MORNING BECOMES
ECLECTIC
Tuesday, 6/23/98
KCRW * 89.9 FM * Santa Monica,
CA
Nick Harcourt: This is KCRW. The program you are listening to is Morning Becomes Eclectic; I'm your host Nick Harcourt, and a very
good morning and welcome back to Angelique Kidjo, good morning.
Angelique
Kidjo: Good morning, everybody.
NH: Good to have you in town. When was the last
time you were here?
AK:
Four years ago, a long time.
NH:
Yeah, what have you been up to?
AK:
I've been doing another album, touring around the world, and been
busy writing this one. So I've been pretty busy.
NH:
You have a new album out, as we said, it was released last week.
It's called Oremi (o-RAY-me)? Is that the correct pronunciation?
AK: Absolutely.
NH:
It's on Island Records, and your fourth album for the label, Mango/Island.
Maybe we could go back...
AK:
Mango disappeared already. Mango is no more.
NH:
Yeah, Mango went into Island, and Island is in the process of going
into something else.
AK:
OK, don't even start.
NH:
I know, I know. We have a theory here about how it's all going to
end up.
AK: Aw, I don't
wanna know about it.
NH:
But let's go back a little further than the new record, perhaps
to your beginnings, you're from Benin?
AK:
Absolutely.
NH: And you
were born there. How did you begin to get into music? I know you
ended up in Paris, but how did you begin to make music yourself,
and then your career progress?
AK:
I started singing with my mother in her theater group; I was six
years old. And I have always been surrounded by music and sports
because my brothers were in table tennis and basketball. And one
of them was the champion and captain of the team of Benin. And my
brothers set up the first modern musical group in the 70s back home,
and I was a little, small little girl, listening to all the music
that they covered, like Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, James Brown,
Aretha Franklin, and musicians from Zaire, the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones; my brother loved singing songs from, what's the name, I
keep forgetting. (singing) Sitting in the morning sun, I'll be sitting
when the evening comes, watching the ships roll in, and I watch
'em roll away again.
NH:
Yeah, Otis.
AK: Otis Redding,
that's it.
NH: Absolutely.
AK: So, I grew up listening to all different
kinds of music like that, so that's how I started singing; I was
very, very young when I started singing.
NH:
I was gonna let you roll with that and sing the whole song there
for a moment. So you were listening to a lot of American artists,
and your brothers' band was covering a lot of these people.
AK: Absolutely. They were covering music that
came from everywhere, basically. All the music that was on the air
in the 70s, they were playing it. Most of them are in my head, I
cannot give you the name of the band, I just can sing the song because
I was very young when I started listening to this music, and sometimes
I didn't even know the lyrics, basically, in English. So I would
sing the melody and sing the instrument part with my mouth. That's
how I developed my memory with the song, so that's how I started
to be in the music world.
NH:
What about your own music, the music of Benin. How did you begin
to, perhaps, incorporate that into some of the music you'd been
hearing and then make your own music?
AK:
The music that comes from the South of Benin where I come from had
been bred inside. I was most of the time hooked with my aunts and
uncles, always asking questions because I was curious a lot, so
the first song I sang, basically, was a traditional song from Benin.
So, my brothers brought me to the modern instruments from the Western
world, the instruments in the song and the drum I used to know came
from Benin, came from my village, came from different parts of the
south of Benin. So, when I first discovered the instruments that
come from the Western world, I was like Alice in Wonderland.
I was like, "What is this? This is different, it's not the
cowbell, it's not the big drum, it's not the chest, it's not the
leg, it's nothing that I knew from." And, I was like, "Oh, I
like that. I like that thing that can make music that can
make me happy as my drums do the same thing." So, I have been
always wondering how, one day if I became a musician, how I could
let those two worlds meet. That's what I try to do with my music
today.
NH: So, we can
jump forward in just a moment, and we're going to hear some music
as well, but I'm really interested in how you then went from this
beginning to understand all these different styles of music to actually
starting to make your own music. When did you first perform?
