Black Music Month QLS Classic: Angélique Kidjo

Travel back to our conversation with five-time Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo and her down with team Supreme.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
What up, y'all, it's unpaid bill for Quest Love Supreme.
As you may have seen throughout June, we are celebrating
Black Music Month by releasing an episode every day, So
every day you either hear especially picked QLs Classic, and
on Wednesdays we are dropping new two part episodes with
Wayne Brady and the legendary James Poyser, both of which
were filmed at Studio. Black music is deeply important to
me and has been an influence throughout my entire career.

(00:29):
It's also something we celebrate here at QLs. Today we
look back at our twenty eighteen conversation with the incredible
five time Grammy Award winning Angelie Quijo. We spoke about Afrobeat,
Lakuti and more.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Supremo Sun Sun Suprema, Roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Suprema
Roll Call, Suprema Su Su Supremo, Roll Call, Subprema Son
Supremo roll Just so.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
That you know, Yeah, Angel Leek, you, Joe, Yeah, my
roots just might be Yeah and Ben and come.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
To Supremo Roll Suprema Son Son Supremo roll call.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
It's like, yeah, I booked an African diva.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, then I didn't show up. Yeah, I'm at home
smoking's a Teeva.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Supremo roll call out Supremo Supremo roll call.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Out paid Bill. Yeah, and I'll tell you so. Yeah.
I wrote my college thesis on Angelikio.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Supremo, son Son Supremo roll call Supremo Son Son Supremo role.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Boss Bill is excited. Yeah for this here show Yeah,
I'm ready to learn. Yeah, what I do not know?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Roll so some Supprimo roll call Supreme got killed here
seven Supremo roll here.

Speaker 5 (02:06):
I come, Yeah from Africa. Yeah, I've got something.

Speaker 6 (02:11):
Yeah to tell you, dude, son Son Supprimo roll call
Suprema son Sun Supremo roll call Suprema son Son.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Supremo roll call Suprema son Son Supremo roll call.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Wait, Sativa, Wait, whatever's happened You ever cough so hard
that you have a headache?

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah? I think I love Vessel. Greatth that's good.

Speaker 5 (02:45):
Come on with that.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
We got Sugar Steve and and the Bill Twins. Hello,
I'm feel unpaid in U and Boss Bill. If you
hear any noise, it's just the boys, because like sound
of where is Like, why did you call her? She's moving?

Speaker 4 (03:04):
She's not here?

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, I don't know, Well, she's moving, and this would
be it's just that she's not she's This would be
such a great nerve to participate in. I mean, we
we have royalty with us, and and why he's not
here for this? And I guess fan take a little
still tending to his uh kitchen countertop.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
Anyway, it's not easy, guys, Come on ye.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Anyway tonight or today, we're in the presidence of royalty. Uh.
We have the undisputed queen of African music.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
And according to Time magazine, she is Africa's premiere diva.
I don't know if what's the jury when the word
term eva. It's over with diva, isn't it already?

Speaker 5 (03:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Enough of that, okay, okay, so we'll just say that
according to Time magazine, you're just the premiere. I will know.

Speaker 5 (03:57):
I'm not a premier.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
I'm just a regular scene that okay, Okay, she's one
of those Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (04:05):
No, I'm always humble because this life is like that.
One day you're up, the next day you're down with
your nose in the Doukie.

Speaker 7 (04:11):
All right, well, waiting and gentlemen, fresh forky News's welcome,
right the Queen of the Queen of all Angeley Qujo
the quest.

Speaker 5 (04:23):
Love Supreme, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yes, okay, now I'm paid, Bill, Yes, and you rarely
take the take. You're rarely out of the batter's box
first on the show. But here I am. You did
your final college thesis on our subject today.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I did explain this, okay. Well, I was really into
West African music in college. I went to Ghana for
a semester when I was in a sophomore or junior
or something like that. Wait you what, Yeah, I went,
I've been to Africa more than anybody in this room beside.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Are you serious? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:59):
But so I went to wait, I'm not using this
just to play your new themes. By the way, there's
a lot of random ship that goes on in my life.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
And here's why.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
Alright, okay, what's just happened?

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah I didn't get you didn't know that? Now that
worked because I felt like I was so high, no
more than normal or just like I'm paying Bill is
random round me?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
He's just so wait, So I I how many times
have you been to Africa three, three times, twice twice. Okay,
that's the North Coast anyway, that's important. I wrote my
thesis about what I called Transatlantic diasporic feedback, which is
a smart way of saying, we all know how West
African African music affected the States, but then in turn

(06:05):
how the States how the music went back around and
affected West Africa. So like people like Fale and people
like Angelikijo who like by Funk and like also with
African music, but like other stuff that happened, and then
and then there's another trip across the Atlantic, and it
kind of keeps on going in this big.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Circle, and so dog chasing it. Yeah, so I wrote
my thesis about that. That's beautiful. Okay, Well anyway, Angeline,
that was like the movie previews. Now I'm gonna get
to you.

Speaker 5 (06:28):
But I think that is interesting that you thought of
doing that. But most of most of the time, people
don't even understand, don't even realize that the music they
have been listening to for so many years or centuries
comes from Africa. And I always tell people no music
will exist in America without the blues. Everything started with
the blues and with the blues, blue grass is not

(06:50):
white people's music. It's black people and music. All the
music in this country, it's black people. That's sorry.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
A lot of my UH students the first year started
teaching at U n Yu didn't know that. Three students
didn't know that the banjo came from Africa, like a
lot of instruments that are used in country Western music.

Speaker 5 (07:10):
They don't even know that.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
They didn't know that. Yeah, they didn't. So how are
you today?

Speaker 6 (07:16):
Me?

Speaker 5 (07:17):
I'm cool, apart from the rain that makes me stay
in the car for more than and now I have
to get here. And my bladd I was crying for
help when I walked in here. I mean, come on, guys,
just for you, I do that request of you know that? Right?

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yes? Just for me?

Speaker 5 (07:30):
Yeah, because every time he invited me, I always have
to go for traffic. But something going on with these
guys sounds about right.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
I'm glad you made it. I'm glad you made it.
So you're you've been in New Yorker for a second? Correct?
How long have you been?

Speaker 5 (07:47):
I've been here since nineteen ninety seven.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Okay, so I guess twenty one years makes you that.
My official rule is that if you're a transplant, uh
from out of New York, you can officially start calling
yourself a real New Yorker. Yeah after twenty years. Yeah,
oh so I'm only on one ninth year.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
I am broken. I'm from Brooklyn, y'all.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I feel like you always changed.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
That.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Not from you, I hear it from a lot of people.
I've heard. I heard no the number of years it
takes to claim New Yorker status. I've been here for
sixteen years. I think I'm in New Yorker.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
Now, once you past ten years, you're in New York.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Sorry, buddy, Yeah, because I can't. I've reknew my driver's
license here twice. I'm still a Pennsylvania residence. My tax like,
I'm still a Pennsylvania because, uh, I'm too lazy to
go to DMV.

Speaker 5 (08:40):
I guess I don't know, but he's so close it
doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, but how long have you been? I was gonna
to ask. I grew up on Long Island, which all
New Yorkers don't know he exists.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
No, you're really a New Yorker. Yeah, I don't have
an accent. My mom does, I don't. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (08:55):
Okay, I don't even know you have an accent. I
have so many accident a little bit of it.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Accent too, just a tiny one.

Speaker 5 (09:01):
I don't care. I have accent and I'm proud of it.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
We're part of Brooklyn Park Slope. Oh okay, nice cool Brooklyn?
Is there an uncruel Brooklyn?

Speaker 5 (09:13):
Like?

Speaker 1 (09:14):
What's what's hitting for Vincent Hurst these days? Like I
live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in brooks Bushwick, and you don't
wear an ounce of cameo or not since like two
thousand and eight. Okay, No, I've seen them brothers in Bushwick,
like they still have like one leg rolled up in
a Dutch a Dutch in their ears. It's changed a

(09:38):
little bit. Okay. So there's are like pickle shops and okay,
I see, I understand. One day I'll check the Brooklyn
no you yeah, We'll go to Brooklyn Bowl, don't you
like once a month? Yeah? I guess. I don't know
if Williamsburg really counts as super like Brooklyn. But anyway,

(10:01):
so suburb, Okay, I see, yes, the Manhattan suburb. So
I have to say that in the years that I've
been collaborating with you and you know, doing stuff and
shows with you, you and I have never ever, ever
talked about your story and what brought you to prominence

(10:23):
and dominance UH across the world and especially in the
in the world of African music. First of all, Okay,
when they say African music, I almost feel like it's
being too broad.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
I mean, it's acolic, reducing Africa to one thing that
Westerner can understand you and absorbs without asking themselves questions.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
We're idiots. Okay, we're idiots.

Speaker 5 (10:51):
No, no, no, you, no you. I'm saying it. But
I'm talking about Westerner because who tell the story of
Black people from the beginning? The Westerner from the beginning
when they set a foot in Africa. We were doing
because they come with a plan, and that plan was
to enslave us, to colonize us, and to take our
wealth away, the resources away, and keep the hands on

(11:13):
it and continue telling the story of us not being
smart enough, being shylish. We have no culture, we have
no civilization, we have no library, we have nothing. We
are savage people. When you are dehumanized from the beginning,
how do you reclaim your your humanity? As as Curry
James was telling me when I was sitting down with him,
he said, we never win any battle we've been We've

(11:35):
been defeated. So it's very hard for us to tell
our story from the point of being defeated because we're
never given a chance to do whatever we wanted to
do the way we wanted to do it.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Get work, work, work, Yeah, okay. So I just recently,
up until maybe five or six months ago, was told
that my family history starts in Benin. Benin, you're from?

(12:15):
How many How large is the the territory that you're from?

Speaker 5 (12:19):
Well, I know in kilometter, I don't know. In one
point six million kilometer is the country? It is the
small country we are. We are close to pretty much
twelve million, and we have fifty different languages. Whoa, oh yeah,
I may take one five miles you go to the
next village. Different rhythm, different drums, different languages, everything is different.

(12:45):
So out of the fifty, I only speak four, but
those four allowed me to be able to move completely
in the south all the way to the center of
the country. But as soon as I hit the northern countries,
I need an interpreter because I don't speak any of
the language from the north.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
How many languages are would you your assessment? How many
languages are in the continent of Africa.

