Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Angelique Kidjo: Africa’s Premier Diva

Transcript

Angelique Kidjo: Africa’s Premier Diva · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. According to Time magazine, singer an Joli Quijo is
0:28
Speaker 1: Africa's premiere diva. In addition to racking up prestigious accolades
0:33
Speaker 1: throughout her forty year career, Angelique has always leveraged her
0:36
Speaker 1: success to protect and educate young girls living in sub
0:39
Speaker 1: Saharan Africa. An Jolie Kuijo started out singing traditional music
0:57
Speaker 1: as a teenager in her native Benin, West Africa. In
1:01
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, she escapes the conflict riddled Benin for Paris,
1:05
Speaker 1: where she studied music and eventually married a French music producer.
1:09
Speaker 1: Angelique became one of Paris's most popular live performers, and
1:12
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one she signed her first record deal
1:15
Speaker 1: with Island Records. Angelika since released sixteen alums and won
1:21
Speaker 1: four World Music Grammys. Her latest album, Mother Nature, was
1:25
Speaker 1: released in June and features young African musicians like Sampa
1:29
Speaker 1: the Great and Burna Boy. On today's episode, Bruce Headlam
1:34
Speaker 1: talks to Angeli Quijo about the nature of African rhythm
1:37
Speaker 1: and why I can confuse Western musicians. She also explains
1:40
Speaker 1: how she lets her songs dictate what language her lyrics
1:43
Speaker 1: should be and how she managed to escape her home
1:46
Speaker 1: country despite being a recognizable national pop star. This is
1:54
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondtin.
2:02
Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Headlam with Angeli Quijo. It is so nice
2:06
Speaker 1: to have you here. Do I need my headphone? No,
2:09
Speaker 1: I don't think so. You don't like headphones. I hate studios.
2:12
Speaker 1: I only like stage. You don't like studios. I mean
2:15
Speaker 1: I come from a culture where you want to play,
2:18
Speaker 1: just get drums out, and you have phoney people coming around.
2:21
Speaker 1: I start on stage when I was six years old.
2:24
Speaker 1: I was twenty when I first step step be food
2:27
Speaker 1: in the studio and I hated it. I was doing
2:28
Speaker 1: my first album and I have to record from ten
2:31
Speaker 1: am in the morning to eight pm doing all the songs.
2:34
Speaker 1: The producer was not there. I was just left alone
2:36
Speaker 1: with the sound engineer doing the backing and everything. Getting
2:41
Speaker 1: there and I get out there's no son. I'm like,
2:43
Speaker 1: what kind of world is that? I'm not a cave woman.
2:45
Speaker 1: I want to be out. I don't want to be
2:47
Speaker 1: singing to the wall. I want to sing to somebody
2:49
Speaker 1: that You've done fifteen albums at least since then. Yeah,
2:53
Speaker 1: do you try and record in different kinds of studios
2:56
Speaker 1: or you. Oh yeah, I tried recording spaces that aren't
2:58
Speaker 1: studio like the thing is. In two thousand, I decided
3:01
Speaker 1: it was enough of going to the studio and prepare editing.
3:05
Speaker 1: I want everybody in the same room. So when I
3:07
Speaker 1: have the musician with me, it is great and I
3:11
Speaker 1: like that now. When I did my album Ginging with
3:14
Speaker 1: Tony Viscountry, He's like, I haven't done this kind of
3:17
Speaker 1: album since the sixties. When you opened my voice, the
3:20
Speaker 1: drums and everybody, I said, that's if you want me
3:23
Speaker 1: to perform the album, you better get me the studio
3:26
Speaker 1: where I feel like all in my living room or
3:30
Speaker 1: out or something. I just can't do it like that.
3:32
Speaker 1: So we went to Electric Lady and he brought in lamp.
3:35
Speaker 1: It was like a souk in Marrakesh and the musician
3:38
Speaker 1: with all their people, benin his percussion players, Pugibell on
3:43
Speaker 1: drums and Fiddler on keyboard. It was like one of
3:47
Speaker 1: my best memorial studio. We had lots of fun to school.
3:51
Speaker 1: The album finished, I'm like, is it over? Yeah, it's over.
3:54
Speaker 1: Two weeks. I didn't see he passed by, so I
3:56
Speaker 1: loved it. And you know he'd produced David Bowie, he'd
3:59
Speaker 1: produced everybody. Yeah, never done it like that. He never
4:02
Speaker 1: just had all the musicians, he said, I didn't do
4:04
Speaker 1: it since the sixties. Yes, And I said, well, are
4:07
Speaker 1: you gonna follow me in that one? Because I was
4:10
Speaker 1: bringing the traditional percussional player from being in and we
4:13
Speaker 1: have to rehearse before in his life. Are you sure
4:16
Speaker 1: we need all this? He was a little nervous. He
4:19
Speaker 1: looked completely worried, as aid, Tony, Chill, it's gonna be
4:22
Speaker 1: all right, and he go okay, and he's not the calabash.
4:26
Speaker 1: I was explaining to him that we have a rhythm
4:28
Speaker 1: that we play with calabash in the water in the buckets,
4:32
Speaker 1: and when he heard the sound, this smight just lead
4:35
Speaker 1: up his face. I'm like, you're seeing possibilities and he goes,
4:39
Speaker 1: oh yeah. I said, where till we get to the studio, man,
4:42
Speaker 1: let them play the folded carbell for you. There's folded carver,
4:46
Speaker 1: I say, they have tons of different kind of carbell.
4:49
Speaker 1: So we're gonna make it easy for you. Just play
4:52
Speaker 1: the music and you do your arrangement, you do your producing.
4:55
Speaker 1: And that wasn't so you said there's a particular rhythm
4:57
Speaker 1: that's played on that cowbell. Can you explain what that
5:01
Speaker 1: rhythm is? The fact that the carbell is folded like
5:03
Speaker 1: a paper, so the rhythm goes both ways. And sometimes
5:07
Speaker 1: they put it on the head to played. Sometimes they
5:09
Speaker 1: put in the hand, but they can't keep their hand flat.
5:12
Speaker 1: They need the resonance. And it has distinctive sound, very clear,
5:16
Speaker 1: not too high. It has body and take getting and
5:26
Speaker 1: he has like I never heard a sound of carbe
5:28
Speaker 1: like this, But I'm like, hey that terms of them
5:30
Speaker 1: vers you have sainphonies of carbell in the village is
5:33
Speaker 1: where you have from the smallest one to the biggest one.
5:38
Speaker 1: It's huge and it's played on the ground and it's
5:41
Speaker 1: a wall of sound that you just get into the village.
5:43
Speaker 1: Stop playing, you go WHOA Okay? Why are there so
5:46
Speaker 1: many cowpels. Every village have their own rhythm. That's the
5:50
Speaker 1: complexity of my country, almost twelve million people. When you
5:55
Speaker 1: go from one village to the other, the rhythm is
5:57
Speaker 1: completely different, The drums are completely different. And there is
6:00
Speaker 1: a village in the southern part of Being where I
6:02
Speaker 1: come from, called a Jah, where from father to son
6:05
Speaker 1: they are taught how to make the drum. You pick
6:08
Speaker 1: the tree and in the back of tree and they
6:10
Speaker 1: do the drum you want for you. First of all,
6:12
Speaker 1: you said, you know, every town has their own rhythm,
6:15
Speaker 1: their own sense of music. What was and your town
6:19
Speaker 1: was got I grew up in the economic capital of Beling.