AK: I first performed at six years old, singing
traditional songs, and I did my first recording for the national
radio in my country in 1976 or 1977. I was doing a cover of a song
of Miriam Makeba that I adapted on my way. And, the thing is, when
I'm writing a song, I don't think about what kind of groove it's
gonna be, if it's gonna sound hip-hop, it's gonna sound jazzy, I
don't think about it because all those things are in my head all
the time. When I start writing songs, there are three things that
work together for me: the drums, the melody, and the words together
make one sound to me. That's basically how I start. Then the drum-fill
comes in, then the instruments and the harmony comes after. So those
instruments I add, if I like it, I keep it. If I don't like it,
I say, "I don't want this, I don't want guitar here, I don't
want keyboard here, I want this,  and I want that,"
and I'm lucky enough to work with my husband who knows how to deal
with computers because I hate the computer, I don't touch the computer,
I don't wanna know. I just wanna keep my ears and my hands focused
on what's coming outside of my soul.
NH:
So you tell him what you wanna do.
AK:
I just put it on the tape, and I tell him, "You know what,
you put it on there. I don't wanna know what that's gonna be." And he likes
to do that. And sometimes he says to me most of the time when we
travel to Benin, he's French, and the way he discovered and talks
about my traditional music, I never thought about it before because
I'm living my music, I'm living in it, I'm not asking myself any
questions, I don't count, I don't do "one, two, three, four,"
I'm like on the pulse of the rhythm. We never count, basically,
that's the way it is. So when he arrived in Benin, he was like "Wow,
that sounds like the Greek in the ancient times when the orators
stood and started singing, that's how you put the music together."
I said, "All right, if you say it's so, it might be true."
I don't think about it like that, so, every time I talk about a
drum, he's automatically related to it with a modern instrument
because he knows better that world of mine, and sometimes,
NH:
Well, that's his reference point.
AK:
Oh, yeah, that's it, definitely. So I respect that. And sometimes,
he will ask me, "Do you like it?" And if I say, "I
don't like it," he won't force me. If it's jungle too much,
or techno, or too much rock 'n' roll, I'm like, "I'm not dealing
with it, naaah, I don't want it." So, I don't put it on.
 NH: You moved
to France when you were, how old were you when you moved to France?
AK: Mmm-mmm, don't put me in that . . .
NH: A younger woman.
AK:
Yeah, I moved to France in 1983 after doing my first album for African
continent in 1981.
NH:
And did you meet your husband in France or before you went over
there?
AK: Yeah, I
met him in France in 1987.
NH:
And you've been collaborating since then.
AK:
Since then.
NH: Well, we'll
come back up to date in a little while. Why don't we let you play
some music right now. And you have your keyboard player with you,
he's Bonamus Bowie?
AK:
Yes.
NH: OK, and
you're both sitting there in the studios ready to play us some music.
What's the first song you're gonna play for us this morning?
AK: The song I'm gonna play this morning is
on the new album, called "Loloye," which means, hmmm,
doesn't mean anything, basically. I like to make up my own words
in a way to make it sound, but the meaning of the song is love is
not a jail, and you cannot use love as an argument to beat up a
woman; if you love somebody, you have to send that person free.
Love is about freedom of respect of the freedom of each partner.
And, if you're lucky to find somebody in your lifetime who loves
you for who you are and what you are, you should cherish that love
and work on it.
NH: Let's here
it. On Morning Becomes Eclectic, this is Angelique Kidjo live.
AK:
(sings "Loloye") Thanks a lot.
NH:
Thank you! Angelique Kidjo right here live at 89.9, KCRW on Morning Bcomes Eclectic. We were talking just before you started
performing about the fact that you moved to Paris. How did you come
to move to Paris, and I'm sure there was a very active African music
community there, but how did you come to be there?
AK:
I moved from Benin for two main reasons: First one was the musical
scene was so small, after two years of touring, and I'm somebody
who likes to change and to move forward, and doing the same thing
starts to get me a little bit -- sad. And the second reason mainly
is political because Benin at that time was still Communism dictator.
And the government step by step moved on putting pressure on the
musicians for them to praise the revolution and to sing about Communism.
And one thing that I say that my music will never do is to praise
an ideology, and a political ideology. So, the reason to move was
obvious. If I don't move and I stay there and express the way I
feel about it, I'll put myself and my parents and my family in danger.