Speaker 5 (13:11):
Some people say fifteen hundred, and I said, there's more
than that, because every little village the language. Sometimes what
happened is that it's like between Latin and French. The
language of my father's phone was at the beginning, it's
called Peter. It was a tribe and it was very

(13:32):
difficult for people to understand. So step by step when
colonization coming, is that being diluted and a little bit
to make it more understandable. So it turned to French
instead of being the peda language, but the better language.
When you speak the better language, you understand a lot
of languages from the southern part, like Eva, like Nagou,

(13:53):
many different languages in the south. And what is interesting
to me is how as a little girl born in
the city, I was able to be surrounded by different
languages in one street, the street I grew up in.
So I have in front of my house, I have
the Muslim I have the mosque, I have people from
the Mono that comes from between Ghana Togo and being

(14:17):
in that kind of and then I have been from Nigeria.
My mom is from Nigeria, so I have I speak
Yoruba too, and then you have all these people during
the battle between the Kingdom of the Phone and the
kingdom of your Yoruba, when they used to fight for territory.
Every time somebody win the battle, you bring the prisoners back.

(14:37):
So the prisoners that come from the Yoruba land there
you find them in the place. The village is the
vigia that they built is called Ketu and the language
is called Nago, which drive from Yoruba, but mixed with
the language that was in the area, so they mix
it up and it's a completely different language from Yoruba.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
So is it is it quite often that there's conflict
between the Nigerians and.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
Uh no more. No more. At the beginning it was
Nigeria been in Togo Ghana there were one country. So
is the colonizer that put the frontiers, that's separate tribes.
We are all the same pretty much. If you do
the DNA test of Nigerian, Ghani and even Cameroonian on

(15:31):
the northern part of Cameroon and Togo, we're all the
same people all the way to the north. The north
of Bening frontiers is the Niger River. So what makes
it complicated for me to learn in language from Nize.
Is that you have a lot of trade that go
from the northern part of Beining to Nigeria. You have

(15:52):
the Ausa. Ausa is the language. Alousa and Swali are
the two biggest language in Africa. Because there are languages
of trade. So if you want to trade from west
to east, north south, if you speak ourside, you can turn,
you can do the whole continent. And if speak Sayili too,
so you have the outside. In the north, you have

(16:12):
the northern people from Togo that are there. You have
the northern people from Nize that comes in because they
are all the nomad they're coming when it's too dry
in the desert. The closest way place where they can
get water is in beneath, so they cross the river
to come in. So it's very very complex the north,
and they have so many different languages. And the rhythm

(16:32):
also is completely different.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Is the.

Speaker 5 (16:36):
Rhythm in the in the south is much more six
eight and in the northern is more complex. Is you
have five four, all those kind of different weird rhythm.
And it's the only place in the whole country where
women have the music, the traditional music separate from the
men when they are playing. They want no guys in there,

(16:57):
and it's like you just don't touch our drum. This
kind of.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Serious, really really, Also the drums themselves are totally different.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
The whole rhythmic complexities are completely if you go like
five miles east or five miles west, because all those
countries are really close together. So Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria
are all next to each other and you can get
two of them by going through them, and then you
go from an Anglophone to a Francophone to an anglophone country.
So there's this constant dealing of languages and it's it's

(17:26):
insane and and not And in addition to Benin, sorry
to get all gannany, but like that. That country also
as you go north, has totally different languages and totally
different drum cultures. By going fifty miles you have Kumasi,
which is the middle of the country, which has its
own culture. I love Akra yeah, me too, and Tamala,
which is closer to the desert, which is more like

(17:47):
talking drums and things like that.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
It's a totally different culture as well. As you go.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
Like like what verse one village that was wait hang
one second, like your mommy Jamaican, I want to tell
you know about Look, you know one of the things
that was really interesting for me growing up in Benin,
I never wanted. I never went to the north because

(18:15):
when the colonizer came, they divide the Southerner from the
northerner and they tell us they told the Southerner, you
go to the North, They're gonna kill you. They are
savage people there. So when I was little kid, I'm
not gonna go to the North. I'm wanna travel, travel
to desert. My father said, yeah, I like to go.
My mama said, no, don't send my child there. I'm like,
what's going on? I have to leave my country because

(18:36):
of the communist dictatorship, go to France and coming back
to my country to discover the north. And I discover
a village insane. It's called Mani Grie. They speak Nago Yoruba,
but it's different. It's I understand them, but there's a
certain thing I don't understand. And in that village particularly,

(18:59):
the only thing that guys are allowed to do when
they are playing music is to play the equivalent. I
think the ancest of Bernbau. That's where it comes from
is that small guitar that got ding ding ring ringing.
And the only thing he can say the women are singing.
He's going mmmmm, that's it. You said more that they

(19:21):
just go like, we don't, we don't ask you to
sing it shut up.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
So it's sort of not segregation, but it's is.

Speaker 5 (19:30):
That the guys. But the thing is when the guys
are doing their music, the women are not singing. They
are cooking.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
So there's no tribes that collaborate with each other.

Speaker 5 (19:41):
And when somebody die, so somebody dies, when somebody have
a baby, when somebody is getting married, when there for
something that is not official. Because when I come to
see them in the village, the women want to pay
tribute to me. So that's when they come and they
want sing to me, and they tell the guy, she
is our sister. We want to sing for you can't

(20:02):
come in. But we are the main attraction here. So
that's the choice, and the men respect that, but they
are there.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
They do, oh yeah, because I would figure that.

Speaker 5 (20:13):
There's in music. There's not none in music. There's no violence.
It's just like this, and then everybody respect each each
person's desire to play the music. They want to play
at that time, and that's what is really interesting. And
it's also a Muslim village and.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Even now and today like that that is still respected.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
Well, you want to go, come with me. I take
you there. You see for yourself.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
When's the last time you you there?

Speaker 5 (20:36):
It was three years ago, boss Bill.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
When's the last time your boss? One day? Two thousand
and one, two thousand one.

Speaker 5 (20:46):
Okay, So let's go to Benin.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah, let's go.

Speaker 5 (20:56):
From beginning. You gotta go see it.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well, I was asking because I think the story that
was told to me was that when the last slave ship,
American slave ship, the Clotilda, was gathering their last flock,
their last cargo of slaves, that there were prisoners. I

(21:26):
guess they were either there were Nigerians captured in Benin
or Benin in Nigeria. That part I'm still kind of
rusty on, but I believe that they were Nigerian captured
in Benin and it was two hundred of them and
they were taken to Alabama and then at the last

(21:48):
not at the last minute, because slavery was illegal by
that point. It's kind of like the the grand great
great Grandfather's the last sleep he was allowed to start
his own European practice in Little Africa in Alabama. Have

(22:11):
you got a chance to see that village at all
or what? It's No.

Speaker 5 (22:15):
I've been to Alabama, but I stopped.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
I was in.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
Birmingham and this is more near Mobile, so I think
I have to go back there. Because I went to
visit the memorial of those young girls in school. It
was it was just a moving moment for me. What
is really sad for me when I go to those
places that we in Africa we got no idea what's

(22:40):
going on, what goes on when people left? We have
no idea, and we are so ignorant about the history
of African American is painful. And I came here in
nineteen eighty seven. I knew very little. I knew a
little bit because I always ask questions, and because music
has attracted my attention to the fact that they African

(23:00):
people in America, that they are doing the music that
speaks to me that I can bring to the traditional musician.
It's the funniest thing ever. I brought James Brown in
the middle of my village. Their group on it, man
is just like how you go, what the hell? They
don't understand nothing. They're going to say, love back, come blind.
They played. I'm like, oh tru damn, what is that?

(23:21):
It was even groovier than James Brown's stuff. So I'm like,
we have so much in common, yet the job of
brainwashing us and dividing us has been done so smartly
that we keep believing the people that enslave us what
they tell us is the truth. I have a different
take on this because I grew up with my both

(23:42):
grandmother died over one hundred years and the first time
I heard the World's slave, I'm what is that? I
was nine years old because my brother taught himself to
play guitar. But I listened to all the guitar players
and he was a huge fan of Jimi Hendrix, and
he was born bold and he never had any hair.
So one day the axis of love what that?

Speaker 1 (24:03):
That's what that?

Speaker 5 (24:05):
I don't come home. I'm like, this guy is Penniees.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
But how are you hearing that? You thought he was?

Speaker 5 (24:10):
You think that, yeah, he was playing. My brother was
playing the guitar. He put a freaking Afro week on.
I said, you don't need any Afro week to play
the guitar. Man, But what the hell is going on?
He said, I'm gonna look like that guy and sound
like him. I said, yeah, that guy, by the way,
he's African. He's Bennie. What is language he is snaking in?
And he goes, he's not Beniese, he's African American. I

(24:30):
was nine years old. I look at him. I said,
I might be nine, dude, I ain't stupid. You can't
be African American at the same time. And then he said, yes,
you can't. I said, no, you're lying to me. He
said no, he's a slave descender. I said, what is
the slave? What is a descendant? He goes, you don't what?
Because my nickname in my family went white? How I
asked so much question every elderly people. As soon as
I come into the video, they go sh everybody just

(24:53):
gat around. So he said, go ask Grammar. So I
went and asked my grandma. My grandma started telling me
the story of slavery. I'm like, who she's mad because
I never member. My mom and dad always used to advestment.
One thing that repeated every day to us is that
a human being is not a matter of color. Do

(25:13):
not come back to this house and say you felt
because you're black, because that's the day you're gonna see
our hands. Because they never let raise the hand on us.
I'm like, why they say that. I grew up in
such a protected, loving, musical, cultural place where the house
was open to everybody. Today you go to cotton and
you say you're my friend. My mom said, come on,
this is the room, it's sleep. That's how my parents are.

