Everyone considers Angélique Kidjo without exception as the most important singer and songwriter in the entire African continent, even more since her great mentor, the South African Miriam Makeba, died in 2008 and left the scepter of “Mama Africa” vacant. But if there is something more exciting than listening to masterpieces of the afropop as Gin gin (2007), Cheerful! (2004) o, over all, Black Ivory Soul, From 2002, it is to know from their own lips the most intimate motivations that lead him to continue touring half the world with messages of love, respect and tolerance. Taking advantage of his recent visit to the Womad de Cáceres and his tenacious determination of “overcoming the exhaustion of spending half a life in airports,” Benin’s artist agreed to explain to this newspaper why these 65 years that contemplate it since July will not be in any case synonymous with retirement. “I have the obligation to leave my 32 -year -old daughter, a world of concord that looks minimally to the one I promised as a child. No one is immune to the hatred that is extending right now everywhere, so, as an artist, I must confront with power and tell everyone who wants to hear me: it’s time to wake up.”
Angélique embodies the dream of any interviewer: he will never leave a question in limbo or raffle it with lazy, brief or imprecise responses. Also the greatest of its nightmares: it is an unstoppable and chaotic loopcard, so any attempt to plan the conversation is focused on failure. However, three quarters of talk time to minimally unblock the ethical and aesthetic ideology of a woman who presumes to be the seventh of ten brothers. And that turns its strongest beliefs around the “love of the planet as the beautiful living being that hugs us all” and the role of the family in learning and the transmission of values.
“I don’t know why I make music,” he exclaims with a lucid vehement that characterizes the entire encounter. “I never thought about becoming a singer: it was a gift that was there, and any gift should serve to share it and make us better as human beings. My parents were worried with me because I did not build my first sentence until almost four years, but before that I already sing without stopping.”
– And not to speak to being a Chaltana girl?
– From the first moment. I spoke so fast that my mother told me: “I wish you would have continued singing, because now you have exhausted us to listen to you so much.” They nicknamed “when, why and how” because I didn’t stop interested in everything, to the point that the older ones in the family dispersed as soon as they saw me appear so that I did not cold. And my father rejected them: “You sit down and answer it. How do you want the girl to learn, if you escape her?”
Curiosity has been, since then, the primary fuel in the life of Kidjo, one of those people who do not stop observing the world and soak up with the wisdom of neighbor. He understood it from very soon, although then he did not realize, thanks to a father who must be as insatiable as she when learning. “Dad did not speak Spanish, but being still very small, he took his banjo and sang me Cucurrucuc Paloma. He repeated that he was not rich enough to send me traveling through the world, but that I could bring me the world home through music. That teaching is today the greatest wealth that I can give to those who come later. ”
If the father figure was decisive, that of the mother is even more essential when it comes to understanding what is, for sure, the most influent and international artist of the black continent. “Mom agreed to form a large family, but warned that he would never abandon his great passion, the theater,” he reveals. “He founded and directed a theatrical company and, just before each function, he encouraged them all with a phrase as an amulet: ‘Let us go home well.”
Kidjo lost it four years ago and finalized now an album as a monographic tribute, but in the daily moments of doubt or anxiety he tries to recall their advice and imagine them with their own voice. “Every time I get ready to step on the stage,” he details, “especially if I am very tired, I hear how it insists: ‘Your body can be fatigued, but the spirit must remain naked and attentive to any stimulus.”
– And what was your best recommendation for life, beyond the stage?
“A very beautiful.” His favorite phrase was: “kindness is a life jacket.” And he was right. Who can kill kindness? Who can shoot at a smile? You have to be crazy to get to that.
The album on the maternal legacy shares priorities in Angélique’s mind with his recent concert at the Royal Albert Hall London to commemorate “40 years of music and activism”, which can be enjoyed on demand on the artist’s own website and represents the most recent flirting of the Benines – always omnivorous when sharing experiences with other musicians – with the orchestral world. She, as soon as she collaborates with the eminent composer Philip Glass as with the genius of the Funk Nile Rodgers, smiles when we ask her for classical music. “The first time I called me Timothy Walker, the director of the London Philharmonic, I couldn’t help but think: What has this uncle smoked?” He admits. “And the initial essays were little encouraging, I felt unable to integrate and listen persevere. ”
Is there room for hope, despite everything? Kidjo, whom Bill Clinton said that “only his heart is even bigger than his voice,” he wants to think so. The woman who treasures five Grammy awards, UNICEF’s ambassador, the granddaughter of a healer who aroused her every morning at five to accompany her to collect herbs and to understand that any of us is only “a very small part of nature,” he says he contemplates many young faces among the public of festivals such as Womad.
“We underestimate the ability of young people to think for themselves,” he exclaims as an epilogue. And tells one more story of his immense catalog of amazing experiences. “Recently, in a Jacksonville primary school, in Wyoming, a teacher asked me to give a talk to his students, between 9 and 16 years old, because they liked my autobiography very much (Spirit Rising, My Life, My Music). I asked them what they would like to be older. One of them said that Human Rights Lawyer, because I wanted to live in a world where when I left home, people and not only benefits and profits. He was 12 years old. ”He takes air, almost about to break to cry, and continues:” The second to raise his hand said he formed that they did not yell at all times: ‘He returns to your country’. She was the daughter of a Latin American, a cleaning worker. And there is no right to make episodes like that in an advanced world. ”
What to do, this is how things? “We have been worrying about much less important things than children’s well -being and now they deserve to listen to them,” insists the artist. And, but not before personally greet all the festival workers with whom he crosses, sets for the van that awaits at the exit.