So I had to move. So I had to prepare my departure to France very
secretly. And I moved without anyone knowing that I was traveling
that day; people guessed that I might leave one day, but nobody
knew that I was leaving, otherwise I wouldn't be leaving. And I
moved to Paris because Benin is a French-speaking country. When
you move to make a big change from another life, it's better for
you to go to a place where you speak the language. Then you can
get linked to the people more easily, and because, too, my brother
was already there, three years, he had been spending three years
there. And that gave confidence to my parents to let me go because
I'm a girl, and they're not there any more, even if I was an adult,
and I was earning my own money, they still care. It doesn't matter
how old you gonna be, in Africa, you're always gonna be a child
of somebody. So, that's why I moved to Paris.
NH:
So, you came to Paris, and that makes a lot of sense, I mean go
somewhere where you speak the language. That's why I came to America.
AK: Then I started doing music with a piano
player from Holland called Jasper Van't Hof, I had a group called
Pili Pili. So I had been touring with him for about four or five
years before I decided to go back to my solo career. And, meanwhile,
I met my husband. And, of course, now, I'm living in New York because
I decided way back home when, in the 70s, I discovered that movie
from Alex Haley called Roots about slavery. You know about slavery 'til
you face it. In the movie, that changed completely my real understanding
how slavery had been tough in America, and how people have been
treated by going back to Africa where we welcome the colonists,
thinking that because they're human beings, they're exactly like
us, and trust them, and they fool us around for them to be able
to take the people of this continent out to build their own continent
and to build their economy. So, I decided then at that time I asked
questions to my grandmother because I was lucky enough to have both
grandmothers live more than 100 years, ask them how come that this
situation is like that. And the mother of my father was telling
me that slavery was possible because we helped the white people
to get the people outside of the country because they did not know,
apart from the coast, how to get inside the country and get the
people. How can they know who is strong enough, healthy enough,
to take them away, we helped them. And, she told me, "What
you want to do, it doesn't matter what you take," because I
wanted to be a lawyer of human rights. She said to me, "If
you wanna be a lawyer or if you're gonna be a musician, make sure
that you don't do your work in terms of hate and revenge because
it's not the way we're gonna find a solution. White people are who
they are, but they're always gonna be part of our lives. They have
to continue being our partner, and we have to teach them that hate
is not what we go for, beating is not what we go for, we go for
love and care for each other." So, that's what I try to do
with my music; I decided to move forward, to go and meet the black
Diaspora that comes basically from Africa that are in the world.
And my first stop is in America. And, of course, that album has
a sound of R&B and soul and funk, that was my first influences.
And my second stop is gonna be in Brazil, and my third stop is gonna
be in Cuba, Haiti, and New Orleans because all of those places keep
something which is very close to my country which is the Voodoo
religion and the rhythms.
NH:
Let's talk about the religion a little bit if you can before we
play some more music. I know that you actually share two religions,
I mean, you have Catholic. And you have animism. How do you juxtapose,
I mean use both of those religions, how can they both be a part
of your life? I'm not saying that they shouldn't be. I'm just interested
to know how do you make these two religions both a part of who you
are?
AK: When the
missionaries arrived in Benin, for example, and they brought the
religion, they asked everyone to be baptized, and everybody had
been baptized but, we told them from day one that our religion we
wanna keep it because our religion is very important for us. And
they were obliged to accept that, there was no way for them not
to accept that because people wouldn't go to their church and not
go into their Voodoo ceremony after. So the first cathedral that
had been built in the history of the Catholic religion in Benin
was built right in front of the Temple of Python. And those two
priests were very close friends. And how did those affect my life
and I incorporate them in my life? It's simple. In the Voodoo religion
they teach us to respect the nature and to respect every human being.