6:23
Speaker 1: What was your town's music? My town with music was
6:26
Speaker 1: a cosmopolitan music town, because that's where you have all
6:30
Speaker 1: the band, the Belines band, Polyrithmo or elrego Na Spedule,
6:35
Speaker 1: all of those guys. But the thing that is interesting
6:38
Speaker 1: for when it comes to rhythm is that you grow
6:41
Speaker 1: up in it. Everywhere you go there's rhythm. Not one
6:46
Speaker 1: person in Africa will tell you I don't know how
6:48
Speaker 1: to dance unless they don't want to dance, because they
6:51
Speaker 1: know how to put the time on. Our body was
6:53
Speaker 1: an instrument too. The men are a naked from the
6:56
Speaker 1: shoulder from the head to the waist, and they have
6:59
Speaker 1: buckets of water so they play. It depends, it depends
7:03
Speaker 1: if they want difference sown. They put the water on
7:05
Speaker 1: themselves and they play. Is an amazing rhythm is called
7:08
Speaker 1: a chown. And the way they just go and doing
7:11
Speaker 1: the singing at the same time, you just you mesme,
7:14
Speaker 1: can you just clap out? What that rhythm would be?
7:16
Speaker 1: Like the corbell is doing this to bo bo boom boo.
7:28
Speaker 1: All the bodies just play and then you go. And
7:31
Speaker 1: when it is that they start spitting is because somebody's
7:34
Speaker 1: dancing the word. One thing that is really interesting in
7:38
Speaker 1: the traditional music in my country, and I think pretty
7:41
Speaker 1: much everywhere in Africa you're playing, the rhythm you dancing
7:45
Speaker 1: is always in a circle or semi circle. So you
7:49
Speaker 1: have somebody start the song, the people start answering, the
7:53
Speaker 1: carbir comes in, and the drum comes in and the
7:56
Speaker 1: rhythm is set. Then when the dancer comes into circle,
8:01
Speaker 1: then the drums start looking at the foot of the dancers.
8:04
Speaker 1: The dancer that dictates if the rhythm is gonna be
8:07
Speaker 1: faster or slower. You tell a very funny story in
8:10
Speaker 1: your autobiography, and this is years later after he met
8:14
Speaker 1: your husband. You would be singing traditional songs and talking
8:18
Speaker 1: about rhythm and he just kept saying, just tell me
8:20
Speaker 1: where the downbeat is and you're like, yeah, it doesn't
8:23
Speaker 1: work that way. How did you guys ever figure that out?
8:29
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is till he arrived and start
8:34
Speaker 1: digging deep in the traditional music. He had hard time
8:40
Speaker 1: because he's come from a cultural one two three four
8:43
Speaker 1: one two three four, you count the time, all right,
8:46
Speaker 1: And then finally he goes, actually is a cycle. It's
8:52
Speaker 1: always a cycle. It's going on around and around. That's
8:54
Speaker 1: what creates a trends. And it's a language also that
8:57
Speaker 1: you have to learn. Because he witnessed that. So the
9:01
Speaker 1: person that is playing the carbell, he wants to go
9:04
Speaker 1: to the restroom. Somebody picked up the carbell exactly where
9:07
Speaker 1: he stopped and it goes. He continued, we are fed
9:10
Speaker 1: with that, we're living that, it's in our breathing is
9:14
Speaker 1: everything because music is an essential part for being and
9:19
Speaker 1: he has to understand it. That's a different mindset from
9:22
Speaker 1: the Western world and us in Africa. It's all about
9:26
Speaker 1: the instinct. It's all about how we feel from the
9:29
Speaker 1: bottom of our feet all the way to the head.
9:31
Speaker 1: And my husband when I used to explain all that
9:34
Speaker 1: to him, that we are not a tradition of recording.
9:38
Speaker 1: And when we were traveling and recording rhythm, I said,
9:41
Speaker 1: one day you're gonna get the question. Is that now
9:44
Speaker 1: everybody's used to recording? I said, nope. So when the
9:47
Speaker 1: guy came. The guy was standing up looking at us like,
9:50
Speaker 1: these white people are crazy, man, what is all this thing?
9:54
Speaker 1: And we didn't have electricity most of the time. We
9:56
Speaker 1: plug the instruments on the car battery. It's crazy, right.
10:01
Speaker 1: So the guy came in and and tap the shoulder
10:04
Speaker 1: of my husband and said, what are you doing? What
10:08
Speaker 1: is the green? What is the red light? I saw
10:11
Speaker 1: sometimes you put in green, sometime it's red. And John said,
10:14
Speaker 1: when it's red, it's means to be a recording. And
10:16
Speaker 1: when he's green with listening, and he's stayed back and
10:19
Speaker 1: look at him, saying, why you want to record something
10:22
Speaker 1: that we can play for you endless see that you
10:24
Speaker 1: can listen to all the time. And I look at
10:29
Speaker 1: my husband. He looked at me. I said, I told
10:31
Speaker 1: you so, Yeah, you thought I was making it up.
10:34
Speaker 1: That's it for you. I mean. And people have to dress,
10:37
Speaker 1: they just they just cannot take the dress the drums
10:39
Speaker 1: start playing. They have to be ready. I mean, there's
10:41
Speaker 1: no question asked about it. Why you have to be
10:44
Speaker 1: clean and sharp dressed to play the drums. It is
10:47
Speaker 1: because you are giving something. You are talking to people
10:50
Speaker 1: fo the drums and the drums are inviting people to
10:53
Speaker 1: be part of something. It's the moment, because we believe
10:56
Speaker 1: deeply that every moment should be leave to the fullest
11:01
Speaker 1: because we don't know if we're gonna be here tomorrow.
11:03
Speaker 1: So every time we bring the drums out, whatever the circumstances,
11:07
Speaker 1: so I can't be baptism. Even when somebody passed away,
11:09
Speaker 1: we sing the person to the grave and we celebrate
11:12
Speaker 1: the memory, the good memory and the bad memory of
11:14
Speaker 1: the person, because it's like a part of us that
11:17
Speaker 1: is gone, but that partly we're gonna keep it. So
11:19
Speaker 1: we're gonna celebrate. And when my mom passed away in
11:21
Speaker 1: last June, she always used to tell us the day
11:25
Speaker 1: I die, and I want you to sing my Lika
11:27
Speaker 1: for me. I said, Mom, I'm gonna do that. She said,
11:30
Speaker 1: even if you're crying. I want that in my ears
11:32
Speaker 1: before you put me in a caffin. So I did,
11:35
Speaker 1: which was really hard for me to do. I didn't
11:37
Speaker 1: couldn't even finish the song. But she really summoned us
11:40
Speaker 1: and said, I don't want anybody to wear black, and
11:42
Speaker 1: I don't want you to be crying. I want you
11:44
Speaker 1: to play music all the time. Play me some fune
11:47
Speaker 1: some R and B, some hip hop, all kind of
11:49
Speaker 1: music that she dares to. People are looking at us, like,
11:53
Speaker 1: your mom just diing, you're having fun. You guys are crazy.
11:56
Speaker 1: Some people make comment saying that I lost my soul
11:58
Speaker 1: because I was dancing, and I'm like, that's what my
12:00
Speaker 1: mom wants. We liked it or not. As hard as
12:02
Speaker 1: it was for us her children, we didn't have the
12:06
Speaker 1: choice but to do what she asked us to do,
12:08
Speaker 1: even though we were all in pain or on tears
12:10
Speaker 1: and crying. We did because that's the person my mom is.
