to strengthen your lungs.”
And I used to run 1500 meters with the athletic team and I used to swim too, so all summer I’d be swimming non-stop. People called my parents crazy. They said, “She gonna die.” My mom and dad said, “She’s not gonna die; she’s gonna be stronger. That’s all.” So this was one of my days where I was… I was not very dark at that time. So by the end of the summer, I’m so dark that my mom was like, “This is disgusting, we hardly can see your teeth. Mannnnnn what’s wrong with you?” I’m like, “Hey, that’s the sun man, I’m in Africa. What you want me to do?” People think we don’t get sunburned. Oh yeah, man sometimes I’d come home I can’t even lay on my back because it hurt so much, not from the swimming. You come out of the water and you lay down to dry and sometimes you fall asleep and then you go back. That sun just killed my back. And down on this picture you have Roger Guy Folly from the Voice of America.
BE: Oh, yes. Georges Collinet’s colleague from the Voice of America.
AK: Yeah. It was a concert that was produced in a movie theatre called Vogue in Benin. And it came with a prize for the best artist in Benin at that time. Roger Guy Folley was there, organizing for Voice Of America, so he came in and he gave me the prize. I won the prize and he was the one who gave me the prize.
And on the right this is a show that I was doing at the French Cultural Center.
I was around 16 at that time. My mom always did my costumes, my clothes… So I was just singing and going around and down with [Orchestre] Polytrhythmo, in the corner there, because they were the only band.
My brothers at that time had stopped their band. It doesn’t exist anymore, because they all went to universities. So boom, the band is gone.
BE: I heard the Orchestre Polyrhythmo is performing again.
AK: They’re trying, but the thing is they’re to old, man. They always say that, every year. “Our wives don’t want us to go back, because we won’t be home.” One is a doctor. They have big positions now, so its difficult.
So the next picture is my first album that I recorded. It’s called Pretty.
In Africa this album was the one that broke me out of Benin to the other countries. It was produced by Ekambi Brillant who is a singer from Cameroon, who ripped me off blind for that one, so nothing new. And in the far corner, is the photo studio of my father.
My father was a photographer, one of the first photographers in Benin. This place is called Studio Photo. He became the representative of Kodak in Benin, so he used Kodak products for everything there.
BE: Do you have this first record, Pretty? Can people get this record?
AK: We’re working on it. We have a copy that we digitalized and we’re thinking of doing it, but I don’t know when yet.
BE: You sing for Miriam Makeba here. Talk about Miriam and what she meant to you.
AK: Miriam Makeba has always been in my life without me really gauging the importance that she was gonna have later on. I started singing Miriam Makeba when I was around 7- or 8-years-old. Because my mom had with her other “household” women… they had a movement, an association of women asking for women’s rights. Women’s right to vote, women’s right to determine what they want to do with their lives. And it was lead by Madame Johnson, who was the wife of a doctor. They had a clinic. That clinic still exists in Benin today. They used to drive me, they always tell my mom, “Bring your daughter along she can sing. She sing better than us. We all sound like frogs. We need someone that can save our honor here. Bring your daughter then she can sing loud enough for us.” So they would put me in the front. So the song that we were singing was the Miriam Makeba song called “The Retreat Song,” but it was sung in Beninese language. So I would be singing the song [sings], so I’d be singing that song with them, and two years later I started listening more and more to music from South Africa. I started just singing everything that comes thru the house. I don’t care what language is it, I just sing it. I would learn it phonetically. Sometimes I might sing something that’s not in English but its ok for me, so I’m singing it…