Everything that is alive on this earth we have to have respect for
because we believe in Voodoo religion that without the nature, a
man would not exist, a human being would not exist. Therefore, we
choose to believe in the thunder, in the lightning, in the water,
in all the elements that are surrounding us, our lives. Snake is
very important because they say in the mythology of the Voodoo religion
that this world had been created by two snakes, male and female;
during 40 days they created all the planets. And at the dawn of
the 41st day, they embraced themselves and left the earth to leave
the human being to do what they have to do. And those snakes are
called aida-wedo, which means what belongs to the earth belongs
to you. And when those gods come to reward somebody who works for
a community, they come in terms of rainbow. And they call these
two rainbows rainbow snake. And in Haiti, they call it aida-Houeda, and everything stays like that because, what is very
important for me is the care of each other. That's what Catholic
religion teaches us: You have to love each other. God doesn't send
us on the earth to kill each other. He sent us for us to use our
brain and our self-conscience to work for a better life for every
individual and for everybody. And that's one of the things I really
appreciate, too, in the Voodoo religion, where we deal with community.
NH: Well, I like that you can take both of those
beliefs because animism itself, or Voodoo, is obviously really a
belief of everything having a purpose and everything having a soul
and everything having a reason, and taking the caring part of the
Catholic religion and putting it together. That makes sense to me.
Anyway, why don't we have some more music, and then we'll come back
and talk some more in a little while. What's the next piece you're
gonna play for us?
AK:
The next song I wanna sing is gonna be an a capella song
a singer from Togo next door to Benin used to sing. It's called
"Blewu," and that singer was one of my biggest influences,
too, in Africa. She died in a car accident in 1973, and it was a
loss for us in West Africa because she was very big. And "Blewu"
means, it's a thanking song that we used to sing when everybody
joined for a drum or for a concert, and we ask the Almighty to send
everybody back home safe, with no harm to anyone. So, for the listeners
outside, this is my thanking for them sitting down or driving their
car listening, this song is dedicated to everybody.
NH:
On Morning Becomes Eclectic at KCRW, it's Angelique Kidjo.
AK:
(sings "Blewu")
NH:
Angelique Kidjo live on Morning
Becomes Eclectic. That was
beautiful a capella piece. Thank you so much.
AK:
Pleasure.
NH: OK, so we're
talking about the fact, I'm sort of backtracking now, how you started,
you came to Paris, your career really began there, at least the
Western part of your career. You're now living in New York City.
How do you find New York City? How long have you been there?
AK: A year. Almost a year, yeah.
NH:
And the community, it's a pretty different place from Paris.
AK: Oh, it is different from Paris, and it's
different from Africa where I come from. What I like about New York
is the energy in that city. I mean, it's moving non-stop. And when
you are in New York, you have an idea of how the world can look
like. You have every kind of different person, different parts of
the world there. You have Asia, you have Latin America, you have
Africa, you have North America, you have Europe, you have everybody
living in New York City. And I like the energy, and I like the way
you work there. When you wake up in the morning, you wanna do something,
they can be efficiently used, and boom, have things done, and I
like that.
NH: It's certainly
a city of many, many, many different cultures. Los Angeles is, too,
but I would think that New York is probably even more diverse.
AK: Absolutely, and I like that. I'm somebody
who likes to challenge and mix things and mix people. I like that.
NH: And you were saying that your next stop
is going to be Brazil. You want to live in Brazil at some point?
AK: Yeah, I'm going to go to Salvador Bahia
to start with to write because the Salvadorian people have a very
close history with my village. The first colonist that arrived in
Benin was a Brazilian white man called Francisco de Souza. He arrived
and he was very close friends of the king. And he was married to
different women there, he had a lot of kids, and you have a huge,
big community of mixed kids between Brazilian white people and Beninese
women. And there is an anecdote about this guy that arrived that
explains completely how things happen like this today, how slavery
was possible, and how the relationships are still in Africa. As
I was saying before, he was a friend of the king. And they had a
fight, I think he betrayed the king. and when you betray a king,
they kill you.
NH: Not a good
guy to betray.
AK: No.
NH: Not the king.
AK:
So in the Voodoo religion, there are two colors that you can't play
around with: red, which is the color of the blood that links animals
and human beings together, and the color white, which is the color
that we wrap the god and goddesses in, meaning, it is the light,
it has nothing to do with the dark. So because he was white, they
couldn't kill him. So the king said, "Why don't you dye him
with indigo?" So they dyed that guy with indigo and they tied
him up outside in the backyard, but he was looking at them, his
eyes were blue. They were like, "This is weird; he's not a
black man, we can't kill him. Let us let him go." So they let
him go, and he moved from the Kingdom of Abomey to my village. So,
the people that come from Benin and go to Salvador Bahia, they came
back, and they influenced the traditional music of my village. There
are a lot of things that sound like samba and like the drum of the
olodoum. And they came back, too, and built up a museum in my
village. So when you go to my village and you visit my village,
you have two museum. You have the museum of Benin, with the beginning
of the colonization and the slavery -- the people that came back,
the Cubans came back, the Brazilian people came back, the Haitian
people came back, to influence the music itself and the way of life.
