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Angelique Kidjo Brings Her African Rhythms to Berkeley By Phil Reser “Music is the only thing that can bring us together,” says singer Angelique Kidjo. This remarkable African performer has received four Grammy nominations as a result of her blending of tribal and pop rhythms of West Africa with funk, salsa and jazz. With her latest CD, Djin Djin, Kidjo shares her tunes with several celebrity musicians including Brandford Marsalis and Alicia Keys, Carlos Santana and Josh Groban, Joss Stone, Peter Gabriel, Ziggy Marley, and African music legends Amadou and Mariam. The result is a hybrid of musical styles and influences, all beautifully coming together. Kidjo returns to UC Berkley’s Cal Performances on this Friday, March 14, 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall. ((510) 642-9988 - tickets@calperfs.berkeley.edu) In an interview, she described her dance music. “I try to create a bond with the audience so they can experience some of my culture and not forget the powerful African roots of music. My style of music has no name. I use all the influences I like and in the end. I am able to make them mine.” Kidjo was born, one of nine children, in the village of Ouidah in the little West African country of Benin and began to sing and dance at the age of six. Brought up in a musical family, she was introduced at an early age to many forms of music. Influenced by the records of American musicians like James Brown and Aretha Franklin, she started her stage career with a local band called Sphinx. She became aware of the issue of apartheid in South Africa and the history of her own people being exported to Brazil as slaves. At that point, she decided to dedicate her life, “as a human being bringing all human beings together.” She also had a vision of creating a personal musical trilogy that would reflect the journey of the African slaves and how the music and culture was spread throughout the world. “I knew I was not mature enough to do it when it first entered my mind,” she says. “I needed to deal with the anger I had in me about how my people were treated. I have never wanted my music to bring hate. I knew that I would have to be in the mind-set to enrich myself and not to spread pain but to heal.” In 1983, Kidjo left Benin and moved to Paris due to the political situation in her country. As she recalls, “Benin at that time was still a Communistic dictatorship and the government was putting pressure on musicians to sing about Communism. One thing that I say that my music will never do is to praise a political ideology. If I had not moved and refused to cooperate, I would have put my family and myself in danger. I don’t separate my belief from my career, which sometimes has put me into trouble!” So she left for Paris to attend college, planning to be a human rights lawyer. However, it didn’t take long for her to change her mind and decide she could better help people through her music. Enrolling in a jazz school, she met her future husband, bass guitarist, Jean Hebrail, who is today her manager and creative musical partner. She joined a jazz band from Holland called Pili Pili and recorded five albums with them. In 1990, she released her first solo album called Parakou, which led to a contract with Island Records and 1991’s Logozo, which featured the dance hit “Batonga.” In 1998, she moved to New York with Hebrail and their daughter, Naima. She released the first of her childhood trilogy vision, Oremi, which would explore American rhythm and blues and its relationship to Benin and Africa. “I would say that my first influences of music,” Kidjo says, “my first knowledge of black people living outside of Africa, came from the popular music of America.” The second part would explore the relationship between Benin and Bahia in Brazil, the album, Black Ivory Soul was released in 2002 while Kidjo toured with American rocker, Dave Matthews, who also appeared on the CD. She was appointed United Nations UNICEF Special Representative on behalf of children’s education and to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. There are about 100,000 out of nearly 6 million people in her country with the disease. She says, “In Africa, AIDS is directly related to poverty. The people have the misery of the whole world with disease on top of it. She adds, “There’s only one humankind. The reason I believe this so strongly is because I was raised in Africa, and if you are raised in nature, you understand and respect every life.”
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