12:14
Speaker 1: She's very artistic. She loved theater, she loved music. She
12:18
Speaker 1: taught me how to sing, how to dress all my
12:21
Speaker 1: stage outfit. When I was a little girl, she would
12:23
Speaker 1: go to the extent of finding different fabric, telling me, well,
12:27
Speaker 1: you can't wear your everyday clothes. People wear them all
12:29
Speaker 1: the time. When you're on stage, not only you singing,
12:32
Speaker 1: you are performing, you have to see you in different gowns.
12:34
Speaker 1: We should say, your mom ran a theater. Yes, yes,
12:38
Speaker 1: she ran the largest theater in West Africa till today.
12:41
Speaker 1: And what was interesting in my upbringing is the fact
12:45
Speaker 1: that my parents the love of music, for art in general,
12:51
Speaker 1: and their passion also for sport were combined because they
12:55
Speaker 1: always said, whatever instrument you play, even with your voice,
12:59
Speaker 1: you anybody, your body needs to be in fit. You
13:01
Speaker 1: need to work out to be able to to have
13:04
Speaker 1: a healthy life. And me, I was born with asthma,
13:08
Speaker 1: so so I start running fifteen meters in athletic club
13:12
Speaker 1: in Benin and start swimming. People are telling my parents
13:15
Speaker 1: you're Chris. You're gonna kill your child and my mom
13:17
Speaker 1: dad said, no, she has to strengthen her length. I
13:19
Speaker 1: step by steps, she's gonna be able to have a
13:21
Speaker 1: normal life, not being crippled by asthma. My mom and
13:24
Speaker 1: dad also we bring us all kinds of music. If
13:27
Speaker 1: the music is this, someone on this planet, they find
13:30
Speaker 1: it and they bring it. Is it true your dad
13:33
Speaker 1: bought a bunch of instruments because he wanted your brothers
13:36
Speaker 1: to be like the Jackson five. My father managed to
13:39
Speaker 1: take a loan to buy the instruments and didn't tell
13:42
Speaker 1: anything to my mom, no to my brothers. My mom
13:45
Speaker 1: was pissed off. He said, how are you gonna pay
13:47
Speaker 1: for this? My dad said, don't worry about it. We'll
13:51
Speaker 1: find a way to play it. And while my older
13:55
Speaker 1: brother was a nasturale musician. He taught himself to play
13:59
Speaker 1: all the instruments he can play, keyboard, guitar, bass, drum,
14:03
Speaker 1: whatever you bring put in his hand, he would play.
14:06
Speaker 1: And my mom and dad loved me. Basically, my mom
14:10
Speaker 1: used to play when she was in high school in
14:12
Speaker 1: the band where she played the clarinet and sayings too.
14:15
Speaker 1: But the thing is, my father was that kind of
14:17
Speaker 1: person that believe that the world, as big as it is,
14:23
Speaker 1: he can bring part of it to us through music
14:26
Speaker 1: and culture in general, and always urge us to think
14:29
Speaker 1: beyond the door of the house, saying to us, when
14:33
Speaker 1: you get out of here, you're a citizen of this world,
14:36
Speaker 1: and I hope I've given you enough tool for you
14:39
Speaker 1: to live in this diverse world and challenging world we're living.
14:43
Speaker 1: So music was part of that too, because sometimes he
14:47
Speaker 1: would bring some stuff, weird music sometimes, But when he
14:51
Speaker 1: started bringing classical music, were life that what is this?
14:55
Speaker 1: Especially me? I said that music has no reason to us.
15:02
Speaker 1: I think it was Beethove, and I don't know which
15:03
Speaker 1: one he brought them, Like, man, Dad, we can't dance
15:07
Speaker 1: on that now. How did you discover that you had
15:13
Speaker 1: this powerhouse? Voice, because you know, one of your heroes
15:17
Speaker 1: growing up was Aretha Franklin. You had the amazing Grace record.
15:20
Speaker 1: You know, she at the church. That's where she found
15:22
Speaker 1: out she could sing like that. How did you find
15:24
Speaker 1: out that you had this booming voice? My father used
15:29
Speaker 1: to say to me when people asked that question, how
15:33
Speaker 1: come your daughter is singing? My first? I can't tell
15:35
Speaker 1: you what I remember when she starts speaking, she would
15:38
Speaker 1: be talking to me singing. I started singing before I
15:41
Speaker 1: started making phrases, just because I was surrounded by song.
15:45
Speaker 1: There's always ceremony somewhere, and I'll be sitting on the
15:48
Speaker 1: lap of my mom and I'll be clapping my hand.
15:50
Speaker 1: When I was two or three years or not understanding
15:52
Speaker 1: anything about anything, and I developed that musical memory, not
15:57
Speaker 1: knowing that I was gonna be a singer, because till
16:00
Speaker 1: I make the leap to be a singer, I wanted
16:03
Speaker 1: to be a human right lawyer or a surgeon. Your
16:05
Speaker 1: country was under a communist dictatorship, and in a strange way,
16:10
Speaker 1: it almost helped you in music at first, because they
16:13
Speaker 1: declared everybody had to have like a cooperative they called
16:16
Speaker 1: it at school, and so you formed the band that
16:18
Speaker 1: was called the Sphinx. So we start playing the thing
16:23
Speaker 1: that was not clear about that we were making. The
16:25
Speaker 1: head of the high school allowed us to do that
16:29
Speaker 1: because it was imposed by the government. But what does
16:32
Speaker 1: the money go? Because they sell tickets and we were
16:35
Speaker 1: not paid, why does the money go? So we don't
16:38
Speaker 1: know what the money goes. But we figured out that
16:41
Speaker 1: the head of the school was taking the money to
16:42
Speaker 1: build his house nice and I'm like, okay, enough for
16:49
Speaker 1: this nonsense. I mean, two years before I finished high school,
16:51
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I said to myself enough, I'll do my
16:54
Speaker 1: own stuff and I'll be paid. I don't want to
16:56
Speaker 1: do this anymore. We'll be right back with more from
16:59
Speaker 1: Angelique Kijo after a quick break. We're back with Angelique Kijo.
17:08
Speaker 1: When you were listening to Western albums when you were
17:12
Speaker 1: a kid, because you always had music in the house.
17:15
Speaker 1: You mentioned James Brown, you really liked Curtis Mayfield. I
17:18
Speaker 1: think did it sound stilted? You did it sound like one, two,
17:21
Speaker 1: three four? Did it sound western? Or did you hear
17:23
Speaker 1: your music in it? Africa is the James Brown is
17:26
Speaker 1: the first one that put the beat first beat on there.
17:29
Speaker 1: He changed a lot of things. And for me, as
17:33
Speaker 1: an African young little girl, when I first heard James
17:35
Speaker 1: Brown like, it's not only the rhythm that attract me
17:39
Speaker 1: to him, is how he plays his voice. He made
17:46
Speaker 1: the English language rhythmic for me. Till then it was
17:51
Speaker 1: another language like others, and I was not paying that
17:54
Speaker 1: much attention to it in school when I was learning it.