And you have the museum of the Salvadorian people that came back
to Benin and built up a museum. So, people tell me that going to
Salvador Bahia is just like my village, so I wanna go there.
NH: So you wanna go check it out.
AK:
Oh, yeah.
NH: Do you get
back to Benin, to your own village very often? Do you return?
AK: Oh, yeah, I try once a year.
NH:
To go home, you still have family?
AK:
I have my dad, my mom, my family, my uncles, my aunts, and cousins.
NH: So it's always good to go back and make
that connection.
AK: I need to
go.
NH: I think we have one more song prepared for
us, which looking at the time here, I think we've got time to do
that and probably come back and chat just a little bit more after
this. What's the next song you're gonna play for us?
AK:
"Malaika," which is a traditional song from Tanzania and
from East Africa, I will say, because there is fight between the
Tanzanian who wrote it, who didn't write it, I don't wanna get involved
in that.
NH: You just
wanna sing it.
AK: I just wanna
sing it. And it's a love song which means "I love you, my angel."
(sings "Malaika")
NH:
Beautiful piece of music, "Malaika" is the title of the
song; traditional piece of music, as you said, made famous by Miriam
Makeba.
AK: Absolutely.
NH: Angelique Kidjo, thanks so much for coming
in and visiting with us.
AK:
Pleasure.
NH: Here this
morning. For our listeners, I should let them know that your CD
is in stores, Oremi is the name of the album, it's on Island
Records.
|
Angelique Kidjo: I'm happy to be back home.
AK:
Yeah. She wanted badly to sing. She really wanted to sing that song,
and she wouldn't give up. I mean we thought it was just a kind of
caprice, that she would forget and she wouldn't think about it.
And she kept on saying, "I want to sing." So the day at
the studio, she arrived at the studio, I don't know who put the
Cartoon Network Channel on; she arrived, there was that Tom and Jerry cartoon playing, and she was like, "Mom, you know
what? I don't feel like singing now. I wanna watch my cartoon first."
So she sat down and watched the cartoon for three hours. And then
we go, "Time is running, we're paying, man. Come and sing."
"OK, OK," she said. She sat down, she put the headphones
on, and she goes to her dad, "Can you put down the light, please?"
So the father put down the light, and she looked at the father and
goes, "You'd better make sure your computer works right. I'm
not gonna sit down here singing 10 times." I'm like, "OK,
here we go." I said, "Naima, what? Where do you learn
those things from?" She goes, "Mom, I watch TV."
I'm like, "OK. That's it." And when she finished singing,
she goes, "I'm done. I'm not singing no more. Done." She
stood up, vroom, she was gone, back to the Cartoon Network Channel.
Tom Schnabel: I'm Tom Schnabel. I'm very delighted to bring Angelique
Kidjo to our microphones. Once again, I don't know whether you've
been here or not. You came here once before or
AK:
Yeah, first they threw out the Brazillian Portuguese people because
the first ones that arrived were the Brazillian Portuguese people
before the French. And when they came, they kicked them out as they
did in Togo, they kicked the Germans out.
AK:
I wanted to be there because the last time I was at the Hear, record
stores were doing the in-store with Daniel Lanois and another guy.
And the guy from Hear Music said, "We have been looking forward
to having you for such a long time, and you never can come here
because your schedule is so packed, and your record company never
gave us the ability." And I'm like, "OK, next time I'll
make sure that you're gonna be the priority." So when we started
the tour, I told them, "My priority will be Hear Music, and
we have to do so." So they took it. "We'll do it."
And I met them in San Francisco, and I told them, "I want to
go to the one in Santa Monica" because I like that store. It
doesn't look like any other record store. You enter that store,
you feel like a little bit home because it's a roof all around,
and the atmosphere of it, and I love it.