(25:35):
They don't have any kind of fear about any other
human being. So for me, when I I arrived in
France and started hearing all those racist slur I was like,
what does this thing come from? I never felt like that,
And even the story of slavery, for me, it was
not true. I did not believe in it until I
turned fifteen and I said Winnie Mandela on TV talking

(25:58):
about Nelson Mandela and Jail Path, and I was sitting
in the living room and I turned around. For the
first time in my life, I start cursing at my
parents and insulted them. Think I've never done, and they
were just like, take a back you were. I was mad,
I say, you are liars, you're lying to me. That
Suddenly I realized that I've been I've been living believing

(26:21):
that my skin color was not going to be any
liability for me. Ever, that everywhere I go in the world,
I'll be I'll be welcome with open arms. And then
I'm not far from where I live, people are still
on their apathet and what so, and I just go crazy,
literally go crazy. I was sobbing so much, and I
walk into my room, slam the door, and I stay

(26:42):
in that room for two three hours, and I come out.
I said to my dad, I wrote a song, and
I was still crying. My father said, let us hear it.
So I start singing the song. And I finished the song,
and my father said to me, well, I understand you,
mad I understand, and you said, whatever feeling you have tonight,

(27:03):
I get it. But one thing I have to tell you,
you never, as a musician praise hate nor violence. What
you're saying not gonna go on my house. You're never
gonna sing that song unless, as an artist, you realize
that your role is to build bridges, to hold the
kid to a closed door for people to come together,

(27:24):
because it's a gift that is given to you with love,
not with hate. Unless you go back in that room
that you come from and rewrite this song and think
about what that anger can be turned to into positive,
what strength it can give you, what you think the
future can look like, and you rewrite the song. If

(27:44):
you don't do that, you know what I'm gonna sing
under my roof anymore. So I went back and I
rewrite the song, and it becomes for me to be
able to live with it an anthem of peace, where
I said in that song, the song comes out everywhere
the same way the bird flies in the sky, the

(28:05):
same way. There's no frontchier's no color. Wherever they go,
they go free. And I'm dreaming of the world where
we all, as human being we can move around free
with no fear that I'm dreaming of the world where
it's not there will never be anymore ever oppressor or
oppressed people. My father said, now I like that song,
you can sing it.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
So you're saying at that moment when you saw Winniam Anddella,
you were fifteen years old.

Speaker 5 (28:30):
This time, so it called my life bar It's like
two costmos come together. So suddenly what my grandmother's told
to me, I'm like, it's kind of the same thing.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
So were you not aware of what was going on
next door in Nigeria with what failure I was doing
with his music.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
And oh yeah, fella, yes, I knew what I mean
when I was a teenager. I knew because when Zombie
come out first of all, when first Fellows Fellas music started,
it was a kind of revolution, a huge revolution because
for me, for years, the music that was coming from
Nigeria was fuji music and juju music, and we were

(29:08):
like dring and we were like you know, benez Obey,
we were all dancing on that music and juju music.
I mean most I just like dancing it. And then
fella comes in and it was come ona, come Ona.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
So it sounded radical to you at the time.

Speaker 5 (29:32):
Oh man, I like it because the first song I
heard was open and close. We drave our parents crazy
because we invented so nasty dance. I tell you, even
how what we're doing it, you're not gonna listen to
that music anymore if you don't like that. We're like, yeah, right,
as soon as you go to work, we're gonna call it.

(29:52):
Crank it up and then move body and open it up.
I mean's just like chrisy. And then it gave us
as a younger freedom of making our own music, music
on top of it and dancing it because we see
it fella dancers dancing. We were like, it was an
eye opening for me as a young girl, what you
can do with music, how you can empower people with

(30:13):
music too. Then he wrote the song zombie mm hmm,
because I always you to go back and forth on
vacation in Nigeria, because I have part of my family
in Nigeria. So we arrive in Legos one day and
my auntie said, you come in that house, you close
the door, you don't go out. I'm like, Auntie, we
gotta go see the other cousins as you are living

(30:34):
this house. What's going on me? I'm curious that care
you tell me no or be it? Oh, you better
wait for something that's gonna happen to you. And I
know all the way to sneak out of that house
because all my cousins or this ship we do the
presid don't see. So they were sitting in the living
room out there. We get into the street. Oh my god.

(30:58):
The house of my auntie was not far from the shoe,
not far from the shine where all the taxi comes to.
And all those people were there and then you see
the military out there, and it was working from the military.
So I'm being talk unless you tell them to talk
to their fast like this, and they would chase their
deby running. And at one point I'm like, you don't
leave here, They're gonna kick you. And then at that

(31:21):
time my mom realized I was no longer serious, screaming
in my name, your father gonna kill me. Man, something
happened to this child. And I came by. He said,
why are you? I said, I didn't go to know,
I went to the toilet. I didn't go anywhere. I
just went to the toilet, really, I says, more and
I was colored with us. So what was the toilet?

(31:42):
I said. We went to the next labor there because
somebody was in the toilet. Way, just we make up
your mind makes up because you're gonna get a slap
on your head. So fella, that's what fella did. And
also by me growing up listening to me and Makay.
But but when she came here, I was eight years old.
What I was with my mom. They have a group
of women asking for women to write to vote to

(32:05):
decide who they're gonna marry. No more arranged marriage. And
I was eight when I'll be singing the retreat song
of Miriam Makayba with them because they're like, we can't
saying when you're from in front, you're singing, everybody stop
and listening to our message. Just keep on singing. That's
I was sitting in the front. I don't understand nothing
about what they were saying. I'm like, I'm not doing
my homework. I'm here having fun. I'm singing. That's it.
I'll be singing and then I start having that political

(32:28):
conscience actually about what you can do with music for
people to empower people first and to make people aware
of what is going on because the menus, most of
the time, what they're telling the man not be the truth.
So fell off Miriam, Aritha Franklin, Didna Simon. They were

(32:48):
the women musically that opened my eyes to a lot
of things.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
How how would American artists in the seventies, uh, trickle
to the culture in Africa? Like was there and was
there a radio station.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
Or the radio? I mean our radio was playing every music.
I mean it was the I'm talking about it now
and then looking back, I'm like, I didn't even realize
how revolutionary It was at that time before the communist
regime arrived and say no more music from outside. I
mean they would do a traditional music program and then
right after there they would go to chuck Berry or

(33:30):
they would go to the Rolling Stones, or they'll go
to the Beatles, or they go to Amazing Grass from
as Afroncan to Crazy. For me towards the norm, it
was okay, it was really what it is and those music.
I was listening to them home because my brother they
have a musical band. Way before the playlist moved. They
started and my father bought the instrument for them. The
first time I saw a drum kid and far fista organ,

(33:54):
the bass, a guitar, percussion. It was because my father
bought the instrument. The boxes eat outside and I come
from school. I started booking myself. I'm and when they
opened everything, I sat down the rehearsal room looking at
the drum kid, going is it one person that played
out or two?

Speaker 4 (34:13):
No?

Speaker 5 (34:13):
One person? I said, how many arms?

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Wait? How many? How many siblings do you have in
the family?

Speaker 5 (34:20):
We are ten, seven boys and three girls. And where
do you fall seven?

Speaker 1 (34:25):
You're the seventh child, and I have three brothers.

Speaker 5 (34:27):
After me.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Okay, okay, so I said that now I don't want
to sound like the ignorant Americans.

Speaker 5 (34:38):
Who let me tell you African, let me tell you
how Aretha Franklin has impacted.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Save me.

Speaker 5 (34:46):
Thank you all of those. I mean. There was a
period of LPs and some LP will come with two
songs and some some will come all the whole song,
and I just get my brother's I drive them nuts.
I'm like, can you get any LP out in this
house that have some women on the cover. I'm sick

(35:06):
and title seeing boys on the covers, man boys band
from CONSI to two, my jesty here and this there,
they're no woman that does music. And my brother said,
you better start bringing some city in the LP here
with women, because this little girl, you're gonna break all
this stuff down. So they start bringing the French female singer.
I'm like, yeah, okay, I take that. Why's there any

(35:30):
black women playing? Right? And a friend of them come
from New York, from America and brought amazing grace of
Aretha Frances I was not home where the album came in.
The singer of the band of my brother. His ego
can't even fit here, he said. I can't sing anything.
I'm the best singer in the world. I'm like, I
would look at me and yeah, sometimes you sing off key,

(35:53):
but I'm a little ger. I can't say that right.
So I came back from school and they were having
that hitting discussion because my brother wanted to do some
of the song of the Amazing and the guy said,
that woman singing, sit crazy me. I can't sing that.
I'm like, huh, a woman. I'm going to see that me, mister,

(36:14):
I know everything. Oh, I'm going to find out who's
whooping his boat right there. And I grabbed the city
from the table, and I from the first time I saw,
I read the frank and I'm like, thank you, sister,
you whooping this guy's board. I like it so much
I can't even scream up enough. And then I sat
and I looked at him and said, and I said

(36:35):
to him and said, don't you sing everything? He said,
why you know about singing? I said, I can't sing better?
Now you are to him my brother, I said, shut up,
because my daughter, my brother always telling him, come and
listen to the note sometime you're And he said, but
she's the woman. What woman knows how to sing? This
one is just screaming. I said, no, she is screaming,

(36:56):
she's singing, and you can't. He was so mad and
did that day my brother said he didn't come for
the two revers of that. I'm like, well, you know
that he can't sing, I said, but you can't say
everything that you think. I mean, you have flitted a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
I said, was her singer? Was he okay?

Speaker 5 (37:17):
He was the lead singer?

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Or was he okay? Was he a good singer?

Speaker 3 (37:20):
No?

Speaker 5 (37:21):
He wasn't. Impersonator. That's the different thing singing. And because
he likes to do James Brown with the cape with
the thing and he come up, that guy's stupid, man.
I mean they play what they played, they have red
clean on the floor. He were white or white James Brown.
And I'm like one day and I was like looking
at him and said, this guy is just a fool.
And he did the what do you call that? Splitting

(37:42):
the pango on direct. I'm loving this.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
He's idea on what's happened? I feel it.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
Well, that's the gold man that you're gonna take some.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, have you I know how much that that album
means to you? Have you ever been fortunate enough to
see the documentary that Sidney No No, No, No, No,
The The The Amazing Grace. So basically Sidney Pollack directed

(38:22):
had eight cameras on her at the whole time. The
funniest part of that documentary is the fact that the
rolling Stones are the deacons. Like there's a scene where
like Mick uh, the drummer, Charlie Watts Keith and the

(38:43):
bass player, Yeah, Brian Jones, Uh, McK taylor, the bill
thank you, Yeah, they like the church is in like
the hood of south central Los Angeles, and and then

(39:07):
you see the rolling Stones get out of like a
rolls voice limousine and they're ushered and flanked them between
like the deacons on the side of the choir, and
it's it's I mean, I saw a good ten minutes
of this. A friend of ours, a friend of the show,

(39:29):
Matthew uh has the complete movie. What oh yeah, Okay,
I don't know he has the complete movie. But for
the longest, for some reason, uh Aretha keeps uh these

(39:51):
injunctions from stopping it from being shown. It was supposed
to be shown on its on its fortieth anniversary at
cons Film Festival, but even at the very last minute,
right before they were about to like press the thing
like a judge in Juckson came through and like prevent it.
I guess there's she gets last rites options. So for

(40:12):
some reason, not obviously it's money or you know, she
doesn't want that footage to be seen. So, but it's
the ten minutes I saw some of the most life changing,
probably the best footage of any seventies act I've ever seen.

