:00:00. > :00:13.Now on BBC News, it's time for HardTalk.
:00:14. > :00:20.Africa has produced a host of world-famous musicians, but very few
:00:21. > :00:26.of them are women. Why? Who better to ask than I guess today, Angelique
:00:27. > :00:32.Kidjo, who has been hailed as Africa's veneer diva, known for the
:00:33. > :00:36.passion in her voice and her fierce determination to help African girls
:00:37. > :00:40.fulfil their potential. -- premier diva. Three decades ago she had to
:00:41. > :00:44.leave her continent to become an international star. How much has
:00:45. > :01:12.Africa and its music scene changed between then and now?
:01:13. > :01:19.Angelique Kidjo, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you for having me
:01:20. > :01:23.here. You are one of Africa's biggest female stars, and that
:01:24. > :01:28.brings with it a real sense of responsibility, being under
:01:29. > :01:33.scrutiny. Absolutely. Do you find that difficult? No, I have nothing
:01:34. > :01:37.to hide. I know where I come from. I may not know where I am going, but I
:01:38. > :01:41.definitely know what the traditional music of my country has taught me to
:01:42. > :01:45.do with my voice and my music, to empower people, to bring joy to
:01:46. > :01:50.people, and to let people understand their own power and unleashed their
:01:51. > :01:53.own power. And as a woman, do you feel a particular sense of
:01:54. > :02:00.responsibility to, in a sense, like it or not, read isn't African women?
:02:01. > :02:05.-- represent African women. Yes, I feel that very much so. I was raised
:02:06. > :02:12.by two grandmothers and a mother that have a passion for theatre. And
:02:13. > :02:17.in the 1960s, she decided to have a theatre piece on the life of the
:02:18. > :02:23.King. In that time, when you decide to do something like that, G, it is
:02:24. > :02:30.not easy. So she wrote the piece, directed it, auditioned all the
:02:31. > :02:36.actresses and actors, did the costumes, and from that moment on, I
:02:37. > :02:40.was taught that it is not because you are a woman that you are not
:02:41. > :02:45.allowed to dream big. And in my case, I always say my case is one of
:02:46. > :02:48.the kind, because I was lucky to be worn in a family where both parents
:02:49. > :02:52.were educated, and were really dedicated and determined to put the
:02:53. > :02:56.kids to school. Doesn't matter what we do after. So your mother was very
:02:57. > :03:01.much a creative, independent role model for you. But when you started
:03:02. > :03:05.singing, I know your parents loved it, when you are a kid, as in six
:03:06. > :03:08.years old you are singing and singing fantastically well and
:03:09. > :03:18.making a name for yourself as a child in your home country of Benin,
:03:19. > :03:22.I know that has you gripe it became difficult to keep it going. The
:03:23. > :03:26.taunting started when I was 12 years old. You would be coming home from
:03:27. > :03:33.school and out of nowhere, Wang, a stone hits you on the shoulder. --
:03:34. > :03:38.bang. Throwing stones at you, calling you a prostitute. Because
:03:39. > :03:42.you are singing? Because I was singing. When you are a girl, you
:03:43. > :03:46.are singing, there is no other way for you to succeed if you are not a
:03:47. > :03:52.prostitute, and if you are a boy, there is no other way it you are not
:03:53. > :03:56.a junkie. So sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, in Africa, the perception was
:03:57. > :03:59.taken literally. So today, when a girl comes out and tells her
:04:00. > :04:03.parents, I want to sing, I want to be music, the parents say, no,
:04:04. > :04:12.that's not a job. The perception of an artist in Africa today is still a
:04:13. > :04:16.problem. Even with politicians who do not think we are great
:04:17. > :04:19.ambassadors for the country and the continent itself. The other thing
:04:20. > :04:23.that I think people assume, and this may be wrong, but they assume the
:04:24. > :04:27.young girl being brought up in Benin 40 years ago, is that you would have
:04:28. > :04:33.in steeped in traditional music rather than music from all over the
:04:34. > :04:37.world, the US and the UK, rock 'n' roll, as well as Yarran music. But
:04:38. > :04:40.from what I understand from your parents were exposing you to all
:04:41. > :04:44.sorts of stuff that wasn't just traditional. Yeah, my father played
:04:45. > :04:50.banjo, I don't know why, everybody else played guitar, but that was my
:04:51. > :04:58.dad. Keep us away in 2008. My mum and dad believed that as their
:04:59. > :05:02.children, we had to lead our own lives and make our own mistakes and
:05:03. > :05:06.make our own choices. My father's favourite phrase is, your weapon is
:05:07. > :05:11.your brain. The ultimate weapon you have is your brain. Work on it. Open
:05:12. > :05:17.up to the rest of the world. Don't be afraid to get out of this house.