17:57
Speaker 1: And from the moment I started hearing James Brown sing
18:00
Speaker 1: in English, I'm like God, singly like this guy because
18:03
Speaker 1: I love rhythm. You speak and sing and I think
18:06
Speaker 1: at least five languages. Yes, Indeed, is English a harder
18:10
Speaker 1: language to be rhythmic in? No, it's easy. It's easier
18:13
Speaker 1: than in French. French is more, much more complicated. The
18:16
Speaker 1: difference is how can I say this? The English language
18:21
Speaker 1: you can say things with one word, and the same
18:25
Speaker 1: thing you say in one word in English you need
18:28
Speaker 1: two or three. In France it's more descriptive the French language,
18:33
Speaker 1: and the sounds are not the same. The vowel or
18:37
Speaker 1: constoms are not pronounced the same. How does that compare? Then,
18:41
Speaker 1: your father was so you spoke that language, yeah, and
18:45
Speaker 1: your mother was Yoruba and phon both. It's absolutely not
18:49
Speaker 1: the same sound at all. How do they compare in
18:52
Speaker 1: terms of singing in those languages, it's different. For example,
18:55
Speaker 1: if you want to say good morning in Yoruba and
18:59
Speaker 1: in font it's already it's Ecaro, it's already singing. And
19:07
Speaker 1: Phon is the anguage of the Amazon, so it is
19:11
Speaker 1: a language of power. Every time I go back to
19:14
Speaker 1: being in and I start speaking, people turn around and
19:17
Speaker 1: look at me, like, you've left this country for how long?
19:20
Speaker 1: And you speak this long better than us? I said,
19:22
Speaker 1: because I live in the complexity of this language. Time
19:25
Speaker 1: I'm trying to write a song, as you're writing, does
19:27
Speaker 1: it naturally occur to you? It fits this language? You know?
19:30
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm inspired to sing something in all the language.
19:34
Speaker 1: I mean, when I was prepared the album Modern Nature
19:37
Speaker 1: versus song on my demo that didn't make it to
19:39
Speaker 1: the album, we were composing it and I was writing it.
19:43
Speaker 1: I said to me, it comes like had to be Portuguese.
19:46
Speaker 1: No other language was fitting into this. So I wrote
19:50
Speaker 1: my stuff and I put in Google Translation and start
19:53
Speaker 1: singing Portuguese. And I call my friend and say, is
19:55
Speaker 1: this right? This is what I'm trying to say. So
19:57
Speaker 1: she corrected it and it fits perfectly, So I just
20:01
Speaker 1: follow what comes with the song. I don't know what
20:05
Speaker 1: it's going to be. I don't have any control on
20:08
Speaker 1: my inspiration. And that's something that I realize and I
20:12
Speaker 1: learn hardly. When I'm in spiled to do something that
20:15
Speaker 1: I will record it and I'll put it aside and
20:17
Speaker 1: I try to make something beautifully fitted to it. It
20:20
Speaker 1: doesn't work. And when it hits me that less is more,
20:25
Speaker 1: that's when I realized that the thing that comes first,
20:28
Speaker 1: the thing that burst out of you, you gotta keep that.
20:32
Speaker 1: You gotta keep it into that integrity of the thing,
20:36
Speaker 1: otherwise it doesn't sound right. When did you learn that? Lesson? Oh,
20:41
Speaker 1: I was writing music since I was eleven years old.
20:44
Speaker 1: I read Verse and I'm like, something not working. I'm
20:50
Speaker 1: trying too hard. It's not what I wanted to say
20:53
Speaker 1: at the beginning. Then I'll go back and say, let
20:55
Speaker 1: me try what I say. And when I when I
20:57
Speaker 1: close to it, then I find my lyrics and I
20:59
Speaker 1: find my melody in my rhythm too, because the rhythm
21:03
Speaker 1: is there in the world. The rhythms are there. Everything
21:06
Speaker 1: comes if you listen carefully to your furation. Everything is
21:11
Speaker 1: already lay out for you and all the rest. It's
21:14
Speaker 1: just ornament. When you were growing up, you were teased
21:18
Speaker 1: for singing? Was it? It was mainly men who sang
21:21
Speaker 1: and boys, men and girls. I mean what was hard
21:26
Speaker 1: was when I arrived in high school because I when
21:31
Speaker 1: I was when I was in primary school, it was
21:33
Speaker 1: girls because of jealousy because I was singing. I will
21:36
Speaker 1: tell them, well, last night when I was out singing
21:39
Speaker 1: in the club, this disc happened. They look at me,
21:41
Speaker 1: you lie, you no way you can get I'm okay.
21:45
Speaker 1: So I stopped talking about my concert because they were
21:49
Speaker 1: annoyed and they didn't like it at all. And I
21:51
Speaker 1: have many friends either. And when I arrived my first
21:56
Speaker 1: year in high school was her on nerve. The first
21:59
Speaker 1: day I arrived, I saw a couple of guys at
22:03
Speaker 1: the door seeing nonsense, insulting people. I'm like, okay, funny whatever,
22:09
Speaker 1: and they will say, you don't be along here, you
22:11
Speaker 1: already finished primary school. What the hell are you doing?
22:13
Speaker 1: You should get married and get out of our way.
22:15
Speaker 1: I'm like, really, don't dare? I mean, I grew up
22:18
Speaker 1: you seven brothers. The next step was to try to
22:21
Speaker 1: humiliate you so they will find a stick of wood,
22:25
Speaker 1: and I don't know how they do that. They put
22:28
Speaker 1: mirror on it and you're walking. They tried to look
22:29
Speaker 1: under your your dress and that I get mad. And
22:34
Speaker 1: I remember getting back, coming back from schooling, telling my dad,
22:37
Speaker 1: you say not to fight physical fight a couple of boys.
22:41
Speaker 1: I want to just crap the teeth of My father said, no,
22:45
Speaker 1: you aren't doing that. I didn't teach you violence. My
22:48
Speaker 1: father's aren't too smart. They think they're smarter than you
22:51
Speaker 1: because they've been into high school before you came in.
22:55
Speaker 1: I'll smother them, find something they can't understand, invent a
23:00
Speaker 1: world that means something for you that they don't know.
23:04
Speaker 1: I'm like, gee, that's hard. Oh I'm gonna do this.
23:08
Speaker 1: So I came up with the world batonga, which means
23:10
Speaker 1: care off my bag. I will do whatever I want
23:13
Speaker 1: to do and whoever I want to be. How did
23:16
Speaker 1: you come up with that word? I don't know. I
23:18
Speaker 1: woke up one day, was there in my mind? So
23:20
Speaker 1: I go ba tonga and the guys go, is she crazy?
23:23
Speaker 1: What kind of language is that? Oh? She crazy? This
23:26
Speaker 1: man is crazy. She wanted last in school. That's how
23:29
Speaker 1: they let me. That became a big song. For you,
23:32
Speaker 1: it's your foundation. Yeah, that stays with me because I
23:36
Speaker 1: realized that when you outsmart people in a good way,
23:42
Speaker 1: even if there's no conversation after that, you have escaped fight.
23:46
Speaker 1: We underestimate our ability to talk people out of nonsense.