(40:33):
And this includes like watching Michael Jackson do the robot.

Speaker 5 (40:36):
And so, I mean, she's great, that's I mean, she's
the ultimate. I mean she she's just there's no words.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Have you met her?

Speaker 5 (40:44):
Oh yeah. We did a show at Radio City Hall
for Nelson Mandela's birthday and the lineup was intimidating. She
sung right after Steve Wonder and Alicia Kiss and myself
were to go right beef after Aretha and my husband

(41:07):
was sweating, going, how are you gonna do this? I'm
like a man, She's giving me the back tone and
I'm taking it. We're putting flame on that tone. Man,
even light up the place.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
I was about to say you, I can't even imagine,
like your your show is so high powered, and so
I I can't imagine you being stopped or I am
getting nervous about anything, and starts struggling.

Speaker 5 (41:33):
She sings, I mean because she's such a good singer,
she's such a great performer. She has something that is
if it's not given to you by nature, as no
way you can be like that. You know, the people
said they have it and they're wasted, don't know how
to use it. She's in control of every part of
her body in that voice. Every word that comes out

(41:54):
of the mouth of Aretha, it doesn't come out because
it can't come out. It just come out before it
has to as to. So when she finished and she goes, Halleluiah,
I'm like, hallelujah. I mean, I'm coming, man, and I
look as Alicia said, girlfriend, are you ready? She goes,
let's go kill it, and we walk on. That's taking bamn.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Wow. It inspired you.

Speaker 5 (42:14):
I inspired us, both of us so much. We look
at each other. We're singing this song differently, because when
you come after somebody like that, you don't want to
shame her. You want to shine, to prove to her
that everything she does we admire, and then we're gonna
continue doing it with the continuation of whatever she gave
us to person.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
So that's it. That's very noble, because I know a
lot of people would just be like, nope, I'm gonna
I'm gonna ld you.

Speaker 5 (42:42):
And music is not competition for me if you're there
to do competition, if you're not there to empower people.
My mother used to say phrase to me for years.
I'm like, what did she mean? It took me years.
One day I was about to go and stay in
Boston a Somerville theater. And as I was getting because

(43:05):
till then, even though my show are really great and everything,
I used to be a little bit stressed before I
go on stage. And as I was staying on the
wing of the stage before I go on stage, I
heard that voice of my mother saying, before you set
a foot on the stage, you have to be able

(43:28):
to think of yourself and be naked spiritually. And then
suddenly it hits me. It hits me like bell I
walk on that stage, no fear, my feet barely touched
the ground. I'm like, I'm free, no more fear. I'm
never gonna be afraid of going on stage because what
she means by that is that you are not on stage,

(43:51):
you look at your belly button and how beautiful your
dress is or what if you wear is. You are
there to be humble at the service of the music
and the song that you are doing, to be able
to open yourself to the public. The more open you are,
the more you give, the more you get. And from
the moment I understood that it transformed completely in my life.

(44:13):
And what amazes me is people that come back and say,
you never can see what we see when your show
is over. When we are walking the street with people,
the smile they have on their face is just like
you can't even put in the bottle. I don't think
about it when I'm on stage. My stage is my sanctuary.
My stage is my heaven on earth. And I always
tell my musician, if you have an issue, check it

(44:35):
on the garbage before you work on that stage. It'll
be waiting for you can pick it up when you
come up. When you come on my page, you make
faces you don't know me. I don't have to talk
and look at you men, and you know you don't
do it right. You can leave if you don't like it,
you can go. No one is indispensable, and even not me.
So when we are on stage. What we do, we artists,

(44:55):
is to play to entertain and at the same time
knowing because we don't know that we are empowering people.
And that's what we do the best. That's why music
specifically and arts in general are the first thing that dictator, dictators,
auto returning regime the target. Because we set people three,

(45:20):
we tell people what time it is. We give them
the strength to go in the street in march, to
speak out the mind. And I don't want that. Do
you remember any speech of JFK. As smart as he is,
You don't martinly thinking we love him, but we remember
phrases of his. But songs you listen to from sixty

(45:43):
to seventies, you tick and sing them?

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Is it true? That?

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Right?

Speaker 5 (45:48):
That's the power of music right there?

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Do you remember your very first performance on the stage?

Speaker 5 (45:57):
Oh Jesus, how long ago was? I was six years old.
My mom have a theater group till today. She's the
only woman in West Africa that has had such a
large theatre group ever. And she wrote the piece. She
did everything by herself. She learned how to do lighting,
she does the costume everything. It was her passion. So

(46:21):
a little girl in the theater group of my mother
that sing a song that I knew before she started
saying it, and I knew every part of the piece.
And I will tell my mom why I'm not the
one singing it. And my Mama, is that because you
ain't playing the part? I said, what is? What does
mean playing the part? She said? Can you shut up?
Then I finish what I'm doing. I'm like, every time

(46:42):
you don't want to answer me, I have to shut up.
But I'm gonna ask the question tomorrow and the day
after tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Every day I see why they called you? Why now
shoot man?

Speaker 5 (46:50):
Oh geez. And then every time there's a player, I'm
gonna just to piece her off. I'll be messing up
with the costumes because she has nobody. So see, after
seeing she would put this mixed them. And then one
day the girl had malaria crisis something like that.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
So I am you didn't you?

Speaker 5 (47:17):
I was trying the costume. She came and dragged me
by my feet and say, come on, you want to sing? No,
this is your turn, come and sing. I said, no,
I ain't singing. She goes, yeah, you swinging. No I'm not, Yes,
you're singing. She put the dress on me, and I
swear she shoved me that stage. She shoved me literally
on the light. For the first time, I realized I

(47:40):
have a skeleton. She was looking at me like this
in the wings you want to play the fart. Thank
God for me. There only one light in that theater.
The spotlight was right on my face. I can't see nobody.
People know in my I'm the clown. Two hours making jokes,

(48:01):
cracking up jokes, and people start laughing. I'm like, oh,
they ain't seeing me. I can do my thing as
I do, and I sing and I stopped singing. Or
whom yeahdy sound on that old beth Man Joe Man
wag bed yeah yeah, boon dilla, I go thrown. Oh
I means he whom yeah, I tell you, I try
home so her bear door d who I g there? Well,
y'all boom got gone, boom tha gone, lady or me

(48:23):
and my child file o chow. When y'all are you
throw away Jude ju boom chair, y'all all we bore
Lord Donnie throw away it up?

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Chow?

Speaker 5 (48:31):
When y'all are you throw away y'all?

Speaker 4 (48:33):
All? Hell?

Speaker 5 (48:34):
Or who's up bad? When my child who he had
me and I alway coy man oh, I means he
who Yeah, I tell you, I try home. So her
beard door d who I wear the way and I finished.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
I just.

Speaker 5 (48:48):
Run upstairs and my mama was like this. I said, Mama,
how did he go? She just shaking her head. I'm
not gonna take this off my head. I took it
food dive back to the COSTU.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Wait, you didn't wait to see if the audience applauded.

Speaker 5 (49:00):
In a version, I was gone and I'll come back,
I said, I'm going back there.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
There. So I have to ask you said that most
of the that was in six eight what you were clapping,
So was that typical of the rhythms.

Speaker 5 (49:14):
That's typical of the rhythm form my village?

Speaker 2 (49:16):
But also that's like a backwards clave, like a backwards
rumblave that's in six eight. It depends on how you
hear it, because that's the other thing. It's like you're
thinking about it, like, where does your one line? What
she was just singing, can you sing it again?

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Where's one? Yeah? You got so, where's your One's not there?

Speaker 5 (49:41):
It's not there.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
That's the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
It's like it's like the perception of where one is
is a completely different thing, and that you have to
completely abandon all of that.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Oh, so she could easily join the roots because nobody know.
I mean, she join like that, abandon the one a
band with no one.

Speaker 5 (50:00):
Yeah, I mean I think the thing that he's right
about that because my husband and I we've been working
together forever with Marrid for twenty thirty one years, and
the first time we met, he knew nothing about African music,
nothing at all. He just listened to Van der Graff
or whatever he tried to I'm not your music. If
you're not diad me, this is not a kind of music.
Don't be playing the actually for me. I want something else.

(50:22):
So I start in teaching him traditional music, and when
he started listening to it, it transformed completely his life.
And when we went to be in nineteen ninety five,
I always tell him, forget to count, don't count. If
you go to Africa, you coun't you you're out of
the door.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
It's like it's part of the bottom. It's feeling. Yeah,
So when you do it.

Speaker 5 (50:49):
Like a drummer right now, so bad you can't No,
you can't just play, just play.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I mean, but half sciences.

Speaker 5 (50:59):
Yeah, well in sciences, wait, you know what the drums
and the music in Africa, they are coded their cycle
all the time. Like you're playing, somebody's playing the clavet
the person stand up and go pee. Somebody coming black
there because he knows where his body is. I mean,
it's such you gotta feel it in your body. And
that's why when I'm dancing, I can't be dancing six

(51:21):
eight and doing any rhythm on top of it because
the one I don't count. It's just my body that
I follow. So I mean, when we start doing this
field trip recording songs and music everywhere, that's when he
realized exactly what I was saying versus village in my
village where I come from, the village where my father
come from, is the village where you have the gate

(51:42):
of No returns, the memorial that have been built by
the President Soglu that no one wants, especially not the
French wanted, because he said, we cannot be in denial
of this country's past. Slavery have happened here and we
have no memorial for it, and we need to build
place for that, and not far from the beach where

(52:05):
they take the slave, where you have the Gate of
no Return. We have a village that belonged to us
that it's called as is a que mm hm and
you only can get that that by both little boats
because it's between mangroves and swamps. And you have a
kind of island that that village is. And in that

(52:27):
village one of the rhythms of my family is made
of How can I explain this? I would say, a
symphony of cowbell. You have carver that I high like this.
You have big one all the way to the small one,
and there are like that big sound playing right and

(52:47):
you have two drums in the middle of it. Okay,
I can. I'm visualized. I have the sound of it
in the in the computer and you look at the
pro tools. It's is the craziest thing ever. Everybody is
sharp on time. It's crazy. The wave I like. And

(53:08):
then I tell him, I tell you, don't count. He said,
how do they do that?