:05:18. > :05:23.They made us understand that the house was going to be an open
:05:24. > :05:32.discussion place, that there would be no taboo subject, with the
:05:33. > :05:36.exception of racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. I father said he
:05:37. > :05:41.didn't want any hateful people in the house, he didn't have time to
:05:42. > :05:44.that. So as a child I grew up like that. And every single human being
:05:45. > :05:48.on this planet, everyday which possible, I heard them when I was
:05:49. > :05:52.growing up. So I would come back and think, OK, what am by going to hear
:05:53. > :05:57.today? And I was really a very curious child. When he was playing
:05:58. > :06:00.you both music from Benin, from the traditional storytellers and all
:06:01. > :06:04.that stuff, and then he was playing your records that he brought home by
:06:05. > :06:07.James Brown and Otis Redding and even Jimi Hendrix, which did you,
:06:08. > :06:13.the young and Chile, actually prefer? Both of them. Both of them,
:06:14. > :06:23.because as I said before, I was very curious. My nickname in my father's
:06:24. > :06:28.village is When-Why-How. If you don't ask questions, you don't know.
:06:29. > :06:32.When the music was too far for me to understand, I would take it and go
:06:33. > :06:36.to the traditional musicians and play this and say, you tell me that
:06:37. > :06:40.all the music is the same from you play this. The funny thing is that
:06:41. > :06:44.they can jam with Otis Redding, James Brown, all the music you bring
:06:45. > :06:47.in, they would say, just pay it. So you have this incredibly open and
:06:48. > :06:51.creative upbringing in your family, but I am also very aware that at the
:06:52. > :06:55.time, and this is true of many African nations, not just Benin, the
:06:56. > :07:04.country was ruled by a dictatorship. It was nominally Communist. As you
:07:05. > :07:07.grow up, singing more and more, developing more professionally, by
:07:08. > :07:11.the time you are a teenager, it was becoming more politically as well
:07:12. > :07:15.socially very difficult for you. Absolutely. You are right about
:07:16. > :07:21.that. Before the Communist regime, which arrived in 1975- 1976, the
:07:22. > :07:24.radio, which when you put on the radio in Benin, you could hear
:07:25. > :07:29.everything. All the way from traditional music in Benin,
:07:30. > :07:37.conditional music player, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, to the music of
:07:38. > :07:43.rock 'n' roll from Great Britain. Everything was played. Even the
:07:44. > :07:47.French music, classical music, they would play that on the radio. The
:07:48. > :07:53.Communist regime arrived and said, OK, from now on we don't want white
:07:54. > :07:57.people's music. We want your very morning, from the morning we started
:07:58. > :08:03.at a.m. Until we finish, we just want revolutionary music every day.
:08:04. > :08:07.It changed my life, it collapsed, because I was like... I don't want
:08:08. > :08:11.that! Is that when you decided you had to get out? I decided to get out
:08:12. > :08:15.when they started putting pressure on artists to write music about the
:08:16. > :08:20.Communist revolution, and the people in power. And I was like, I'm not
:08:21. > :08:23.doing that. My father always told me, do not use music for any
:08:24. > :08:29.political party because they come and they go. You want to be neutral.
:08:30. > :08:34.So here I am, 16 years old, I have to go and sing, and luckily for me,
:08:35. > :08:38.I was touring around in Africa. So every time I was able to escape, not
:08:39. > :08:42.to be that, until one day I was faced with the fact that I would be
:08:43. > :08:47.in the country and I was singing in front of the head of state of West
:08:48. > :08:52.Africa. And you feel dirty. You feel absolutely degraded. Because they
:08:53. > :08:56.look at you, like, you sing and you me nothing. There are certain people
:08:57. > :09:00.who can give a status in our countries, and they are the ones who
:09:01. > :09:04.perceive you as a prostitute, because you are in front of them
:09:05. > :09:10.singing. At 1.I told my father, if this is what singing is about, I'm
:09:11. > :09:13.out of here. Which takes a seagoing to Paris in your early 20s and then,
:09:14. > :09:17.Franco, spending the rest of the light travelling the world, but ace
:09:18. > :09:22.first in Paris for many years, then settling in New York City in the US.