When I was 9-years-old…My 9th and 10th years were a very important moment in my life, not only when Miriam Makeba came into my life, but it was also the first time I heard the word African-American. Looking at a cover of Jimi Hendrix and I heard about slavery, and for me at 9-years-old I said, “This is not true. The older people are just telling me tales. This cannot happen. It doesn’t make any sense, because Mom and Dad have always been saying there’s only one humanity, so how can slavery have ever existed?” So I just, not denied it, but just put it in the back of my head, because I was more interested in the music. All Miriam Makeba songs, I have learned them phonetically. Every language, she has sung in so many languages. I just copied the songs as I hear them and then it became very difficult for me because people be calling me prostitute. Because I was no longer the little girl that everybody liked to hear singing. I decided that I was gonna continue singing, and that doesn’t go well in African societies. When you are a traditional singer you have huge respect, because our tradition is most of the time through storytelling or songs, but when you decide to put it through what elderly people call instruments of evil… because of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll that was everywhere in Africa, they don’t like it at all. If you’re a boy you have a hard time too, because they say it’s not a job. You’re never going to have the money to raise a family, and no parents want you to date their daughter, and when you’re a girl, no man wants to marry you. Everybody think you’re just there free of charge for anything they want to do with you. It was not an easy moment at all in my life, and then I was like, “Why should I be coming back from school and people are spitting on me calling me all those kind of names? I don’t want to sing anymore.” And gladly, my grandmother, who you saw on that CD cover, was home visiting, and I walked in and I was just so mad, I’m like, “I’m not singing anymore. I’m tired of this thing now and so mad.” And then she said to me, “Well, why are you mad? What happened to you? Who spit on you?” I said, “People, I don’t even know who.” So she wiped me down and she said go take a shower and come back and we discuss.
So I went to take my shower, and it calmed me down a little bit, and I said, “Why should I sing? Singing, there’s nothing good about it because people are calling me prostitute and spitting on me, I don’t wanna sing if that’s what I have to go through. And she said, “You love singing?” I said, “Yes, I do.” Then she said, “So what does that matter if people call you names? Everybody in this house believes in your talent; we love hearing you sing; we all support you. Does that matter or do the people outside matter more than your family?” I said, “No. I mean, you guys. I have no problem with.” And she said, “You shouldn’t have problems with nobody… I’ll give you a piece of advice and you do whatever you want to do with it. You cannot love or please anyone as much as people cannot love you and please you too. You’ve gotta learn it: if you’re not happy with yourself, you’re gonna be miserable. If you’re happy with what you’re doing, keep on doing it, that’s all that matters.”
BE: So when did you first meet Miriam Makeba
AK: I met Miram Makeba in 1989, through Mr. Boris. Mr. Boris was the person that decided who was playing at Olympia hall. So they have Miriam Makeba and he called me up and said, “I would like you to do the opening act.” I said, “You must be joking.” He said, “No, I’m not joking. I know you love her.” My jaw just go (dropped)…I’m gonna meet Miriam Makeba!
I turned around and told Jean we’re going to have to play for Miriam Makeba. He goes, that’s a stunt or something… I said, “No, that’s what they say. Lets go for it.” So we put the band together and we went. Man, I was in shock ‘cause I never thought that I would ever one day meet her, and it’s an emotion that can be deadly. I was sick after that because my heart was pounding so hard. I had headache like I never had before. But I was so happy to be in her company. She was so gracious, and so nice. I just do my thing, and I have the blessing doing it so, that stayed with me, I mean it stayed definitely engraved in me till today. I still can remember what I wore that day, and how the place was… just an amazing moment in my life.
And then after that, in 1996 I went to play in South Africa. Before that we met in Switzerland, at the festival in Basel and we were in the same hotel…and in that hotel there is a club, a jazz club, downstairs. So all the musicians when they finish they go to the club and they smoke, so I can’t go in there. So I’m like, I’m not going to the club. So we had two clubs… one up drinking and talking and blah blah blah… and the other they’re doing music and smoking and drinking. And then um, I said, where is Miriam I’d love to meet her, and they said let me take you to her room. So we went and we sat down and we talked. It was fun.