23:52
Speaker 1: And from that moment on, for me, it was obvious
23:55
Speaker 1: that fight wore all those things our incapacity to come
23:59
Speaker 1: to understanding. Everybody want to win. It's not possible. What
24:03
Speaker 1: do I care about what people think about me. They
24:05
Speaker 1: a'n't paying my bill, They're not my family, they're not
24:08
Speaker 1: my friend. If you can say whatever you want to
24:10
Speaker 1: give them. I learned that because of school, you're pretty
24:14
Speaker 1: fearless about going in the countries in Africa. You know,
24:19
Speaker 1: you got it up in front of pretty hostile crowds
24:22
Speaker 1: and talked about in general mutilation of girls and all
24:26
Speaker 1: kinds of issues and slavery and sexual abuse. You don't
24:29
Speaker 1: seem to have any fear about talking about stuff on stage. Well,
24:32
Speaker 1: you know, fear is the beginning of the end of
24:34
Speaker 1: all our humanity. I, having wrote the song and this
24:36
Speaker 1: new album, said we are our own enemies. Fear work
24:41
Speaker 1: hand in hand with violence and hate. So unless we
24:46
Speaker 1: decide that we are all equal, free and equal, as
24:49
Speaker 1: the first article of the Human Right Declaration, and we
24:53
Speaker 1: are not doing it. There are problems in this world
24:56
Speaker 1: and lots of them are created by our complacency, our
25:02
Speaker 1: silence to accept that if it profits me, it doesn't
25:05
Speaker 1: profit other people are okare with it? So everything down
25:09
Speaker 1: we make your choice off. Saying being silent is more
25:14
Speaker 1: comfortable for me, you are putting over other people in danger.
25:19
Speaker 1: You're allowing people to abuse, to rape, to kill and
25:26
Speaker 1: to profit from it. Where if I live in fear,
25:29
Speaker 1: I won't be here today as a union step would
25:32
Speaker 1: be an ambassador. I've seen so many suffering for children.
25:36
Speaker 1: That's what makes me mad. Does that not the rage,
25:40
Speaker 1: but the lack of fear? Has that always carried over
25:44
Speaker 1: in your art as well? I've done You've done a
25:46
Speaker 1: lot of big projects all the time. Have you never
25:49
Speaker 1: said I'm a little worried about this, or I'm not
25:51
Speaker 1: sure I'm getting this right, or you know, you did
25:55
Speaker 1: a very ambitious set of albums which is really all
25:58
Speaker 1: about the spread of West African music through the world.
26:02
Speaker 1: We should mention for our listeners. You know where you
26:05
Speaker 1: come from. Its basically the cradle of so much Western music.
26:10
Speaker 1: It's kind of the vienna of pop music. You've never
26:14
Speaker 1: been afraid as an artist to put something out at
26:17
Speaker 1: the end of my day on this earth, I want
26:19
Speaker 1: to be able to die and said I've done my best,
26:22
Speaker 1: I've done my share. I don't want to die as
26:25
Speaker 1: thinking well I should have, because if you look like
26:29
Speaker 1: live like that, you become bitter, You become a person
26:33
Speaker 1: that you don't want to be. But that's helping other people.
26:36
Speaker 1: Are you as confident You've written so many songs, you've
26:39
Speaker 1: done so many albums, you don't ever question yourself. You
26:43
Speaker 1: always feel you're giving your best always, Especially with my music.
26:47
Speaker 1: There's don't lie in it because I can't live with it.
26:50
Speaker 1: My inspiration is what I follow. There's not one song
26:53
Speaker 1: in my repertoire that I won't see with pleasure today,
26:57
Speaker 1: all of it, because it's right to say what you
27:01
Speaker 1: have to say. I come from a culture of orality,
27:05
Speaker 1: where the story of my ancestor the story of little
27:08
Speaker 1: have been told to me by elderly people, and it's
27:11
Speaker 1: different from anything you can read in the book. That
27:13
Speaker 1: interested me in reading your book because you said you
27:16
Speaker 1: got a great education, but they didn't teach you about slavery,
27:21
Speaker 1: and you didn't. You learned about slavery when your brother
27:25
Speaker 1: brought home a Jimi Hendrix album. Can you tell me
27:28
Speaker 1: that story. What was interesting on that album is two things.
27:33
Speaker 1: That two things the snake above his head. I've never
27:36
Speaker 1: seen snake on any album that much, right, and the
27:40
Speaker 1: Afro For me, those two things you gotta be African,
27:46
Speaker 1: especially from Benie, because we worshiped the python in my
27:49
Speaker 1: family and I'm scared of it, so I don't like snake.
27:53
Speaker 1: But then I see my brother that was my brother
27:56
Speaker 1: was born with no hair, and he never had any hair.
27:59
Speaker 1: He would wear a long tunic and we put Afroweek
28:03
Speaker 1: on every time he put that album on. And I
28:05
Speaker 1: went to him, I said, what I was nice? I said,
28:10
Speaker 1: explain to me, do you need enough frow week to
28:12
Speaker 1: play the guitar of this guy? And by the way,
28:16
Speaker 1: he's African, right, And then he goes, well, he's African American.
28:21
Speaker 1: I said, are you trying to pull my leg? Because
28:23
Speaker 1: I'm nine years old? You think I'm stupid enough not
28:25
Speaker 1: to understand you can't be African and American at the
28:27
Speaker 1: same time. It's two different continent. I know that so far.
28:31
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, if I start answering you, I'm
28:35
Speaker 1: not going to practice my guitar, right, So go ask
28:37
Speaker 1: go ask a grandma. So the only grandma can put
28:41
Speaker 1: my hand on was my mom's mother. And she starts
28:44
Speaker 1: telling me the story of slavery. And I look at
28:46
Speaker 1: him like she's having a dementia. Man, this is not right.
28:52
Speaker 1: She's losing a mama. Because my mom and dad we
28:57
Speaker 1: always say to us before we leave the house, a
28:59
Speaker 1: human being is not a matter of color. Don't come
29:01
Speaker 1: back here tell us you felt because you're black. And
29:04
Speaker 1: I'd be just like I grew up with that, So
29:07
Speaker 1: I brush it off. I'm like, yeah, well, I guess
29:11
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna tell me anything about slavery. Then I turned
29:14
Speaker 1: fifteen and I learned about apathey in South Africa. It's
29:19
Speaker 1: just like I was hit by a twin running, I
29:23
Speaker 1: mean a fast train boom, and I just lost it.
29:27
Speaker 1: And did you learn about that in school? No? No,
29:30
Speaker 1: they didn't TV, they didn't teach apartheid. No, I just
29:34
Speaker 1: saw it. I just thought we did in Mandela talking
29:36
Speaker 1: about Nelson Mandela just and I lost it, literally and
29:39
Speaker 1: I turned around and see my mother for the first time,
29:42
Speaker 1: I said, why are you lying to me? And I
29:45
Speaker 1: never scream at my parents. You're not allowed to disrespect
29:48
Speaker 1: your parents in Africa, And I smashed the door, walk
29:52
Speaker 1: into my room, starts crabbing. Lie. I was mad and
29:56
Speaker 1: afraid at the same time, because suddenly I realized that
30:01
Speaker 1: being black can be a death sentence for me, because
30:05
Speaker 1: what is going on in South Africa. And then slavery
30:08
Speaker 1: come to my m J and I start panicking. Then
30:11
Speaker 1: I wrote a song and my first draft was so hateful.
30:16
Speaker 1: I'm going out they kill everybody that is getting black people.
30:19
Speaker 1: And my father said, hey, I listen to my song
30:22
Speaker 1: and go, are you serious? Did I teach you hating
30:26
Speaker 1: this house? Didn't I tell you that they're never gonna
30:29
Speaker 1: be hating. Violence allowed here. There's no platform for this,
30:32
Speaker 1: no outlet. If you want to sing, you want to
30:35
Speaker 1: be an artist, you better think again. I say, what
30:39
Speaker 1: do you mean? He said to me. I understand you're mad,
30:42
Speaker 1: you're afraid everything, but that reaction that you have it's
30:46
Speaker 1: not from the smart girl that I know. You better
30:48
Speaker 1: think about it again. You can write about this situation,
30:52
Speaker 1: but you have to write in a way that go
30:55
Speaker 1: toward solution. My father said, you can't find everybody on
30:58
Speaker 1: this planet. You don't have the power to as an artist,
31:02
Speaker 1: as you've told because they told me that my musician,
31:04
Speaker 1: the traditional musicians say it's a gift, and that gift
31:07
Speaker 1: you use it to bring people together. So how do
31:11
Speaker 1: you do that? So I went back and rewrite the
31:13
Speaker 1: song and it become an anthem for peace. And then
31:16
Speaker 1: he said, do you feel better now? As he yes that.