:09:23. > :09:29.I just wonder, if you had not made your adult life in the west, whether
:09:30. > :09:33.you think your music would have been fundamentally different. If you had
:09:34. > :09:36.stayed in Africa. It would have been different because of the technology
:09:37. > :09:40.that we don't have. Within have that in the 80s or the 90s. Now you have
:09:41. > :09:44.studios in Benin, and pretty much everywhere in Africa, people have a
:09:45. > :09:48.MacBook or a PC where they can be music now. The young kids today are
:09:49. > :09:52.really savvy about that because of the internet. They can have sounds
:09:53. > :09:59.here, they can get this. It was very difficult. My first album, believe
:10:00. > :10:03.it or not, that are recorded in 1980, I had to travel, there was a
:10:04. > :10:07.student loan for university that everybody has a right to have, I had
:10:08. > :10:11.to take that loan to come to Paris on record my first album that
:10:12. > :10:17.require Korea through -- broke my career through. So I knew I would
:10:18. > :10:20.have to be recording and going and coming back and forth. I was a
:10:21. > :10:24.professional. I wanted my sound to be different. I wanted my music to
:10:25. > :10:28.embody not only the traditional music of my country but all those
:10:29. > :10:35.wonderful artist that I had heard that allowed me to dream big. It is
:10:36. > :10:39.a fantastic queue for people who know Angelique Kidjo's music, and
:10:40. > :10:43.for those you don't, to get a little flavour of what you do. We are going
:10:44. > :10:48.to play a track which is from your 2010 album Oyo which she performed
:10:49. > :11:00.for the BBC recently. A look at this.
:11:01. > :11:23.You are bopping away and you are making the move as well in much out.
:11:24. > :11:27.It seems to me there is a lot going on in your music, and there is
:11:28. > :11:30.really this mix of influences. Some people listening to albums like that
:11:31. > :11:34.one, like you said, there is a problem here, because it is not
:11:35. > :11:40.authentic. It sounds like it is manufactured from to many sources.
:11:41. > :11:44.What is authentic? Shami music that is authentic. I can tell you if it
:11:45. > :11:51.is not. Most of the time when people talk about traditional music in
:11:52. > :11:54.Africa, it is like, well, it is music that may answer this work
:11:55. > :11:58.plan, traditional music that they were playing, it is completely
:11:59. > :12:02.different from today. We have trouble in Africa keeping those
:12:03. > :12:05.instruments alive. Most of the young kids don't want to learn to play any
:12:06. > :12:11.traditional instrument. They want to go to the city and make quick money.
:12:12. > :12:15.The way to keep those instruments and that music alive is to make them
:12:16. > :12:19.available in a way that the world can listen to. Therefore, if you put
:12:20. > :12:25.them in modern music, you have to find a way forward to appeal to
:12:26. > :12:29.everybody. That's what I do. Is it working? I noticed the other day
:12:30. > :12:33.that on TV Africa has 50 million viewers across Africa now, but if
:12:34. > :12:37.you switch it on in many cities across the continent, you find that
:12:38. > :12:41.by and large it is a diet of the sort of urban music you might get in
:12:42. > :12:45.the United States as well. It has its own African flavour. It is
:12:46. > :12:49.based, it seems, a lot of that, on hip-hop and rap and urban sounds and
:12:50. > :12:55.beads. Is that where African is going? Well, the thing is, rape will
:12:56. > :12:58.not exist without African music. Soul music would not exist without
:12:59. > :13:04.African music. Rock 'n' roll would not exist without, you know, there
:13:05. > :13:08.is no music in the western developed world without African music. It is
:13:09. > :13:13.what happened, the slaves, when they moved them from Africa, unwillingly,
:13:14. > :13:17.they came with their culture. From a different part of Africa, the blues.