She was more mad at the term “world music” than I have ever been in my life. She hated it. She hated it so much. She said, “Who’s the moron that called our music world music? That moron already put third world music and the people tell him it’s not politically correct, and the person removed the third. Why they call our music world music? Without our music there’s no American music, no music at all!” I’m like, “Ok, take it easy. It’s ok I understand that.” We talked about music. We talked about a lot of things. We talked about exile a little bit. At that time it was not the end of Apartheid yet, and she was like, “I wish one day I could die in my country and be brought back to my country.” And I’m like, “Don’t talk about death now. You’re gonna go. Apartheid is gonna be over and you can walk right straight into your country.” And she said, “Ok, if you say so.”
And then we exchanged our phone numbers, she said, “If ever you come to South Africa and I’m there then…” I said, “You see? You’re already talking about the end of Apartheid.” So then Apartheid was over, and I accepted to do a tour, a little tour in South Africa, and I went to Johannesburg and I called her on one of my days off. She said, “You have time to come home? I’ll cook for you.” I’m like, “Alright.” Then Jean and myself we went to her place… she cooked a storm of food. I walked in the kitchen and she goes, this is this, this is this. I’m saying to myself in my head... “Is she planning me to eat all those food?” Yes. She’s like, “Eat.” I’m like, “I’m full, I ate already.” She says, “You see how skinny you are? Eat.” I’m like, “Oh, I can’t eat anymore.” So I eat a little bit, take a deep breath. We have another little bit of discussion and come back to the food. It was a great memory, I spent the whole day there. She was talking about the fact that the young artists in S.A. were more inclined to do American music more than South African music. And I said, “It’s just a phase. Just trust the time. Time will tell. It’s just gonna be there, and not be there anymore. American music is African music too. Once they find the link, they’re gonna find their identity so that’s all that matters.”
BE: You had planned to do a lullaby with her and that never happened, so that’s the background for this new recording of “Lakutshona Llanga.” Tell us that story.
AK: The last time I saw Miriam was at the Africa festival in Wursburg. And um, it was a really nice talk, but I had a very weird feeling about it. Because she was all happy to go on stage. We had fun. We laughed, because she would just crack jokes… You just go, “I cant believe she is saying this.” There were stairs, and we had to go on those stairs to go on stage. She goes, “I bet anything, men make this stage. They don’t think about our high heels or our dresses. They just make the stage like that and we have to go through this.” And I was laughing, I was cracking up laughing. I say, “Yeah, hey, man made the pumps we wear too. The shoes are so high, our back ended up being painful.” And then she goes, “Its true, but who forced us to buy those shoes anyway?” (laughs)
So that day was absolutely interesting. Because I was in the dressing room and we were talking about things here and there, and before that she had already told me, “You know what Angelique? Today I can die and know you’re there.” And I’m like, “Don’t say that. Don’t go there, please. Don’t even try it. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything like that. You better be here and continue being Miriam Makeba and I can hide behind you and I push you on the front there. I don’t want that position at all.” She said, “There are more chances for me to die before you do.” I said, “You don’t know anything about it, so stop talking about death.” She say, “You know, life and death work hand in hand. Not talking about it doesn’t make it go away; you just have to face it.” I’m like, “Ok, but enough of that, now you have a concert to do.” And um, as we were walking toward the stage she was just looking at the stairwell, looking like if she could make those stairs vanish she would do that. And I’m like, “Its ok.” She gets to the stairs and she’s like boom boom boom boom woosh… went on stage… I was behind her and laughing and she say, “What are you laughing at?” I say, “You see? You just walked up those stairs and nothing happens to you.” And then she took a deep breath and looked at me and said, “The way I would love to die is to die in a country where people love me, on stage, doing what I love to do.” I’m like, “Here you come…” And then she said, “No.. I mean when I’m on stage, I’m in heaven, so if I die on stage I know I’m going to heaven.” So I’m like, “Eh, that’s a good way to say it.” And during the concert she took a break and some of her backup singers sang the “Lakutshona Llanga” song. And I said to her, “I love this song.”
