Afropop Worldwide (New York)
Sean Barlow
6 February 2002
interview
Brooklyn, New York — Sean Barlow of afropop.org visited Angelique Kidjo at her home in Brooklyn, NY in early February. She talks about her new album Black Ivory Soul (Columbia)released this March.
Sean Barlow: Congratulations on your new album! The first one since '98. It has a real different sound, a real different instrumentation and feel. How would you describe this album?
Angelique Kidjo: This album is the 2nd part of my trilogy that I started with "Oremi." Since a child I have always been attracted to covers on which you have black people that sing in different languages, because in school they never teach you anything about slavery. It's done on purpose for us not to think about that and not to know our history. I come to know about slavery through music because I started asking questions. I thought when you're black you live in Africa, right? Then I was fortunate enough to have my grandmother tell me about slavery. My first reaction was violent. I was like, how could we do that? How can something happen like that? I go on blabbing My parents always let me do what I want to do. If I want to scream then I scream and when then when I'm done, they say, now we can talk. Now that the anger is expressed, now we can talk to you, get your attention and get your sense. They always said to me that I have to be focused on what I want to do. Hate to hate is not an answer. If I want to heal, if I want to better understand it for the global view, then I have to do something and go meet those people.
This album is between Salvador de Bahia and Benin and specifically my village where I come from because that's where you have one of the biggest communities of Portuguese that come from Brazil, in Africa. One of the first colonists to arrive in Benin was Francisco de Souza. He was from Brazil. He lived and died in that village. So, since I was young I have lived inside that music because my mom has Portuguese blood too. So the music, the food of Brazil, I have been into it. When I went to Bahia I felt at home. I have the same feeling in Bahia as when I land in Benin. The vegetation is the same. The smells are the same. The foods are the same. They do music all the time. So, I tried to build up the connections between my village, my country and Brazil. In order to do that I wanted a live album, an organic album where everyone would come together to play-- where people were mixing African-American, African, Caribbean, and Brazilian, and anybody else, because the music does not belong to me. It belongs to everyone. We just approach it in different ways. The overall of this album is basically the mixing and the mixture.
SB: Talk a little bit about the Brazilian musical elements you're using through out your new repertoire.
AK: The Brazilian part of it is much more guitar and percussion. What African music brought to Brazil was the rhythm. What African music meets in Brazil is the harmony and complexity of the classical music that the masters of the slaves were listening to. Also, on top of that there is the Indian music, which gives to Brazil the specificity they have to their music. In this album I also have a duet with Dave Matthews. He first said, "I'm not singing with you. You scare me to death." I said, "Come on, you can sing, I love your voice." I gave him the music tracks before I finished recording and then he came on board.
SB: Let's talk about some specific songs with that Brazilian connection, "Tumba" and "Refavela" specifically?
AK: In order to do this album I've traveled a couple of times to Bahia to get different artists involved because I could not do it without them. I wrote "Tumba" in Bahia with Carlinos Brown. We wrote six songs in an hour. That's how fast and good he can be. On this album we only have three from that writing: "Tumba," "Iemanja," and "Okan Bale."
SB:Can you recreate the scene there? How did that happen with you and Carlinos Brown?
AK: I went there and he has a swimming pool on the sea. It doesn't have walls, just wood, open like a veranda. He invited one of his guitar players, an old guitar player from Bahia. We start singing old songs. It doesn't feel like working hard. You have the sea, the breeze, the drink, and the food. I thought, we're never ever going to write a song because it's too cool to be working here. But before I realized, an hour had passed by and we already had six songs. That's the magic of music and that's the magic of inspiration. So, I came back home after that and he said digest. Do whatever you want. Make them yours. When I came back to where I was living in Bahia I sat down, and when I start playing the song, the lyrics just started falling into place. For example the song "Tumba," I was writing facing the sea. I was looking beyond the sea at the people who would listen to this album, come to the show, and buy the album. I wanted to dedicate this song to them because it was too good. I was having too much fun not to share with the public.
