Angelique Kidjo Performs Live

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Our October Get Lit selection was the novel Someone Like Us from author Dinaw Mengestu, which takes place partially in Paris. We were thrilled that international Grammy-winning superstar Angelique Kidjo, who has called France her home for many decades, joined us just ahead of her shows at Carnegie Hall. Her performances were so joyful and infectious that by the end of the event, our audience was on their feet. Even Dinaw Mengestu was dancing.

Angelique has been called one of the most important people in the world by Time magazine. She joined us live in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library for an interview and performance. You'll hear my conversation with her in a moment. First, here is Angelique Kidjo with a live performance of her song Kelele.

[MUSIC - Angelique Kidjo: Kelele]

[applause]

Alison Stewart: So good to see you. It was interesting in Dinaw's book, the journalist, he decides to live in Paris. You live in Paris? From Benin? You came from Benin to Paris.

Angelique Kidjo: Yes. I didn't choose to leave my country, but I have to leave my country.

Alison Stewart: Please tell me more.

Angelique Kidjo: I ran away from communism dictatorship, and that trauma is still with me. When you leave your loved one, don't know where you're going, how even though you speak the language, nothing is like home, never.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Angelique Kidjo: People that go somewhere, no one ever take that decision. Like, "Oh, I'm just going to check it out." It's not that easy. For six years, I didn't hear the voice of my parents. I couldn't call because I didn't know if the phone was tapped. It took my parents a year to find the money to send me. I didn't ask for the authorization that you should ask and have a stamp on your passport. Then they know when you're coming back. You don't come back, then your family become a liability.

I took the risk, and my parents took the risk with me. The large vision of my father was my father sitting behind the wheel, getting me to the airport, not coming too close and weeping and asking himself as a father, is it a good decision to send his daughter out there not knowing if I'm going to make it or if I'm going to come back, I'm going to be caught and put in jail without him knowing. It is a decision that it have impact not only on my life but the whole family because my father and mother taught us to be free thinker and to speak freely.

Here I am a couple of years now, and I'm seeing around me, everybody fantasizing and saying the heck with it, we don't want democracy anymore. If it's going to be dictatorship, we're going to take it. Can I tell you one thing? It took us more than 20 years to get rid of that guy. Once they're in power, they don't go. They don't go. They will kill you. That vote for them, they will kill you when they want to. They can do whatever they want to do because you give them the power by voting them in office. They never leave.

For me, coming here and then living in France and traveling around the world, seeing how fragile our freedom is, it's not even democracy. The freedom to be not one person is born to this world with shackles. Since we've been on this earth, it's like something have been on the way for us to understand that love is the most powerful weapon. Love is more powerful than nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapon will wipe everything away. Love produce all the time.

Accepting the fact that you are different from somebody else is in itself a self-affirmation of yourself. Once you see that you're different, you accept somebody else's difference. We can't all be the same. We can't think the same. We can't like the same thing. It's not possible. It's one human family, within it, there are infinite differences. Why are we afraid? That's the question I ask all the time.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think-- What part of you survived in Paris when you were a kid?

Angelique Kidjo: The part of me that survived is the love of my parents and the value that they've given me. My father always used to say, "I want you guys to go to school. I want you to read forbidden books, because even in forbidden books, there's something you're going to learn." That the world in which we live in, as he's sitting down there talking to us, tomorrow will be different. That's just the fate of nature, is the fate of us as human being. That the change is going to be constant. Never think that this year finish, the next year going to be exactly the replica of the one that has finished. It's never going to happen. If we don't change, we disappear.

That changes when you are educated and you can analyze the situation at large. You're not the only one feeling what you're feeling. How do you accept that that change is going to be an opportunity, not a threat? Not hate. Nothing negative. How can I play my role in the change? Who can I be? How flexible can I be? We have water in our body. We change, we move. Everybody walk differently. Life is the same thing.

When you accept that this period we live in is difficult. Yes, it's a fact. It's not an understatement. How can we play a role in making it better for our children? If you're not thinking like that and you just hang on to your anger and your frustration. "Me, I don't count." Everybody counts. Don't wait for somebody else to validate you. Validate yourself and do something about it.

Alison Stewart: Sounds like your parents taught you to think.

Angelique Kidjo: Oh, my father said, "This is your ultimate weapon. It's not a bowl of spaghetti put in front of you." My father, when you ask stupid question, he look at me and say, "Are you waiting for me to answer you? I have my brain. You have yours. Use it." "Dad." He said, "No dad in here."

Alison Stewart: You said he was a book eater. He loved to read.

Angelique Kidjo: Oh, my God. Jesus. God help you. You want to ask dad a question? Urgent question. If you want to sit on the bedside, I bet you anything you're going to be poked by a book. Doesn't matter how many shelves you put out there. I'm like, "Dad, why don't you put the book back?" He says, "It's my room, whatever I do with my book, it's not your business. You want to sit on my bed? You sit and you shut up." I'm like, "Okay, dad. Okay. You got a point." [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Angelique Kidjo, thank you so much for being with us.

Angelique Kidjo: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: We got a gentleman with a guitar right there.

[MUSIC - Angelique Kidjo: Malaika]

Malaika, nakupenda Malaika

Ningekua na mali, ninge kuowa jaja

Nashindwa na mali sina, we

Ningekuoa Malaika

Nashindwa na mali sina, we

Ningekuoa Malaika

Pesa zasumbua roho yangu

Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio

Nashindwa na mali sina, we

Ningekuoa Malaika

Nashindwa na mali sina, we

Ningekuoa Malaika

Kidege, kukuwaza kidege

Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio

Nashindwa na mali sina, we tchongili

Ningekuoa Malaika

Nashindwa na mali sina, we

Ningekuoa Malaika

Alison Stewart: That was Grammy-winning singer Angelique Kidjo. She was our musical guest for our October Get Lit with All Of It book club event. Before we send you out into the weekend, we're going to hear one more song she performed that evening. She got the crowd to sing along and said that this song was about putting down our burdens for a while to celebrate being together. Here's Angelique Kidjo's live performance of Mama Africa.

Angelique Kidjo: Y'all ready for me? Okay, you're going to sing this.

[MUSIC - Angelique Kidjo: Mama Africa]

Angelique Kidjo: Let me hear you, New York.

[audience sings]

Angelique Kidjo: Now you're getting ready. Okay, now let's be serious. Y'all giving me the tired New Yorkers. I don't want it. I am the only one that have the right to be tired because I'm jet lag. I need your energy to help me through this song. When I say, let's go, sing it out loud, stand up, jumping, whatever you want to do. Jazzle. Okay, let's go.

[MUSIC - Angelique Kidjo: Mama Africa]

Alison Stewart: That was Mama Africa performed by Angelique Kidjo at one of our Get Lit with All Of It book club events. After the news, we'll hear a little bit about Laila Lalami's new novel, The Dream Hotel, and hear some music from the New York-based Moroccan band Imal Gnawa. First, we want to announce that today, WNYC's Public Song Project released a Super Deluxe album, 35 tracks celebrating public radio and the public domain at an important time for both.

The Public Song Project Super Deluxe album includes songs from Rhiannon Giddens, the Lemon Twigs, Rosanne Cash, Odyssey, Bela Fleck, Will Butler, and more. To hear the Public Song Project Super Deluxe album, head to publicsongproject.bandcamp.com, and if you want to hear the almost 300 tracks that listeners have submitted to the project, head to wnyc.org/publicsongproject. We'll have more All Of It after the news. Stick around.