And she say, “I wanted to talk to you about a project that I want us to do with other artists if they want to, or you and I do it. We do an album of lullabies in every different language, and donate that album to UNICEF for the mothers of this world. Because on the battlefield, a little boy that hold a gun… that little boy, was a mom’s child. He’s an adult now carrying a gun killing other people for one reason or another. Every child has been sung a lullaby to. The only way for us to stop the nonsense of war and racism, and hate, is to remind us the very things that across the planet, have never changed, is a mother putting a child asleep singing a lullaby. That’s what we have to do.” And I said “Ok, I’m ready.” And we never had time to do it… never… but I’ll do it, I have to carry it now, I have to do the lullaby album, I have to do it, otherwise she’s gonna be mad at me.
BE: Was it difficult to approach “Mbube?” I mean, it is such a classic song, covered so many ways over the years.
AK: I know Miriam Makeba songs so much, like you could wake me up from my sleep and I can sing any Miriam Makeba song for you. And I’ve always, always loved the original version of “Mbube.” All the other covers they’re great, they whatever you… but they never make it to me. They never touch me as deeply as the original one, because when you listen to original “Mbube” there are so many things happening behind. The voice, the way it’s put together. I mean, it’s amazing. You just gotta listen to it. It’s just so overwhelming, that people, when they cover, they make it simple. Because in order to do that you have to learn every part as I did, and I put every part in it. And this was hell, believe me, it was not easy to really listen to it and get the part, and to put them together, because sometimes they confronted by each other, but that was the beauty of it, so for me, its one of those songs that is never gonna go out of fashion, and yet needed to be revived.
BE: Tell us about another singer you admire, a singer form Benin that our listeners are probably not familiar with, Bela Bellow.
AK: Bella Bellow died too quick, unfortunately, She died in 1973 in a car accident. And she was the closest, biggest star to my hometown, and she was so beautiful, every time I saw her on the TV, I was like, “Can somebody be that beautiful?” And she sings and you’re like… at that time I was already singing, I was like, “It looks so effortless. What the hell is going on here? She sounds like an angel.” And my dad would be looking at me, and my nose would be like this close to the TV. My momma hate that, she was like, “Even if you get closer, you ain’t gonna see her better than that. Come on back here.” But I wanna see if she’s moving her lips, if she’s singing. That is Bella Bellow, when she started singing it’s just like, you feel it comes from all her body, from her toes all the way up. And I’ve always been mesmerized. One day I was 13- or 14-years-old, and she came to play in a club that belonged to a friend of my father, it was called beach club, it was on the beach. The club owners they were there and she came and play, and I begged my dad, “Please, please, please can I come?” At 13, you don’t go to a club where you have prostitutes in there, alcohol, and all kind of stuff. So my father took me to his friend and his friend say, “Uh-uh uh. If the police come here, we gonna close.” And my father say, “We will smuggle her through the kitchen and then she won’t get out of the kitchen.” So through the kitchen I was behind her. She was singing, and I was dancing, and they were like, “Shh, stay quiet!” And I’m like, “How can I stay quiet when a person is grooving like that?” It was so beautiful. She meant a lot to me and I always sing Bella Bellow because she has so many beautiful songs that are not known.
BE: Are there records out there?
AK: I think she did one or two albums, and Manu Dibango has worked a lot with her. He was the musical director who arranged and produced a lot of her songs. I think I have to do an album for Bella Bellow, but I can not do it without Manu Dibango, because he knows all the original arrangements and everything.
BE: Your song “Kelele” is inspired by what you call “highlife,” basically African party dance music. How did you feel about that music back then?
AK: It was part of everything. Because I jumped from E.T. Mensah in Ghana to Fela Kuti on the other side, Ekambe Brilliant from Cameroon, Tabu Ley Rochereau… All of them. So for me it was not only American music or British music or French music, it was everything: African, Indian, Asian, whatever music existed. So imagine my day when I come back from school, and people be sitting in the house and you don’t know who they are, and they are speaking languages that you don’t speak. And it’s like, “Ok, I want to have a conversation with you. What language are you speaking?” You start learning this word, this word, this word… “What is that?”