Speaker 1 (53:13):
So you're saying, without counting, they're somehow in sync with
each other because.

Speaker 5 (53:20):
We live together, we breathe that we were born in it.
It's like, for example, I give you an example another
example in the northern part of Bennie, where the rhythm
is completely different from the southern part. Okay. There's the
rhythm that is called teke alke is a rhythm okay,
and it's played like two drum in the front and

(53:42):
stick along like that. There can be eighty of them
singing and dancing. And when the rhythms split it up right,
they'll go. They're dance and they're dancing. They're not looking
at each other, and they all coming. They clack, they
all the stick come together. You have one sound, no fla.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
You want a comparison, I think what it is, it's
like everything is by feel in the same way. What
you're known for is like when you play with d
and like you're never on the beat right these things.
He's always behind the beat. And it's a feeling that
you feel that you're famous for that this is your ship.
You're on the back side of the beat. It's a feeling.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
So is this.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
It's exactly the same thing. It's just like you're born
and you're born into your father was a drummer. I
can't make you could try a mathematical sense of this.
You could try to and people have done it, like
like scholars who go to Africa to study of the music,
They're like, this is.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Alan Lomec's been around the villages.

Speaker 5 (54:36):
But the thing is, you studied that and you write
it down. When you played, it's not the.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Same, right, And when they would look at it and
be like, who that What the hell is that, it's
like it's like twelve a versus six eight, because that's
the thing.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
It's like she's saying, it's it's a six, but it's
I couldn't read it but in my head. And now
I'm trying to figure out. When she said that, I
was like, I wonder if only because I've spent meticulous
amounts of time, like decades of having inner clock in
my head when I'm drumming. I don't even know if

(55:04):
I can drum without the inner monologue.

Speaker 5 (55:08):
You can, you can.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
The other thing that you're not getting is that you
should comment on this is that is that often it's
tied to the dance, and so like more often than not,
the drumming is tied to the dance. So where they
are stressing certain beats is where they feel it. So
it doesn't have anything to do per se. Yeah, the
accents a lot of times come.

Speaker 5 (55:27):
From But the thing is, when we start playing for example,
it's let me set it for we are. For some reason,
it's always a circle, and I never understand why it is,
but that's the way it is, right only in the
nov that you have lines like that, but people stand
like that. The teka is one san louis another one
sinan louis something they put on the feet all the
way up here and then they do the rhythm and

(55:52):
it is not it's like that, all of them and
it's one sound. Okay, So here it is when you
are in Africa and in the middle of these things
you have been you haven't been taught to think about counting.
It's just you. You, you breathe it. It's you're born

(56:13):
in it, and you don't ask the question at all.
So for me, since I've been a little girl, I
have been always exposed to that rhythm. So this is
how we start. We come together. We start playing. You
have the cowbell, you have the drums, you have people
that claps, you have people that saying. So you start
playing back to to go back to, back to, back

(56:37):
to come back to good, to come back to good,
to go back to good. And then you have the
dancer coming. And then he said the drummer, the principal drummer.
He takes his cue from the feet of the guy.
When he starts going to it's changed in me that
it's the same rhythm, but it's completely brings brought somewhere

(56:59):
because the guy he can decide to this slowly in
that he can everything changes.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
Wow, some people are born with it and maybe it's
maybe it is my mind is yo. I knew I
was going to learn something, but damn I didn't. You
gotta come to mean, I gotta smoke weed. I think.

(57:33):
I think when you have a lot of thoughts in
your head, and you know, being a sober guy, that
I am like, I'm almost thinking that I have to
clear Like even if I wanted to clear my mind,
like there's no amount of meditation that will ever not
make me think.

Speaker 5 (57:53):
Yeah, it's okay. So that's what a music is about.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Is counting overthink it or underthinking it or constricting. I
think the lesson I'm learning now is that counting is
overthinking it.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
But that's just how you were taught, how you were born,
and like that's what you came up in. And he
she's saying that hers is completely different.

Speaker 5 (58:11):
And what you counting. I can't do it too without
any problem. Why I don't read music and I can
play with classical orchestra. I mean I did a piece.
I wrote a piece with Philip Glass based on three
poem that I gave to him, the mythology of the
creation of the world. I calld it the Yoruba. So
the first piece is Lodu Malus, the second one is Yamanja,

(58:32):
and the third one is the Shumrie. And knowing Philip Glass,
he changes from five to four to five six, and
then you sang it. So I memorize it. I memorized
the whole thing in my dream. You whake me up.
I go straight for it because you developed that memorization

(58:54):
in the wound of your mom. You remember songs that
you never even know that it has been played because
you have heard it. So for me, I memor memorize everything.
Everything that has to be memorized is in my head,
all the music I listen to, For example, when American
music starts coming to my house. I don't speak in English.
I mean I was speaking. I mean pigin from Nigeria.

(59:16):
I mean proper English. I mean I don't know what
that is, but I make up my own words and
it feeds perfectly. That's how I start. When I create songs,
I create world like my tonga is the world that
doesn't exist in my language, doesn't exist. I just come
up with that because it it feels right, and it
describes something that I've seen that I can't put any

(59:36):
word in it because the world doesn't exist. And for me,
when I'm inspired, there's no limit. I don't care if
it works or not. I just put it there. So
for I grew up in such a rhythmic surrounding. The
language phone is the language of the Amazon. It has
no It's like somebody is just hitting you. Urubi is

(01:00:00):
like I wanaoady bo I waaoady bo. Hey reck no
the phone h That's what I was seen before, all
that kind of stuff. So you gotta be so tight.
I have prefered rhythm, and you move me. I look

(01:00:23):
at you like I'm moving from here because I know
he's right, because that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
So is westernize basic four four rhythm sort of look
down upon and.

Speaker 5 (01:00:39):
The four four you have it in everything, the sixth
eight you have the four four.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
But I've just been something like okay, So when Billy
Jean first comes across the pond as a song. And
I know it's hard to separate the presence and the
artist that is Michael Jackson, separate from the song. But

(01:01:05):
is that seeing as something that's just basic boom cat
boom cat boom cat boom cat.

Speaker 5 (01:01:11):
Bo You know? You know what though, it's not the
boom cat boom boom that's that appear appeal to the
African people.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
It's the space in between.

Speaker 5 (01:01:23):
No, it's the basics, dom doom. The bass always sings.
You're never gonna hear any music in Africa the best
going boom boom, boom boom. People gonna go, what the
hell is wrong? You just was saying, Man sing that
make up based thing and the thing that it's really
interesting to me. I never realized that till I started

(01:01:47):
writing music with my husband and one of the bass
line because I can't play the bass, but I can
sing it for you. And I can't play the drums,
but I can sing it for you. So that's how
I write my song so Very a song that we
wrote on the album I that had been produced by
David c in Presley Park, and it's called a Manja

(01:02:07):
Hey David, go what is that baseline? I said, if
you start counting one, two, three, you don't, you're not
gonna get it. So he was the one playing, So
I come up as I was singing the song or
your fair fair fair ojo. Go on, let me hell
jr fair fair fair ojo. Go on, let mell jr
fa fa fat ojo. Come on, let me lo ojo fair.

(01:02:32):
You best go the bass, go, don't do do doom, doom, do, don't,
don't d doom, dumb, don't do, don't, don't, don't, damn do, don't,
don't dumb dumb dumb dumb do dum dunn dumb dumb
dumb dumb do do, don't dumb, don't, don't don't. The
best is always giving the cue to the percussion and
the drums. The first go, do do, do, do, don't, don't,

(01:02:54):
don't do. Then don't don't doo doo doo do don doom, doom,
damn doom, dad, don don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't,
don't d don't, don't, don't don't.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
I changed it all the time, so it never goes,
and it never goes in a loop circle. No old
David z as match.

Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
And it was fun. Because I have fun, I cannot
be able to dance. I always said, astell, if you
remove the keyboard and you remove the guitar, you leave
me the percussion in the drums, I'm cool.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
That's a drums and bass or that's the key to life.
So why did you move? You moved to Paris in
the early eighties. What caused your uh? Well?

Speaker 5 (01:03:45):
I moved to Paris in nineteen eighty three because of
the communism addicted to shipping benin uh in the seventies.
When they arrived, my home becomes an open jail. The
freedom of speech was on because you can't speak. Everybody
spying on you. My father has been asked to do politics.

(01:04:06):
They say, I don't do politics. I'm a retired from posts.
I'm a postman. I don't want to sleep with blood
on my hand. Please, I don't do politics. So therefore
it created the surrounded of paranoia. The phone what tapped
or not? The thing is brothers, family has start eating

(01:04:26):
at each other and you find yourself in jail. I
mean because basically they tell you your father have to
be called comrade, your mom have to be called comrade.
Everybody have to become comrade. You see anybody on the street,
you say hey, camera, I'm like, what the hell? And me,
I've been told by told by my father that I
can never bring my music to be associated with the

(01:04:49):
political party because they come and they go. I have
to be neutral. All I have to do is just
be the voice of the voiceless. And every artist in
being in at that time, all of us have been
elegantly urge, if it's possible to put it like that,
to write propaganda song, which I refused to do. So

(01:05:11):
it coincided with the release of my first album Pretty.
So I was trained in West Africa, Cameroons, every coast,
all different places. I was always able to dodge the
political gathering where you have have you have to sing too.
And then one day I was stranding, been in and
have to do it. And after that I just said

(01:05:31):
to my parents, saw me throw it. My father and
mother said you gotta go because then I'm gonna open
my mouth and I'm gonna finish my life in jail
for sure. So it took them one year to plan
my escape, and we were waiting for a location that
we'll coincide with that and one of my cousins was

(01:05:52):
getting married and she lived close to the airport. So
my mom and dad has been made the weakness of
the couple, and that was our our reason to plan this.
So everybody knew about it in the village, in the
street where I grew up, because everybody's spine. Our house
was already a movie there, because people from every kind

(01:06:15):
work of life would come to the house, white, black, yellow, blue,
whatever color you are, you come to the house. So
we were we were already it was suspicious before the
military regime arrived. So the day of the wedding we
went to the city hall, marriage went to the church,
and then the evening was the moment where my father
put the car in the house. I put my my

(01:06:40):
evening dress and in the plastic bag I put my
traveling cool clothes. He put the suitcase in it and
everybody saw us going to the party. So my flight,
the flat that I took to live is still lived
Stilly to Paris eleven fifty five. Still it's still the

(01:07:02):
flight still exist. And what happened when the military regime started.
The military coup was was perpetrated by military that comes
from north northern Parst so the division comes into the politics.
So in every powerful position they put the Southerner and
a Northerner, so they spy on each other. So I walked.