31:19
Speaker 1: He said, as long as you understand the purpose of
31:22
Speaker 1: what you're doing and why are you doing it, and
31:25
Speaker 1: you understand that you are in a position where you
31:27
Speaker 1: hold keys to open doors that are closed that I've
31:30
Speaker 1: been closed forever through your voice for what you write,
31:35
Speaker 1: then you can be an artist, the full artist that
31:37
Speaker 1: we go into the world and work with everybody. It
31:41
Speaker 1: stays with me. When you learned about South Africa, was
31:44
Speaker 1: that when you started listening to another one of your heroes.
31:49
Speaker 1: I was listening to her without knowing anything about it.
31:51
Speaker 1: You didn't know this is Miriam mcabe. Yeah, I wanna
31:54
Speaker 1: start listened to Miriam mcabbe. Was I was a little
31:57
Speaker 1: The first song of Miriam mcabbe that I sang I
31:59
Speaker 1: was eight years old, and it was the retreat song
32:04
Speaker 1: that my mom and some of her friends have chosen
32:07
Speaker 1: to march in the street asking for women's rights to
32:11
Speaker 1: vote to this no more arranged marriage. Their body belongs
32:16
Speaker 1: to all those those things we're talking about. They were
32:19
Speaker 1: talking about it at that time in nineteen sixty eight.
32:23
Speaker 1: My mom said, come. Her friends said, we can't sing.
32:26
Speaker 1: You're the one. You one. They tell my mom, you're
32:28
Speaker 1: only one that can't sing. We sing like, oh it's bad.
32:31
Speaker 1: Bring on your little girl. She sings good. We're gonna
32:33
Speaker 1: put on the front and she can sing and everything follow.
32:36
Speaker 1: So I started singing that song that they use. They
32:40
Speaker 1: use the music and they put the words of their
32:44
Speaker 1: demands in fun. So I was singing that. I mean
32:49
Speaker 1: I like it because I was on the supervision of
32:51
Speaker 1: my mom. I was all doing my homework and I
32:52
Speaker 1: was like having fun. And I didn't even know what
32:55
Speaker 1: the power to message that I was singing it. At eight,
32:58
Speaker 1: I was there among all those people singing. But never
33:01
Speaker 1: thought of South Africa because it's not told. TV came
33:07
Speaker 1: to being in very late early eighties, so none of
33:11
Speaker 1: those information comes in. My father will listen to the
33:14
Speaker 1: news on the radio. It's a different thing. That's seeing
33:17
Speaker 1: images you hear from far and you don't pay attention
33:21
Speaker 1: to it because when he's listening to news in the morning,
33:24
Speaker 1: I'm running to get ready to go to school, so
33:26
Speaker 1: I don't pay attention to what he's listening to. And
33:29
Speaker 1: and it's it's really take its toll on me. How
33:35
Speaker 1: do we manage to convince ourselves throughout centuries that harming
33:40
Speaker 1: another person and profiting from it is good. We haven't
33:43
Speaker 1: dealt with the scope of the damage, the damages of slavery.
33:48
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter we concincolor you have because we're still
33:51
Speaker 1: living the truma of it today. We'll be right back
33:54
Speaker 1: in a moment with more from Angelique Keijo. We're back
34:01
Speaker 1: with the rest of Bruce Heathlam's conversation with Angelique Keijo
34:05
Speaker 1: and with politics eventually that made you have to leave
34:08
Speaker 1: your country. You know, one of the things that interested
34:11
Speaker 1: me so much on this new album is how many
34:13
Speaker 1: young artists you work with and established artists too. You know,
34:17
Speaker 1: you've got burned a boy on this sample. The grade
34:20
Speaker 1: and different artists. They no longer have to leave Africa,
34:24
Speaker 1: but you did in order to pursue your art and
34:28
Speaker 1: do what you wanted to. But they have the technology
34:30
Speaker 1: to stay. I didn't have that at that time. You
34:32
Speaker 1: said your family couldn't talk politics anymore, that there was
34:35
Speaker 1: I mean censorship, and there was fear. Well, the thing
34:39
Speaker 1: is today, I when I listen to people talking about addictatorship,
34:41
Speaker 1: I look at them outten myself. You don't even understand
34:45
Speaker 1: what it is. You don't know what it is. But
34:49
Speaker 1: what was it for you living in a home that
34:52
Speaker 1: become a jail cell. Well, you don't trust anybody that
34:55
Speaker 1: walked in and you always have to look over your
34:58
Speaker 1: shoulder when you when I call your dad dad instead
35:00
Speaker 1: of calling him comrade, he's my dad. Somebody coming in
35:04
Speaker 1: and you're calling your father dad. You can't help in jail.
35:06
Speaker 1: I mean people crazy. Mean you used to take to
35:09
Speaker 1: get out of your house to do whatever you want
35:11
Speaker 1: to do. You can't take your car and go anywhere
35:13
Speaker 1: you are. Somebody can come anytime in your house and
35:17
Speaker 1: check you out. The man are like something you say,
35:20
Speaker 1: Well something where you put something, You end up in
35:22
Speaker 1: jail and sometimes people disappear. And how did you get
35:25
Speaker 1: out when you left? I mean it took a year
35:27
Speaker 1: to for my parents to organize me living because you
35:33
Speaker 1: don't trust anybody, so you got out. Really be careful.
35:37
Speaker 1: No one knew I was living. My mom and dad
35:41
Speaker 1: were witnessed at a wedding of one of our cousin
35:44
Speaker 1: and they live not far from the airport. So we
35:47
Speaker 1: make sure that everybody in the street where I grew
35:49
Speaker 1: up knew about that wedding that we were gonna go
35:52
Speaker 1: to that wedding. We played a game like that, addressed
35:57
Speaker 1: like I was into the party. While in the car,
35:59
Speaker 1: my father put the car home in the trunk. I
36:02
Speaker 1: put all my stuff. So when my father and I
36:05
Speaker 1: left after the dinner, because I took the flight that
36:08
Speaker 1: was living at fifty five, I have to change my
36:11
Speaker 1: clothes in the car of my dad and pray from
36:16
Speaker 1: the women he dropped me. I was my hours on
36:18
Speaker 1: my own. I was over twenty one, so if something happened,
36:21
Speaker 1: I'll go to jail, not my parents. So I would
36:24
Speaker 1: die to protect my parents. I won't say anything, but
36:27
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough that the custom agent that I
36:30
Speaker 1: saw was a friend of my brothers, and he just
36:34
Speaker 1: asked me to just run, and I run. That's how
36:38
Speaker 1: I left my country. You were already a pop star. Yeah,
36:42
Speaker 1: that's why. That's why I couldn't say I was going
36:46
Speaker 1: because I was already on the radar. Because when I
36:49
Speaker 1: did my album, I didn't I didn't write any song
36:51
Speaker 1: about the regime. I didn't write any song saying ready
36:55
Speaker 1: for the revolution to fight country. I refused that. I said,
36:59
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say about an idology. My father had
37:01
Speaker 1: taught me that don't use your music for any political
37:04
Speaker 1: party because they come and they go. You want to
37:06
Speaker 1: have a career, don't be linked to it. So then
37:09
Speaker 1: went to Paris. You had to start all over again.