Once my brother had a trainer from China for one year and the guy didn’t speak a word of English or French. All he spoke was Chinese. So my brother was learning Chinese, so sometimes I would come and I’d be bugging the guy—poor guy, he was so shy. He was not used to such an extravagant person, just loud, and just joyful like that. I’m always cheerful, I’m always laughing, making people laugh, saying jokes, stupid jokes. And I go to him and say one day, “Teach me a song in Chinese,” and he go, “Huh? What is she saying?” So somebody translates, and the guy go, “I can’t sing.” He blushed. I’m like, “I don’t care. Till he sing, I’m not moving.” So he started singing a song in Chinese, and I’m like, “Ooooh! Stop. One phrase at a time,” and it was the funniest thing ever. My brother was cracking up laughing, and he was like, “Can you leave that poor man alone.” And I said, “Why not? Chinese is a language too. Why can’t I sing in Chinese?” I’m like, “I wanna hear it, and I wanna hear the song.” Then he started the song [sings], and I’m like, “What the hell is that?” [sings] That’s the melody. I remember the melody, but the words… I can’t sing Chinese. If I learn more perhaps one day I can be able to do that.
BE: So can we watch for that one on your next record?
AK: Hey, don’t dare me, You know I’ll do it.
BE: I hope you do. But for now, let’s talk about some of the American artists that you channel on this record.
AK: They are not all there. Man, there are a lot of them though. I didn’t decide to approach them in any way, shape or form. I just let the song come to me. Because there are so many songs in my memory. Sometimes I start singing and I’m like, “Where did that song come from? Who sang that song? Who wrote that song?” It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember. I just move on and I sing it anyway. Aretha was among the women, the female singers, that really nailed it for me. Because when you’re growing up as a girl and you don’t have a role model in what you do, it’s very hard, especially when you have the whole society against you telling you what you doing is wrong. So here comes Aretha with “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” Now I can say that Before I couldn’t say it at all. I would mumble the stuff, and I remember what I would say: “Mammy yelly shoo pit ta.” My mother said, “What the hell you talking about?” I’d be singing like, “Tay ba tay ba hey hey hey,” and my mom was like, “This girl is just gonna drive us crazy.” “Baby I Love You,” the only thing I could sing was “I love you, I love you” that way everybody knows it. So, it was either “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” that I was doing or “Baby I Love You” but “Baby I Love You” inspires me more because it comes in with that vision of gospel songs, like from church. When we sing as we sing in Yoruba language or in Fon, to start the whole music, it’s a trance thing. You’re setting the mood for the song, so that’s how the song started, basically.
BE: It says in the liner notes that you brought in Voodoo drumming into that, that was part of your arrangement?
AK: The drums, I mean, the drums are drums. It can be Voodoo drums or whatever it is. If you’re calling people to listen, rhythm is a message too, and for me it was not even a question of what drums is gonna be there, the drum was obvious for me. It has to be there. And if it’s not there, there’s no song. I did a demo and I played it to Diane Reeves, who’s a real good friend of mine. And then she goes, “Whoa, Angelique, you take this song to another planet. Whoa, I like it.” I said, “You wanna sing with me?” She go, “You joking or are you serious?” I’m like, “I’m serious.” She go, “Hey girl, done deal. I’m doing it.” So that’s how Diane Reeves comes on the song. And I said, “We ain’t gonna sing Aretha; we gonna sing ourselves. We gonna pay tribute to Aretha in a greater way, than anyone has done before,” so that’s what we tried to do.
BE: How about Otis Redding?
AK: Otis has been, whoa man… Otis was something else, because the first version of “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” was the Otis Redding one. And “I Cant Get No (Satisfaction)” before the Rolling Stones comes in, and there is the one. [sings] The other thing is when you’re learning the song I learn every part, the guitar part the bass part, everything, and I can sing all of them. And when “I’ve Got Dreams” comes in, first of all it was, “Satisfaction” that comes in and then you have, uh, the song where he say, “the lady is a tramp.” Yeah, the voice of Otis Redding was just like, oh my god!