(01:07:26):
My father dropped me four so I checked my luggage
and then I have to go through customs, and I
was praying because there I can, I will end up
in jail, because before you leave the country you need
the authorization of the government. And you said to them,
when what you're going to do, where you're going, how
long you're going to be going, and when you're coming back.
You don't come back. Your parents are the one that

(01:07:48):
they put it. They put in jail.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Oh where?

Speaker 5 (01:07:51):
Oh yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Oh man.

Speaker 5 (01:07:52):
So I didn't have that paper in my passport. So
I walked to the custom and I saw one of
the friend of my brother they used to do music with.
He saw me. He almost have a heart attack. He goes,
what are you trying to do? You have the authority?
I said no, He goes, my you one second, you'll

(01:08:12):
have the guy here. He just stepped to the toilet.
Run disappear, just disappear. I didn't see you. I don't
want to see what. Just go and I ran. I ran,
So I never run that first in my life. And
I walked into that plane and dive under the seat
and crawl down there till the plane take off, and

(01:08:35):
pretty much before we learned I came, I came out.
I was so scared that the police was still there looking.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
For me, even in Paris. You thought that you weren't
safe yet.

Speaker 5 (01:08:45):
Until I get off and I see my brother, I
was not safe. Yehad and I walk out. It was
September eleven, nineteen eighty three, and I saw my brother.
My brother say, you made it. But for six years straight,
I couldn't speak to my parents because we didn't know
my brother and my parents if the phone were tapped.
So my brother he left from to go so they

(01:09:08):
didn't have anything on him. They didn't know when it
was and then they have a call to speak about
this or about that. So I arrived in Paris and
I decided that if I want to do music, I
want to learn to know. My father told me, whatever
you choose, if you become a human right lawyer, or
you become a singer, whatever it is, go to school
and learn to know your capacity, were your strength, and

(01:09:32):
your weakness to be a better person. I want you
to so I start going to music school, and I
spent a trimester at the university to learn a little
bit about law, and I realized at that point the
law don't serve justice, and if you want to be
a human right lawyer, you have to study politics. I'm like,
it's too much for me. I don't want to go there.

(01:09:52):
I'm just gonna focus on singing. And my first year
in France, oh my god, I cried every day. People
were so races. I'm like a crazy man, and and
I was. For the first time. I take vocal class
because I never had any vocal teacher, and the teacher
was like, I come from the classical school of Italy,
so you're gonna I'm like whatever. As long as I

(01:10:15):
know how to do scales, I'm started. And that's when
people start telling me all this crazy stuff. They come
one day, some two or three of them, the same guys,
the stupid guys. They come and say, so, actually, tell us,
how do you go do your groceries? How do you
go to the market there? You have cars or you

(01:10:36):
go on the back of elephants. I say yes, and
then the wings of the monkeys.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Everyone started that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:43):
Africa, Yeah, nineteen eighty three. I'm not just crazy. And
sometimes the teacher, the vocal teacher, will play some open
back singing all those stuff, and then one day you say, okay,
I want you to listen to this song and tell
me what you think. So she played ravel Boolero and
when it's finished said, this is African man, and oh
what did I say? MA, I'm like okay, and I

(01:11:06):
shut up. I didn't say anything anymore. That's why I
did my version of Bolleroo revel b put lyrics on it,
and I'm like, hit this, I just settle my mind
issue letter on. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna stay there.
Last I always got the last word. And in the
same period we go sometime I make some friends, a
good friend that you always used to say to me,
They're stupid, man, they live on another world. Just leave

(01:11:28):
them alone. So, because the parents have one of the
things that they entitled to everything, they want to say,
do I care? They don't pay marry what. I don't care.
So we went to a party and then at that party,
I heard once in a lifetime talking head and I
was like, this is African No no, no, no, no, no,

(01:11:50):
no no no, it's up. So African melody is ridiculous.
So I like, hm hmm, I like this, this is Africa.
And they say he don't say this in front of
other people. And then people say, yeah, but well, Africans,
you know you're not sophisticated enough to understand all of
these things. You can't do this, And I say, well,

(01:12:11):
I'm just saying you're stopping me from saying what I
think to say. So that's how my life started in
in Europe, and I was lucky to work with a
piano player called Jaspevanov. That guy is the crazy dude,
but men independency have it both hands. He can play
something completely crazy. He be playing this. He got a

(01:12:32):
song and goes on the left eie, you go dead
and dead and then drag good dun dun. Yeah you're
gonna kill me. Yeah, it's just that crazy. And that
for him from him because he did an album with
Ashy Ship called Mamaruse and he comes from that world

(01:12:56):
of I mean free jazz. And he went to Africa
with the guitar player from uh Belgium called Philip Catherine.
He came back he said the first time we met,
he said, I have to apologize to you. We're white people,
didn't create nothing. We just we just dipped from all

(01:13:16):
you from Africa. I'm like, oh, really, okay, I said,
he said, man, please teach me some of your stuff.
I want to make music. I can't live my life
being the free jazz musician anymore. So we started to
a Pilli Pilly was the name of the band, and

(01:13:37):
we I wrote a lot of songs with them, and
we Phillip Pilly. So after that, you know, I started
making money to pay my graduation. But I have to
go do hair, I have to clean hotel room, I
have to do babysitting and all the things that I
and I was a big star when I left my country,
But me, it doesn't mean nothing to me. I knew

(01:13:58):
that I had to do something from scratch again. Yeah,
because I'm like now I'm in. I mean, I'm an
adult for real. Mom is no longer there. I gotta
pay my rent, I gotta pay my food, I gotta
pay my transportation. I got everything, And I like the
responsibility that it bestowed open me to do that. And
one of the things that was really important for me
to bring up here is that my mom and dad

(01:14:19):
before I left, I knew they were worried. And I
know my parents and then won't tell you why they're worried.
And I went to them one or two days before
I left. I said, momy, that what is going on?

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
What is it?

Speaker 5 (01:14:33):
And they said, we just worried that in France, if
it's too hard for you, maybe tempted to go through
prostitution or take drug or jail drug. I say, I
will clean the floor for one dollar a day for
how long it takes before I come back. Are doing that?
So for me, doing music was the thing that really
keep me together. And after that I went to jazz

(01:14:55):
school and I start learning jazz. For me, jazz was before.
When I was listening, I was to Mahalia Jackson. I
was listening to because my mom my dad loved Mahalia Jackson,
loved Sydneyhborshame, my mom used to play clarinet and all
those things for me was jazz. But really knowing more,
I become just a junkie of music. And it's just

(01:15:17):
because for so many years none of no music came.
I mean, the Talking Heads never made it to be in.
It was crazy. I mean I missed out so much
that I started just kind of hurry hurrying up to
to to catch up with all the music.

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
Everything.

Speaker 5 (01:15:35):
I just I'm taking everything. And then I get to
the jazz school the first day to register and as
I was walking the stairs to go to the office
of admission, the admission office, then one brunette and one
blonde girl, and I met them halfway. Because it was
an old building with corners, you never know if you're
going left or right. So I asked them what was

(01:15:56):
the admissions office and they go why I said, I said,
because I have to go register, and they said you're African.
I said yes, and they look at me and said,
what are you doing here? Jazz is not med for
African people. I'm like, okay, doesn't matter. I just walked
up and I do yeah, and the founder of the
school listened to it and he didn't say anything. I
finished with my registration in pay and then he came

(01:16:20):
to me and said, don't listen to them. That is
ignorant speaking every school and year and we do music here.
I will help you put a song together, and I
know you can't do it. And at the end of
that year, they all picked el pick up this all
this song like okay, just got him, just go ahead,

(01:16:43):
And I came with George Benson this masquerade and I
nailed them on the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Nice, nice, Wait, besides the overt cultural racism, Uh, where
were the other cultural differences as far as that you
face the first time when you got to Paris, that
you weren't used to.

Speaker 5 (01:17:08):
The difference of people indifference completely. People weren't friendly, people
weren't indifferent completely. I mean, when I get out of
my building, my house, my apartment, you cross your neighbors
on stairs, you say good morning. Everybody just go like

(01:17:28):
like you just have it gone. You're gonna shoot them there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
I'm like, just how you make it out? In Brooklyn? Right, Brooklyn?

Speaker 5 (01:17:36):
We say hi to each other. I tell you, man
in Man Street, we are a polite we know each other.
Come on, it's like the village man works. Okay, but no,
but you got there's a difference. There's a profound difference
here in America. When you make eye contact with people,
there's a nod or there's a can can't recognition somehow,
you know, in France it's just like you can be

(01:17:59):
transpar and nobody cares. And everywhere she performed, I mean
one thing that really really struck me to the point
where I just like, how am I gonna live in
this country? I was in the subway going to school
and there is at one station a girl walked into
the station and she's just sobbing so much it barely

(01:18:20):
could set. So I stood up and gave her my seat,
and she was crying, and I was there, and it
was looking at her, turned the head and there's something
profoundly wrong with this crying. It's not like crying for
by crying. It's there something bad about this. So when
she came out of the subway, she was stumbling, so
I get out. It was not my station. I get

(01:18:42):
out and grab her because she was going to fall
on the tracks. So I brought her to sit and
I gave her my handkerchief and I sit there and said,
I hold her. And she was shaking so much, and
I said, what's going on? Can I help you? She
couldn't speak, But I stayed there and I missed my class,
but I was not gonna let her there because I
didn't know what was going on. And finally she said

(01:19:05):
to me that she's orphans of both of her parents.
The only person she still have alive was her brother,
and she just get into accident and he's very critical
in hospital. And I said, let me take you to
the hospital. See but I can't stay alone. I say,
I'll stay with you. So I have to find a
way to call my brother because I was living with
my brother. I could not live without him knowing where

(01:19:27):
I was. So when we get to the hospital, I said,
this is what happened, and this is where I am.
And then he said, if he's too late, tell me
I come and get you. The brother make it. He
was feeling better when I left her, and I said,
you want to come to my house, you can stay
with me. And she looked at me and said, no
one do that here. I said, yes, but where are

(01:19:49):
you gonna go? You don't have the key. Your brother
was the one that have the key. And then I said,
let's go ask the nurse if if in his stuff keys.
So we find the keys. I accompany her to where
she was going and I tell my brother where I was.
He had God at that time. He said, now it's
past ten pm, I'm gonna come and pick you up.