37:11
Speaker 1: You went to school, you work. Oh that was much
37:14
Speaker 1: more exciting than anything else you like. Oh yeah, I
37:17
Speaker 1: mean what I love was that I realized that now
37:22
Speaker 1: every decision that I made for myself can be a
37:25
Speaker 1: good one or a bad one, and that I have
37:27
Speaker 1: grown up. Now I'm an adult because ford my dad,
37:31
Speaker 1: I have to pay a rent, I have to find food,
37:34
Speaker 1: I have to work. I mean, the fact that I
37:37
Speaker 1: have to start from scrush was really exciting for me.
37:40
Speaker 1: Nobody knew me, nobody knows so for once I wanted
37:44
Speaker 1: to be a backing singer. I couldn't do it. Because
37:46
Speaker 1: I was a phone runner. Also, around this time in
37:49
Speaker 1: Western music there were artists like Talking Heads and Peter
37:54
Speaker 1: Gabriel and later Paul Simon, this was in the eighties
37:58
Speaker 1: who started embracing a lot of African rhythms, African sounds.
38:03
Speaker 1: You were not struggling in your career but working on
38:05
Speaker 1: your career, and suddenly you hear these people come in
38:08
Speaker 1: and start using these sounds. What did you think, Well,
38:10
Speaker 1: the thing is, when I arrived in France, that's when
38:13
Speaker 1: I discover all those things, like the Talking Heads. But
38:16
Speaker 1: the thing was, I didn't know anything about the talking
38:19
Speaker 1: Heads at all till I get to Paris and here
38:24
Speaker 1: with a friend, we were at the students place, and
38:28
Speaker 1: then they started playing the cassettes. When I arrived in
38:31
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, I was in music junkie because I
38:35
Speaker 1: have the feeling that the world the ten past years,
38:38
Speaker 1: the world have just left me behind, and I wanted
38:42
Speaker 1: to catch up so bad. And when I heard the
38:44
Speaker 1: song once in a lifetime, I was so happy and
38:47
Speaker 1: I was like dancing, And then of course you always
38:50
Speaker 1: have some stupid racist person saying, what are you doing atally,
38:53
Speaker 1: this is not African music. I'm like well, sorry for ignorance.
38:58
Speaker 1: This is African music man, And he looked at me
39:00
Speaker 1: and go no, I'm like, just get off my bag.
39:04
Speaker 1: But let on, I realized all those things. But the
39:08
Speaker 1: African rhythm have always been in every music. As I
39:12
Speaker 1: said before, recognizing it or not recognizing it doesn't go
39:16
Speaker 1: away because it's in your DNA. So later, of course
39:20
Speaker 1: you covered the whole album remaining light. What made you
39:24
Speaker 1: want to do that? Because here you are taking songs
39:27
Speaker 1: that were written to African rhythms by these by this
39:30
Speaker 1: band in New York. What made you want to do that? Well?
39:35
Speaker 1: Two things. The first time I heard the song once
39:38
Speaker 1: in a lifetime, I was seeing my period in France
39:41
Speaker 1: where I will cry every day because of the ignorance
39:46
Speaker 1: of people in the hate that I have to go through,
39:48
Speaker 1: the racism stlure that goes on. The time I opened
39:54
Speaker 1: my mouth to speak, why can't Why can't you speak?
39:56
Speaker 1: From time you understand? We need an encyclopedia to understand you.
39:59
Speaker 1: I'm like, but it's your language, That's what I learned
40:01
Speaker 1: in school. What do you want me to speak? What
40:04
Speaker 1: to pay a tribute to that song? That that day
40:08
Speaker 1: with all those students around me when we were ready
40:11
Speaker 1: in the fridge of one of them, because he invalied
40:13
Speaker 1: all of us to see so many young kids so
40:17
Speaker 1: ignorant about about the culture. And that song like that
40:22
Speaker 1: that day when I listened to it, it brings it
40:25
Speaker 1: brings miles to my face, and it made my day.
40:29
Speaker 1: So I've been looking for because on the cassette there's
40:32
Speaker 1: no name you. I look everywhere to find the name
40:35
Speaker 1: of this. I didn't know it. Oh you didn't know. No,
40:37
Speaker 1: I didn't know because cassette, I mean students were doing cassete.
40:40
Speaker 1: They would let the stuff they put on the cassete,
40:42
Speaker 1: they don't put the title of the stuff. So from
40:45
Speaker 1: time to time, the melody you come back to me
40:49
Speaker 1: m mmmmmmmmm. And that's that's the only thing that I
40:55
Speaker 1: remember till I start talking to my friend of mine,
40:59
Speaker 1: Danny Capillion, my husband management, and I was like, there's
41:05
Speaker 1: a song. I mean, I don't know where it comes from,
41:07
Speaker 1: but I love to listen to it. And said, I said,
41:10
Speaker 1: I don't know the title. I just remember the melody
41:13
Speaker 1: goes mmmmmmmmmmmmm. And then they go, what that's once in
41:19
Speaker 1: the left, And I said what? And I listened to
41:22
Speaker 1: it I said, I have to cover this album. They're
41:25
Speaker 1: gonna actually let you joking, right, I said to my husband,
41:28
Speaker 1: let's get to the studio. There are a couple of
41:31
Speaker 1: songs that we record with the traditional women when we
41:34
Speaker 1: were recording because for me, bonn on the Punches when
41:38
Speaker 1: I was I would listen to it. I'm like, this
41:42
Speaker 1: is talking about corruption for me. Corruption. Imagine the amount
41:47
Speaker 1: of money that corruption take away from investing in education, roads, health.
41:58
Speaker 1: And that's what you were hearing and in remaining life.
42:01
Speaker 1: That's why I started, when I started with the world
42:04
Speaker 1: that I started started is z we oh z zoya daza,
42:11
Speaker 1: which mean when you start a fire and you don't
42:15
Speaker 1: know how to stop it, the fire gonna eat everything
42:20
Speaker 1: up and even you to start the fight. And that's
42:24
Speaker 1: what corruption is doing to our system. When you finally
42:27
Speaker 1: met David Byrne after you recorded it, did you talk
42:29
Speaker 1: to him about how you interpreted his album? Yeah, he
42:33
Speaker 1: knows I told him that about it. Yeah, you're like, well, okay,
42:37
Speaker 1: I do have a request, but could you just say
42:39
Speaker 1: one line when you sing the shotgun shot line? Yeah?
42:42
Speaker 1: Could you just say that for me? And you may
42:44
Speaker 1: find yourself living in a shotgun shock, And you may
42:48
Speaker 1: find yourself in another part of the world, and you
42:51
Speaker 1: may find yourself behind the wheel of a logo to mobile,
42:55
Speaker 1: and you may find yourself in a beautiful house with
42:58
Speaker 1: a beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself, well, how
43:02
Speaker 1: did I get here? Let him do days go by?
43:06
Speaker 1: That is so fabulous. Oh, you just made my day,
43:11
Speaker 1: So you know you did. You started putting out albums
43:15
Speaker 1: and then you did your big album which was Legozo.