And then “I’ve Got Dreams” comes in, and oh man, I start killing the ears of the whole house. I would stand in the freaking middle of the house going, “I got dweeeeeeeeems,” and I’d be screaming so hard, that everyone say, “Ooh that hurts. What are you singing?” I said, “I don’t know. That’s what he’s singing.” They say, “No, its not that.” I say, “Yeah, I got dweeeeeems dweems to ma mam ba.” And then my brother said, “Whoa, what is this?” Because I didn’t speak English at the time. I mean, Benin is a French-speaking country, so I just make up my own lyrics on every song that comes to the house, all the time. From James Brown down to whoever was out there. I don’t even remember the name of the bands. I just remember the songs. Wilson Pickett was there, we singin’ it, I mean there were songs, till today I don’t know who wrote, [sing a few examples of classic American soul]. Me, I would be making my own lyrics, and my brother was like, “Ah, you’re killing the songs.” I’m like, “Why? Because I make my own song? I don’t care. I don’t speak English. Y’all older than me. You learn English, know what they’re talking about. Me, I wanna sing too, because I don’t speak English I cant sing? No, I’m singing. That’s it.”
BE: And James Brown?
AK: James Brown was the top of the list. There was no party in Benin, no nightclub, no party ever, without James Brown. If you don’t have James Brown, your party sucks. Period, man. The one that was,“I got the feelin…” Oh, man, I’m never gonna forget that. There was a guy that used to play in my brother’s band, and then he said he is the reincarnation of James Brown. Oh man, he’s funny as hell, and then he wears the shoe, and then he’s slidin’, and then he comes with the cape, and then I’m like, “What’s wrong with you?” And then you see him go, “Hey, hey, hey, hey, I got the feelin’ uh uhhhhh oh baby baby I got the…” I was cracking up, laughing like crazy, and I was like, “You sound phony. You can’t do it.” And he say, “Yeah, I can be James Brown too. James Brown was top.”
Then you have the Motown and the Jackson Five arrived. [sings “ABC”] Oh man, I almost forgot, I’m a sing everything with my mouth, I’ll make the instruments, I’ll do the whole thing. I love it. Soul Train come to Benin too. Homie, we love Soul Train, because we smuggle the TV in Nigeria to get the Soul Train. When Soul Train started you don’t do your homework. You’re on your own man. Everybody just get back. The thing with the new music, when it started, man, that’s it. You call me I won’t answer. You ask me anything, I’m just like stuck. To see all the new dance steps and all those thing—The Temptations… Motown was all over the place. Whoo, we loved it.
BE: How about Curtis Mayfield?
AK: Ooh, Curtis Mayfield. When he arrived then another thing happens. Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, they were those two that make me realize that you can be in America and be poor. “Move On Up” I’m like, “Where are you moving on to?” And then my brother go, “No it’s not you moving.” I’m like, alright. So later on I understood the meaning of that, and I was looking for a song that can be my gift to the youth of the world. For them not to, in this turmoil time of economical crisis, for them not to forget how important it is to dream big, and to do everything in their capacity to achieve their dreams. That’s when I was like, “I know there is one song.” The song was on the tip of my tongue, but it couldn’t come out, ‘till my daughter say, “What about this song?” And I was like, “Ah, this is it.” That’s when Curtis Mayfield came back, and also Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Goin’ On” was the song the made me ask questions to my parents. “Whats goin on? Why is he saying, ‘What’s goin on?’ And they say, ‘Because of the Vietnam War.’ Then I’m, ‘Why are people in Vietnam? What is going on?’” My parents tried to explain to me, and I said to my father, “But why we human beings like war so much?” My dad said, “The day you find the answer, tell me.”
BE: Back then did you ever imagine you would end up on stage with Carlos Santana?