(01:20:11):
And then and for me, it was just something that
really no one just cares and That's why my first
album that I released in France when I was signed
by Island Record, I call it Tortois Logoso and with

(01:20:32):
the free signs see no evil, talk no evil, hear
no evil. For me, it represents so much this Western
society that called itself civilized, developed, yet we have lost
the ability to reach out helping him to somebody that
is a need because we are just so swamp in

(01:20:53):
survival mode. We don't leave. We survive and we have everything.
People that are poor and ever got the leave, they
have one. They can have one mill a day. That
will laugh. We are resilient and that's one thing that
no one can take from us.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
No one, they can't. There's no way that you can
take good. Oh no, I was just I was just agreeing.

Speaker 3 (01:21:18):
Up.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
How did you How did you come across meeting Chris Blackwell?

Speaker 5 (01:21:28):
Well, that's that's an interesting story. The founder of the
jaz school where I was had a label called Open
Right and he produced only jazz right. And then he
said to me, he came one day and see one
of my shows. We had a bend together with my
husband and some friends, and I was doing my own
music and he said, man, I love the way you sing.
I want to produce your album. So he produced the

(01:21:50):
album one. By the time we finished it was broke.
So he said, okay, I'm printing five hundred copies of Cities.
I gave you two hundred and sell three hundred and
that's it. With the two hundred, I sent it to
record labels at every record label that exists in France.
Have my CD promoters and I started playing at the

(01:22:14):
New Morning Club and I gave one of my city
to a guy from Mali called Mamadouconte. He's the one
that founded the festival Africa e Fect okay, and he
was the you Soon manager at that time, and then he,
without telling me anything, send the CD to Chris Blackwell.

(01:22:38):
So here I am playing the show at the New
Morning Club in Paris, and you do two sets. I
think the first set, the owner of Madame Farie and
all the team of the club. Everybody had just been hijacked.
When I walk out the stage, they are very important
people waiting for your durussing room. I say, really more

(01:23:03):
important than God. All right, let's go say So I
walk in. You have the ear off from UK Island
and you have the head of Island France and then
introduce the to them themselves to me, say we really
want to work with you, you want to sign you
and I'm like this dude from France. I send them

(01:23:24):
ticket to my shows, I send them everything. Nobody reply
we're coming. We're not coming, just like now, you want
to work with me? You know me, ma'am. How I
ask questions? I said, I want to know what I
was on here. I don't want to win. I want
to how.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
You didn't trust the situation at all.

Speaker 5 (01:23:46):
And then I get and I get my hand on
the fact that Crispy Blackwell sent and say you better
sign this girl before somebody do. If somebody signed her
before you, guys are losing your up. I'm like, yeah, baby,
like this.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
Were you excited because of the the lineage that that
he had.

Speaker 5 (01:24:14):
I didn't even know who he was.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
I didn't know what Chris No.

Speaker 5 (01:24:18):
I just know the label Island. I didn't know who
he was until the signior to the day we're gonna sign.
I was kind of reluctant because I never signed any contract.
Because signing a contract for me and my culture is
a handshake. So while am I signing a paper for
I just like hell. And I was just worried that

(01:24:39):
signing such a big record company and I lose my identity,
my cultural identity, that I'll be doing music that I
don't like. So Chris Blackwall came before we signed and s,
I'm really happy to have in the family. If you
have any resistance, if you have any doubt, this is
the moment to talk to me about it. And I
just say, I just want to keep my artistical freedom

(01:25:01):
and do the music that I love to do. And
he said, that's no question about it. You do I sell,
just sign it, put it in. And I'm like yeah.
And for the first ten years of my career, I
have the privilege of having Chris Blackwell as my artistical director.
That guy have an ear. Oh my god. He goes

(01:25:22):
on the sixteenth bar, your snare is too loud. I'm like,
for real, and you listen, Marc.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:25:34):
It's out of face, no no good. And every time
I do it demo, when I send it to him,
it's like he's in a candy store because I always
do my demo so well, because you have to think
about something. It might be hanging out somewhen, somebody might
put his hand on it. You don't know who listened
to what. It gotta be clean, man, it gotta be perfect.

(01:25:57):
Even if a producer have to put his hand on it,
he got something good to work with. Like when I
did this project, remaining like that I'm doing now the demo.
The voice of the demo are the final voice on
the album.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
Not bad.

Speaker 5 (01:26:15):
My backing singing all is in there. Yeah, percussion from
being all in there, and I add some more percussion.
Everything about this album start with a percussion. The drum
followed char Haynes followed the percussion player. When we were
doing Once in a Lifetime with the current response with
the drum, and then he asked, I mean when he

(01:26:36):
played he started playing with the percussion player, I was
sitting down like in the studio leg this is my
brother's man. This dude a killing this start right there.
Nobody else can play like that, And I just I
just raised myself. Really, don't be racist in the other way.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Just shut up. You work with so many musicians and
so many different producers. What what are the highlights of
your your working relationships? Like I know that you did

(01:27:12):
a project with Tony Usconi.

Speaker 5 (01:27:14):
Tony was a wonderful mind though Tony was because I
told him when blank, I don't lie studio me and
a studio at all.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
I was about to say the first time you you
always tell me you don't like the studio. I hate
the studio, but it's it's where the magic happens.

Speaker 5 (01:27:30):
That they don't have the freaking daylight. I'm like, if
it's wearing the snow. Something happened, I don't know, right,
And it's no public to sing?

Speaker 6 (01:27:39):
Why not?

Speaker 5 (01:27:40):
Why should I sing to a wall?

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
We in that case, what was it like working at
Paisley Park? Because you did your whole lap? It was
it was like your snow in Minnesota.

Speaker 5 (01:27:51):
Shoot man, my daughter was ten days old when we
stopped doing it. I just because that album have been
produced by two different producers, Will More from Soul to
Soul in London and David Busy, So I was between both.
I'll grab my child and go do this and go back.
I love Park. It was the time of revolution, the

(01:28:11):
Michael the Drama. We got so much fun. Man, We've
been talking about music when Prince was not there. We're like,
come on, come on, let's let's jump. I'm like, yeah,
come on. It was fun park. And the funny thing
is you see Sting comes in and you have Prince here.
Sting is just like regular Prince is all maked up.

(01:28:33):
I mean, the Christ of the pant is now I'm
like Jesus Christ. And you look, you see two most
of music here completely different worlds and not like that.
That's what music brings me to. I mean, what is
important for me when I'm doing an album is that
the producer becomes also as part of the music. It's
not just pushing bottoms. And if you have any idea,

(01:28:56):
I come from a culture where we do things together
and and my father always used to say to me
that's the reason why he encouraged me to play soccer.
He said, you play soccer and everybody works together for
one goal. You have to learn to do that to
have people around you that even if you don't think
the same, you have the same aesthetics. You have you

(01:29:18):
have the same goal to achieve, and then you are
stronger because you bounced off each other. And two three
brands together is powerful. It's more powerful than any atomic bomb.
And that's how I like to do my work. And
I remember the first time he played on my album
was in quir You remember Quar Studio when I was

(01:29:39):
doing the cover of.

Speaker 1 (01:29:40):
Voodoo Chai, right, and we call it that's you. Yeah,
that's me. I'm kind of everywhere.

Speaker 5 (01:29:50):
But I think I didn't like it. I didn't like
that process because I didn't come to meet everybody. And
after that, I'm like, the next album is everybody in
the studio. Otherwise that's what we did for Black Average.
So the black As album we recorded, it was the
funniest thing ever. Out of this world. Here comes am
here the best player come from French West Indies. The

(01:30:14):
percussion player have never been to America. We do all
the paper for him to come from Salva yea. He
does not speak a word of English. Go listen to
that album Rhden section. Oh boy, it is tired or
what I'm telling you. You don't need to speak the
same language to do music. And it's the only form

(01:30:36):
of art. I mean, I remember, I remember the song
I cover a song of Gilberto Jill mhm. And then Jesus,
I'm still listening to it and then I mean, what too,

(01:30:59):
and the guitar go adam, he just he sits everybody
down saying, okay, this is where it is and you
have the bass player. He was so happy what he
loves it? How wi is all the drummers that have
mean I said, don't be messing up with me right now?

Speaker 1 (01:31:22):
Numbers now now I wish my roll call Angelie.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
How do you pick your covers? Because you're known for
a lot of like Voodoo Child and the other ones.
You're known for a lot of your covers. How do
you pick them?

Speaker 5 (01:31:35):
Well? The Voto Child wants started pretty I mean, I've
known Jimmy Hendrix since being in but then I came
to Price and we had a friend called he's a
specialist of uh you know Jimmy Henry's mother. Any American
come some bed yazid man. He's from Benin. There's nothing

(01:32:01):
I'm telling you sitting down here. You want to try
him next time? I tell him when he comes coming
six to speak to you, there's nothing you would say
about Jimmy Hendy that he doesn't know. Ever, Really, I
swear you he got everything. This is this is This
guy is crazy. I mean, he's he loves Jimmy Hendrix
so much. I'm like, it's not even your brother, dude.

(01:32:21):
Come on, And we were listening to us telling him
how I discovered the music of Jimmy Hendry and he said,
have some news for you. He started playing me all
the stuff that I missed because of this tupid communists,
all those dub and then he puts Voodoo Channel and
I'm like, oh, this is my song right there. I'm

(01:32:42):
doing a cover of it. And he looked at me
and really, I said, what Jimmy really said? Well, let's
see I'm not Oh, don't dare me. You don't know me.
Don't do this. It's not good for you. It takes me.
It can take me ten years. I'm gonna do this
coover take me six years. I woke up one morning

(01:33:03):
and I started singing the guitar in my head with
words because I said, Jimmy Hendrix can't play the guitar.
I might also say it damn it. I don't want
anybody else but Jimmy Hendy's to do it. He can't
do it. I'm sanging it. So that's what I did.
I go a mom michiligit for doom va michiligo. A

(01:33:25):
mom michiligo for doom va michiligo.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
I mean that to you is been in the spirit.

Speaker 5 (01:33:32):
It's it's it's the Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
What other American songs? Because you know we're lost in America.
I don't know. I was been until five months ago.
So I'm just saying that, what other songs do you
hear an American culture that you feel in your heart?