You have to realize that today it is very hard to get people to come to a show because there is so much to do at home. You can sit and do Internet and watch TV all day long without getting out of your house or doing something else like buying a CD or going to a show. So I said, this song will be for them. That is going to be the moment in the show where everybody gets up and dances and comes to life.
The song "Black Ivory Soul" was a song my husband and I wrote about 3 years ago. The idea of this song, after seeing and LP of Manu Dibango, where he was saying on the back of an album that people in America call his music Black Ivory Soul while in Africa they call it Makossa. So we just took the idea from that song. It's about what do we do to ourselves. I mean we have to think about ourselves. If we are happy we can make other people happy. And everyday it's our duty to ask ourselves what are we going to do that day to ourselves to be able to be positive in a global way.
"Refavela" was a song that was originally written by Gilberto Gil. It's the perfect song between the African percussion and the Bahian percussion, the way they blend together because the way he played has that African influence in there, and I emphasize it when I do it myself.
I didn't understand what he was saying in his song, so I wrote my own lyrics. Refavela means Ghettos. Refavela is another way of saying the renaissance of the ghettos. We have to think about who are the first targets of ghettos? They are the ones we see in the streets begging for money. In that song I am saying when is it going to be time to stop talking and to act? What are we going to do for the future of the planet that rely on us adults to guide them and to give them hope for the future? If we don't do so, how can we call ourselves human beings?
SB: Which is the slow song? "Okan Bale?" Tell us about that one.
AK: That is the 3rd song I wrote with Carlinos Brown. I thought about my parents and how they gave me the education that could allow me to go everywhere and open my ear to a lot of different music and the world simply. I dedicate that song to them because it is strength to me to know that I have a family that loves me--that I can call anytime. "Okan Bale" means piece of heart, because their love is unconditional for me.
My brothers and my sisters are always going to love me for who I am.
They're never going to judge me and they're always going to be there if I fall. And including the family that build as well. A lot of people don't think of artist as a person with a family. It's important as a person to be strong, have a background and stand on something, to be able to travel all around the world and give so much. If you don't have that strength, you can't give. If you're empty, all you can give is emptiness. "Okan Bale" is wishing for everyone to have that.
SB: Tell us about your band.
AK: Most of my band members live in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is full of musicians. It's amazing. We used to make a joke that if someone dropped a bomb in Brooklyn, half of the musicians in New York City would be dead. I hope it never happens, right? Brooklyn has a lot of good musicians. To have them around, we can get together to rehearse and make a few touch ups on songs.
SB: Your reputation as a performer is for being high energy, a dynamic dancer, and really putting on a hot show. So when you perform this material is this a different vibe? Is it a little more reflective? How would you characterize how you are performing this material now?
AK: It's always going to be energetic, because I still have those songs that I'm always going to play. But it has that acoustic sound that we have to emphasize on stage. I really want people to understand that energy can also be acoustic. Meaning you can sing, play guitar, use voice, play percussion and have energy in there. It depends how you bring it to people. More and more people like the acoustic part. They can discover songs in a different way, in the emptiness and beauty of it. If you cannot play a song acoustic, with voice and guitar, or instrumentation, then that means the song is not beautiful.
SB: Tell us about the song "Iemanja?"
AK: It's a song that wrote with Carlinos Brown and dedicate to Iemanja, the goddess of the sea, asking her to join us for the party, bring us her wisdom and her loving. We need that. We never can have enough of that, right? So if she's our mother, mother of party, mother of love, and mother of peace, it's time for her to show up because we need that definitely now. Come quick.
Sean Barlow asked Angelique Kidjo to give a short testimonial about the importance of public radio:
"Public radio does the same work we do, opens up people's minds to other people and brings our music to the rest of the world. I listen to public radio because they give you more info than any commercial radio would do. Their goal is not the same. Public radio is really for the public.
The public is not only seen as a consumer. People that love public radio love it because they are looking for something different. If you love public radio you have to support it because if you do not support it, it will disappear. It's not even a question. It has to be normal for people to do that. Period."
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