AK: Never. But it was not impossible for me, because my parents has always said, “Dream. Dream big.” He’s a human being, and there’s millions of chances that we might cross paths.
BE: It’s a really cool rendition of “Samba Pa Ti.” And the brass work is so chilled. It that the Antibalas horns on there?
AK: No. In “Samba Pa Ti” that’s Roy Hargrove. He is amazing. He’s the most, I like him. He’s another kind of artist. He can hear stuff that you and I can’t hear, and that’s what I love about him, he’s a genius.
BE: How does Bollywood come into the picture?
AK: Because that was the only movies we were allowed to see. We didn’t have money to buy movies from Europe or America. We had been doing trade with Indian and Pakistani people in Benin as far as I can recall, and they bring the movies, and I love Indian movies because they always have a happy ending. I love it. I love the fact that the good people always win over the bad people, and it give me good feeling when I come out of that movie, so I love that particular movie, we’ve seen it so many times its called Ann, which means “the magician,” but we called it something else. We rename it in Benin and we invented our own songs on it. But that was not the song I wanted. I wanted the real theme song of the movie, the song that makes the magician lose. But I finally found it with the help of my brother who worked for an airline company. He’s not in the plane, but he’s one of those top ten people in the world that decide the airfare, and the work. He come here sometime, and he goes to India and all those strategic place where they do all those things, and he went to India and asked his colleague to find the song, because I sung a little piece of it on the mp3, and he brought it to the office, and then he played it, and then they all going crazy. Who’s gonna find the song? Telling me, “You African people ain’t gonna dare us. We gonna find this song.” While everybody’s busy talking, one of them very quietly went on the Internet and find the song. He goes, “May I?” Everybody turn at him like, “We gonna kill you if you come up with an answer.” He goes, “Yeah, I got the song.” So I got the song, and I got the lyrics, and the meaning of it, so I thank him on the album too.
BE: You do a cover of the theme from the movie Out Of Africa. For you, its about the nostalgia of leaving home. Tell us about why you left in 1983
AK: I left because of the military regime, the communist regime, that was forcing every Beninese African musicians to write propaganda. You woke up in the morning, that’s the first thing you hear on TV, all around. Then you have people like the Orchestre Polyrythmo that wrote songs for it. You have Gnonas Pedro. He wrote a lot of songs [sings], beautiful songs, and they put their talent to the service of that ideology because they didn’t have the choice. Me, because my album was released and I was touring in different parts of Africa, I was able to escape for a couple of months from the pressure, ‘till I got caught up with the pressure. One thing I remember my father telling me is to not ever use your music and link it to a political party, because they vanish fast, and you vanish too.
So I always refused to do that, and it was clear that I’d have to leave the country, because I cannot dare the government. They’re gonna break me down or they’re gonna take my father. Because my father was also under threat. They asked him to be part of the government which he refused. He say, “I’m not a politician. I’ve never been, and I don’t wanna have blood on my hands. I don’t want nothing to do with it.” He said it more politely, but he was under scrutiny. So our house was an open house of freedom of speech, and that was taken away from us, because they start sending spies to be able to put you in jail. That was the atmosphere when I left. I had to really run out of my country. So I ran from Benin. For the first six years of my exile, I was not able to speak to my mom or dad. One day I was watching the TV in France, and the movie Out Of Africa comes, and I just break into tears, because every image of the landscape reminded me memories that make me cry. I say, “I left my country and I’m here, and I don’t even know if my mom and dad are doing good. I can’t talk to my family.” It was just the most painful thing ever. I don’t know how Miriam Makeba was able to cope with it for 30 years. I just can’t imagine it.
BE: What year did that regime start? And when did you finally go back?
AK: 1972, I think the communists started. I went back in 1991.
BE: You said you to France first?
AK: I left Benin to go to Paris. In 1989, Benin turned from the military regime to a democracy, but I was not still sure it was safe for me to go back so I had to wait two years more before I go.