43:18
Speaker 1: Did that have Batongo on? It was that on that
43:22
Speaker 1: and it was it was your first album for Chris
43:24
Speaker 1: Blackwell in Island, and it was produced by the Think
43:29
Speaker 1: the drummer for Miami, Sam Michies exactly, and a lot
43:32
Speaker 1: of people, if they don't remember all the songs, remember
43:36
Speaker 1: the album cover. Yes, because you in that strike kind
43:40
Speaker 1: of look you look like, kind of like the world's
43:42
Speaker 1: coolest superhero at that point. Well, you know that album.
43:47
Speaker 1: I called it Logoso, which mean tortoys. For me, it
43:51
Speaker 1: was my experience when I arrive in France. The Westerner
43:56
Speaker 1: were looking at for me, My image of them is tortoys.
44:00
Speaker 1: They're all going around by business. Something happened. Nobody want
44:02
Speaker 1: to be involved to come back in the show. So
44:04
Speaker 1: that's why you have the three The logo I put
44:08
Speaker 1: is here, And is that how you felt like a tortoise?
44:14
Speaker 1: I was living in a tortural society because nobody just
44:18
Speaker 1: cared about you unless they want to give you some
44:21
Speaker 1: racist comment. And that zebra suit was really interesting because
44:28
Speaker 1: I just didn't want somebody to put me in the
44:31
Speaker 1: outfit that the thing is okay for an African person,
44:34
Speaker 1: because I've heard that all the time. Well, African people,
44:38
Speaker 1: they work around with their breast naked. Why don't you
44:40
Speaker 1: do that? I'm like, really, I live what jeans in
44:44
Speaker 1: BENI I grew up wearing versus modernity. I never wear
44:47
Speaker 1: aune and I'll never walk around with my TV up out.
44:50
Speaker 1: So I went out and bought my own stuff. I
44:53
Speaker 1: bought my chump suit, and I'm not wearing it. You
44:55
Speaker 1: don't like it or not, that's the way it's gonna go. Man.
44:58
Speaker 1: And you became friends with Miriam later. Yeah, she did
45:02
Speaker 1: not like the phrase. She didn't like the box she
45:06
Speaker 1: was put in, which was world music. You have want
45:09
Speaker 1: a lot of the World Music Grammys. Do you feel
45:12
Speaker 1: it just puts you in a kind of disadvantage. Yeah,
45:15
Speaker 1: the thing is when we're talking about our music in general,
45:20
Speaker 1: and we call music pop this and that, and we
45:24
Speaker 1: want if we just forgot that the blues will not
45:27
Speaker 1: exist without the slaves here and from the blues, how
45:30
Speaker 1: many forms of music come from the blues? Tell me
45:33
Speaker 1: all of it? So why should African artists, let alone,
45:39
Speaker 1: or the artists that are not speaking English or French
45:41
Speaker 1: or Portuguese or whatever it is, have to have a
45:44
Speaker 1: category that is kind of a ghetto category. I mean,
45:48
Speaker 1: we want we want everybody to be music, to be
45:53
Speaker 1: set telling the truth or not, because when it comes
45:56
Speaker 1: to music, there's no genre for me. As long as
45:59
Speaker 1: you can speak the music, language doesn't matter what you
46:02
Speaker 1: do as a music We are the one that put
46:05
Speaker 1: artagory on music. So we like to divide things. We
46:10
Speaker 1: like to put things in category to be able to
46:12
Speaker 1: leave our set with ourselves because we don't want to
46:14
Speaker 1: even face our own complexity. A human being is not simple.
46:18
Speaker 1: In your autobiography you talk about this. It is so
46:22
Speaker 1: fascinating that the music you grew up with, you know,
46:27
Speaker 1: which was voice and rhythm, was split up by slavery,
46:31
Speaker 1: which is why the blues came out of North America.
46:34
Speaker 1: Because the American slavers, they took away the drums. Yes, indeed,
46:38
Speaker 1: the ignorance make them believe that with the drum from
46:42
Speaker 1: cotton field to cotton field, they can slaves can come
46:45
Speaker 1: quicker when they can speak through the drum, because for
46:48
Speaker 1: a long time, drums has been the medium that was
46:51
Speaker 1: used by the king to rally the people. What interested
46:54
Speaker 1: in musically is, of course, what happened with the blues
46:57
Speaker 1: is it's a it's a West African scale. Yeah, absolutely,
47:01
Speaker 1: it's a five notes or six five notes scale. And
47:03
Speaker 1: when you were first you met your husband Jehan in
47:07
Speaker 1: Paris jazz school. In the jazz school, you started working together.
47:10
Speaker 1: You were singing traditional songs, traditional melody lines, and he
47:16
Speaker 1: was sitting at the piano trying to sort of figure
47:18
Speaker 1: out how to put harmonies underneath it. Yeah, what was
47:21
Speaker 1: that exercise? Like? It was great because we come up
47:25
Speaker 1: with our own ammunization. That is kind of a little
47:27
Speaker 1: weird because I would ammonize and then you go, I
47:30
Speaker 1: didn't hear that, and then you go, can you put
47:33
Speaker 1: it here like this? I'm like, yeah, let's right. And
47:36
Speaker 1: it was never shy to try anything as long as
47:38
Speaker 1: it serves the song. So it was easy. I would
47:43
Speaker 1: say easy because he knows the blues. He was in
47:46
Speaker 1: a jazz school. He has master degree in philosophy, but
47:49
Speaker 1: he has listened to a lot of blues. It was
47:51
Speaker 1: easy for us to start a communication in the musical
47:55
Speaker 1: language from that blues. Actually that comes. I mean, there
47:59
Speaker 1: are songs in my village, in my family. When they
48:02
Speaker 1: starts singing it, you just want to cry your heart out.
48:05
Speaker 1: Can you just give me one of those melodies? There's
48:09
Speaker 1: one of them that I really um, that really touches me.
48:12
Speaker 1: Is this one. I'm gonna Ammy Wilo, I got damn
48:16
Speaker 1: in jail a quay, I'm gonna Amy Wailo, I got
48:21
Speaker 1: damn in jail o quae Coca Nada. Yeah, name, I'm
48:27
Speaker 1: gonna amy, I got damn in jail oqua Cooca nada. Yeah.
48:38
Speaker 1: That song is spite time I sing it's just and
48:42
Speaker 1: what's that song? What's it song? For sure, it's talking
48:48
Speaker 1: about vulnerability in the face of death. There's nothing we
48:54
Speaker 1: can do when death come knocking, and he's talking about
48:58
Speaker 1: what have you done so wrong that every year death
49:02
Speaker 1: come back come by and take its too, take the
49:06
Speaker 1: good or the bad, and mostly take the good people.
49:10
Speaker 1: How do we can we leave? We've dev always not
49:13
Speaker 1: giving us a chance to breathe. Wow, that seems like
49:18
Speaker 1: a great song for the last year. Thank you so much,
49:22
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing this. It's just been a huge treat.
49:25
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you to Angelique Kijo for talking through
49:31
Speaker 1: our history and career with us. You can hear a
49:34
Speaker 1: new album, Mother Nature along with our favorite Angeli Kijo
49:37
Speaker 1: songs at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to
49:41
Speaker 1: subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
49:44
Speaker 1: Broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our
49:47
Speaker 1: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
49:51
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel,
49:55
Speaker 1: Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help
50:01
Speaker 1: from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Miolbell. Broken Record
50:06
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this
50:08
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50:14
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Speaker 1: to share rate and review us on your podcast. App
50:27
Speaker 1: Our theme musics by Kenny Beats on Just Much