Speaker 5 (01:33:48):
There are so many of them. I just singing it.
It have to be there, I mean, versus versus price,
it's not. When I was doing the the listening wing
on the album of the Talking Heads, The Vermain to
Remain Live, I sang and Ezra sign that song with me,
and that song is a song that is really profound.

(01:34:08):
It goes I'm a wabo. Then on sackwayo Baldi tula,
I'm a wabo no sackway tula o me why oh me?
Why o me? Why hey me? Why e yay yeah

(01:34:29):
yeay tu last.

Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
He said, you make that look so effortless.

Speaker 5 (01:34:36):
It's definitely because that's like a my life. You can't
cast a spell, you can't stop. When a hunter goes
out to hunt, he's the one telling the story. But
when you shoot at the black panther and you miss,
the story is different because that spell you cast before

(01:34:59):
you try shooting him, he can come back and get
you and then who's staring the story?

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
Now? The panther there it is. I do want to
ask you about remaining light? How how long has this
been passion project? I mean, I'm assuming that for you
to cover an entire album, it has to be a

(01:35:26):
passion project.

Speaker 3 (01:35:27):
So what.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
First of all, did you know the history of David
Byrne's obsession with Nigerian music?

Speaker 5 (01:35:35):
And I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
You didn't know anything.

Speaker 5 (01:35:37):
I didn't know all that till I start working on it.
Wait what Yeah, when I started working on it, I
went out and find out, Oh, really, start listening to
the song first, because the song have to speak to
me before I get dive into it too, because I
don't want to know anything about it. Then it can
it would impact my inspiration. So as as we were

(01:36:00):
working on it, I had so many traditional songs that
I've been sung to me by women when I was
doing Beninese women and Kenyan women. When I was doing
my album Eve and that album that I dedicate to
the resilience and the beauty of the African women that
want the Grammy. It was not only songs that I
come back with, life stories too, women that I've been

(01:36:22):
going through hell. I've sung with Amazon Descendants in a
boomy many songs, profound songs, so I put them there.
I listened to talking and I listened to the women,
and the song goes, they go together, and the message
just match so well. And I also I think that

(01:36:45):
this project for me is about many things. After the
last election, I said, I don't want to live in darkness.
I don't want to live in fear because I had
never been raised in fear. Whatever gonna happen, my music's

(01:37:06):
gonna be always the one that's gonna remain in light
and keep people in light.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
One.

Speaker 5 (01:37:11):
The second reason is that the voice of the women
have so much wisdom that this album deserved to have it.
The third thing is when they wrote this album and
did this album, it was at the reggae era, war
on drugs, and now we have war on democracy. So
I started listening to the lyrics differently, and people used

(01:37:35):
to tell me those talking Head songs, men, the words
are absurd. You don't understand nothing, And I'm like, you
gotta know how to listen to it. You got to
know how to listen to it. And the first time
I heard Born on the Punch is I'm like, this
is corruption big time here. We are all born on
the punches. Our lyrics have set up a system of

(01:37:57):
corruption that deprived us from our rights to thrive, our children,
to thrive, our society to function, North Southeast. It does
not matter where it is. It's not an African problem.
Is the worldwide problem. And that for me, is one
of the things that we have to shed light on
because if you look at it, you look at the

(01:38:19):
world in which we are living. I'll take it from
Africa after colonization, and I said, organizations still exists in Africa.
The independence that we have is just a word with
no substance because the independence that we had does not

(01:38:40):
allow us Africans to set our resources the price we want.
We don't set the price of our resources. People come
and take it and pay the price they want it
that sometimes they don't pay. They don't give money to
a government that they want to keep in place to
be able to take what they need from Africa. And
in order to continue that what they call independence, they

(01:39:04):
have to find a way to stop. Every single person
that's gonna stay gonna say to them, this is not doable.
Start with Bluemomba Kuiman Krumer, all those educated men, when
the country colonizing them presented to them what they call
the colonial Pact, in which basically they have no power.

(01:39:27):
You are independent, but you have no power. You can
have a currency. If you want to build the roads,
we have to come and do it. Anything you have
to do, we have to do it for you. You
cannot make any policy that will impact our interest and
you have to keep your population on the check. No
riot in the street against our interests. All those things

(01:39:50):
are written in the pact. So when the mover stand
up against it, they kill him, not I mean with
the help of CIA. The CI, the guide of CIA
said we kill him and dump him and asked for
him not to have any place where people can come
and say this is our hero. So why did they

(01:40:11):
do that? Because they put people puppets in politic in
high places. They continue doing it. I don't know. If
you see the documentary UH on CNN about the Cobalt, well,
you gotta see that the children are working to get cobalt.
The Cobold people don't even know where it's going when

(01:40:34):
they put it on the on the on the bus.
They have paper and they write the amount, Well, who
is it going to? You can't find it? I mean
the head of Testla saying, oh, we always follow the origin.
And then they're going to say, ask him where it
is the paper? Say what is your name? So it's
always everything the business. The way business is done in Africa,

(01:40:56):
it's done nowhere. The rule of business don't apply in
Africa is just we come, we take, we leave. So
for me, one of the point is, well, the first
song and I said, I'm going hard on this one.
I'm gonna do it. And then you have cross cross
eye penless. Cross eye penless is about calling people names.

(01:41:17):
You call us what you call us the N word,
you call us any kind of name, But what kind
of name you want us to tell? To give you?
You start telling me who you are? That question never
come out? Who are you? How do you see yourself
compared to us? If you call us name, who are you?
Why do you call us that name? And who give

(01:41:38):
us that name? What gives you the right to give
us that name? So that said, cross eye penless, your
eyes are crossed, and goes to the direction that function
for you. The rest you don't want to know, and
so on and so forth. So the whole album. I
listened to it completely differently. The Great Curve is about

(01:41:58):
Mother Earth, hm, not only the nature, but the women
from since since we have been on this planet. Who
tells the story of the women? Not about the man?
Adam and Eve's all, my mom says. All our problem

(01:42:19):
as women start from there. From the moment a man
cannot stand for his own tech responsibility, for his own
desire and have to blame a woman for tempting him.
And he has a brain to think, knowing very well
that apple if he takes it, there are gonna be consequences.

(01:42:40):
He took it anyway and blame a woman? Did I
always ask the question did Eve just knock him down
and put his feet on the throat and shoveled in
his mouth? So why do we have to be blamed
for the man's sexual life? I mean there's a war
rage again in this country against women to go for abortion.

(01:43:00):
Abortion is not never an easy decision to make for
any woman. It takes two today as the tank wor's
the guy. If the guy is there helping the woman,
the woman don't think two seconds to go have a abortion.
So we are blamed for that to everything we blame,
we are blamed for. So the mead To movement is
a great movement, but we have to have a mead
To movement for the mother Earth because the way we're

(01:43:22):
treating this planet, oh my God, oh my God, is bad.
Beyond that, exactly house is in motion is eight thousand,
two thousand and eight crisis. There's one, there's another one looming,
not gonna come. And it's always the same. We choose,
we have chosen as human being when we come to

(01:43:44):
this planet, not to go for the greater good, not
to go for kindness, but to go for the jugular,
go for the violence. You want something, you want it,
and then somebody is on your way. We kill, we
eradicate your raist, and that's it. We did it for
the Inn and in in in, in Peru. We did
it I mean everywhere, the general side of the aboriginiest

(01:44:06):
people here, the Native Indians in Africa, slavery I mean,
and we all have made and excused. The word of
excuse for those crime is business. When you're doing business,
you're making profit, everything is cool. We worship money more
than we worship God, more than we worship human life.
So for me, the whole Many Light album is the

(01:44:29):
anxiety of the Reagan era that we are feeling today.
So how do we reconcile that? That's why my take
on Once in a Lifetime is so joyful because there's
something positive about it. It brings us to questions, how
do we get here? Can we ask ourselves the questions

(01:44:52):
and see the symbolism of water in all this? Every
single human being have to grow up in water before
you come to be born to this earth. What have
been at the center of my our migration in this world?
All of us, from Homo erectus to homosapiens, to the

(01:45:14):
town to Davidian. All of the brains we can call
goes through water. The migrant crisis of today is on water.
We're gonna be fighting for water pretty soon. We can
live without gasoline? Can we live without water?

Speaker 6 (01:45:35):
So?

Speaker 5 (01:45:36):
How do we get here?

Speaker 1 (01:45:38):
Are we wrong?

Speaker 5 (01:45:39):
Are we right? My god? What have we done?

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
Hang on? Yo? This is the wokenst episode of the
show ever, Like, I h can we go on after this?
Like like I feel like I need to go home
and listen to remain in a couple of times exactly now?

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
Did you or you should start a coffee table book?
Of your saying you have ever done that? No people
have that's next, Yeah, that's I mean, yeah, Well, is
there anything that you you haven't done? You've worked with everyone, You've.

Speaker 1 (01:46:23):
That.

Speaker 5 (01:46:24):
We have never done our album. We've been talking about we.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Were I know, I know we're going to do it.

Speaker 5 (01:46:31):
We're going to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:32):
But okay. So that's like the running theme of the show.
Everybody does a record request love Yeah, or that I've
yet to hold up my end of the bargain. Too
many jobs.

Speaker 5 (01:46:48):
No, it's not that. Because he liked music. I like
him for that. I mean, he's open to I mean,
it was very surprising for me when he he started
playing with me. I'm like, this guy is American drummer,
but he's more than that because he listened to so
different type of music. It's like me, he grew up
with music parents musicians, and sometimes you can grow up

(01:47:11):
with parents musician and you go, I hate music, man,
I want nothing to do with that. Drive me crazy.
He listens and he come up to be who he is.

Speaker 1 (01:47:20):
I don't have a choice.

Speaker 5 (01:47:21):
He does not copy. He is himself. When you hear
his drumming, you know it's him. Nobody else plays the drum,
the way he plays. That's it. And that's the most
difficult thing to do in our business where you have
so many talents around. How do you you? How are
you unique and true to yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:47:39):
Well, let's see if you feel that way after this
Prince project. Thank you very much for a coming.

Speaker 5 (01:47:52):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
I need a sandwich. I need to go back to college.
Anyway we have of Damn, this's public school education in
my let me having of Sugar, Steve of Chat with
Sugar and twin Bills. Uh, this is a quest Love.
Also shout out to fan Tigelow and it's like it's like,

(01:48:17):
thank you Angelic one more time. This is a quest
I appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (01:48:21):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
This is quest Love Supreme on Pandora. We'll see you
the next go round. Thank you. Quest Love Supreme is
a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by

(01:48:42):
the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.