BE: So, if Benin had had a better government we might never have had you, you would have been happy to stay there?
AK: Oh yeah, I wouldn’t leave. I would eat my good food. I’d be having fun and… I dunno. I really can’t tell. I mean there is a destiny for everybody, and the circumstances are part of it, so I left because I had to leave. That’s it.
BE: You’ve done this great trilogy of albums inspired by the African diaspora in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, the US, and so on. It’s all connected by the history of the slave trade. Did you think about all that stuff back then in Benin?
AK: Oh, I understood it big time, because there is a huge community of Benin and Portuguese kids, because Fransico de Souza from Brazil married many, many women and had tons of kids. We have Beninese that are called Almieda, de Souza, Vierra. My mom’s maiden name is Fernando. My grandfather was a slave descendant that came back to Benin, so I knew about it big time. I knew the music of the Portuguese descendants in Benin, how close it was with the Carnival music that they have in Brazil.
That Brazilian song on the new CD, “Afia.” I wrote that with Vinicius de Cantuaria. We wrote it for it to be on the album Black Ivory Soul but it didn’t make it to the album. Because there are too many songs and you know, you give and take. My musicians have always been frustrated that we never played that song on stage. They were like, “Angelique, why don’t you put it on the album? If you don’t do it, I’ll do it.” I’m like, “You know what? Give me a break. That song will live when the time comes for the song to live, so leave me alone.” So now they can’t blame me anymore. They have the song.
BE: Tell me about Uwem Akpan, his book, and the song “Agbalagba”
AK: The song “Agbalagba” was in the pipeline. We were working on it, and we left it hanging and we didn’t finish the song. When I met Uwem, and he talked to me about his book, and we had a long discussion, and when I came back, the song was there. Really, the song was there. I’m like, “This is what this is about.” That’s why the song was waiting for the right message to come through it. And his book really inspired that song deeply.
BE: It is a gorgeous song. Tell me more about Lionel Loueke. Did you two know each other back in Cotonou?
AK: Lionel’s father was the principal of my high school, and I’ve been to school with his bigger brother, his older brother, Alexis. And I used to play with Alexis because Alexis was a guitar player in the high school band we were in called The Sphinx, so Alexis was already playing with me. And sometimes he comes and sometimes he don’t, because his father was very strict, and for him music was not an option in his house whatsoever. So Alexis have given up music to help Lionel do it, so Alexis is the one that start teaching Lionel how to play the guitar. And I’ve seen Lionel around. I mean, they were five boys. Sometimes they would come to the school before their father finish work, and they’re all running around like crazy. I mean, imagine five boys—they just go around, around, and around.
So I’ve known him for a long time and I’m really proud of him, because for him to survive the resistance of his father to music is something. Me, I was lucky. My parents were supportive. Him, he was on open war with his father to really be able to do music, and he was willing to leave his family. He had to go to exile too, and he exiled to Ivory Coast. And that’s when he was just questioning, I mean, “If I go back home, I have all the luxury I want. Why am I suffering why am I living in the street?” But then he goes, “But I cannot give up music.” That’s what music does to you, and that’s why Lionel is who he is, and he’s the musician that he is.
BE: Finally, talk about the version of “Ami O” you did with for Lionel’s new album Mwaliko. I think it’s better than the original
AK: Oh boy. Don’t say that too loud for the Cameroonaise people. You gonna be in trouble. With Lionel we work closely to do this album, because from the beginning, once Jean and I we laid the song down and we do the demo, we would call him up and he will do the guitar, and then once we were done and he said to me that he was doing his album, and he would like to have an album with other musicians. So I tried to put him in contact with Youssou (N’Dour) but their schedules didn’t work out at all. And we were sitting down here actually, talking about what we can do together, and he said we should take another African song, that is really known in Africa all over the place, which is “Ami O.” So we started singing it and he go, “Yeah, right. That is it,” and then he came we put the microphone: one take, done.
BE: Thanks so much, Angelique, and good luck with this album.