:13:18. > :13:20.They took the drums away from them when they arrived in America. In
:13:21. > :13:24.Cuba, they kept the drums. In Brazil, they kept the drums. He
:13:25. > :13:28.listened those different types of music and you find Africa in the
:13:29. > :13:35.rhythm. I have a lucky enough to be invited to a ceremony in Brazil. It
:13:36. > :13:44.was the weirdest experience I have ever encountered. I was sitting down
:13:45. > :13:48.and they were singing in Yoruba. I don't speak a word of Portuguese,
:13:49. > :13:52.but I could sing with them, because I kept the song. What you tell those
:13:53. > :13:55.people, because you come to Africa and you come to Brazil and you make
:13:56. > :14:00.classical music that you must used to play, you don't have to do
:14:01. > :14:04.anything with us. Every time people want to reduce African artists to a
:14:05. > :14:08.cliche. That is the problem we have. You call it a cliche. For some
:14:09. > :14:10.people it might be a sense of African pride and nationalism, in a
:14:11. > :14:12.way. legitimately helpful to One of the greatest African
:14:13. > :14:14.musicians, he always talked about defending African culture
:14:15. > :14:16.against Western cultural He probably felt that
:14:17. > :14:20.you had been seduced If you listen to him,
:14:21. > :14:28.you hear James Brown in his music. Where did James Brown
:14:29. > :14:35.take that from? Michael Jackson
:14:36. > :15:04.emulated James Brown. It is always the story
:15:05. > :15:07.of going back and forth, For me, music does not belong
:15:08. > :15:11.to me as an African, What I have learned from traditional
:15:12. > :15:16.musicians, you have to include What you have not done is write
:15:17. > :15:19.highly political lyrics. You once said that
:15:20. > :15:22.lyrics did not matter. The first album I made,
:15:23. > :15:32.the meaning of it, if you look at the logo, see no evil,
:15:33. > :15:35.hear no evil, talk no evil. In France, the country that
:15:36. > :15:39.colonised so many countries In France, the country that
:15:40. > :15:50.colonised so many countries They cannot even take the time to
:15:51. > :15:55.help someone crying in the subway. In my country, when you come out
:15:56. > :16:01.of your house, you see somebody, You cannot even say that in
:16:02. > :16:08.a civilised and developed country? There was something you did
:16:09. > :16:20.that was extraordinary and caused In 2006, you played in Zimbabwe,
:16:21. > :16:26.in front of a huge audience, you basically said,
:16:27. > :16:28.Robert Mugabe and his government, If you live by violence,
:16:29. > :16:32.you will die by violence. You had to leave the
:16:33. > :16:35.country the next day. Is it your determination to fight
:16:36. > :16:43.against what remains of the African dictatorships and to be somebody
:16:44. > :16:45.who leverages your fame When I was invited to go play
:16:46. > :17:01.in Zimbabwe, it was my first concert Because I would meet
:17:02. > :17:11.Zimbabwean artists. We would talk, we would do stuff
:17:12. > :17:11.together and I never had a chance to do that.
:17:12. > :17:19.Two days before I left, I received an email from an activist
:17:20. > :17:22.saying to me, you cannot come here, you are a rare voice,
:17:23. > :17:25.the only one we rely on, to speak for us.
:17:26. > :17:28.If something is wrong you are the only person without fear to talk
:17:29. > :17:29.about it. If you come here, it is like
:17:30. > :17:32.you are giving your consent I reached out to Amnesty
:17:33. > :17:40.International, Oxfam, UNICEF, I asked them
:17:41. > :17:47.what the situation was like. My take on music is that
:17:48. > :17:50.you have to go and play, even in a war zone, to understand
:17:51. > :17:54.the worthlessness of being at war. You have to go to see the people who
:17:55. > :18:10.are suffering, under siege. For me, going to Zimbabwe,
:18:11. > :18:13.was to give something to them. Everybody said to me,
:18:14. > :18:16.you have got to be really careful. When I get there, we have a press
:18:17. > :18:22.conference with the French ambassador at the time
:18:23. > :18:24.who put it together. someone said to the ambassador,
:18:25. > :18:32.the secret service of he turned as white as a piece of
:18:33. > :18:42.paper in your hand and he looked at me and he said,
:18:43. > :18:45.no politics, I said, OK. I went on stage and said,
:18:46. > :18:52.we cannot blame white people When our leaders become butchers,
:18:53. > :18:59.what makes them legitimate? I want somebody to tell me,
:19:00. > :19:06.when you are a man, does that mean you have to abuse somebody else,
:19:07. > :19:09.when you are a President, the welfare of your people
:19:10. > :19:16.is your number one priority. When you start killing them, there
:19:17. > :19:17.is no way you can blame somebody for that. It does not matter why.
:19:18. > :19:20.There was a dead silence when I said that.
:19:21. > :19:24.His eyes were falling out of his head.
:19:25. > :19:26.He was thinking we would end up in jail.
:19:27. > :19:29.When you put that way, with your passion, I can understand
:19:30. > :19:34.why you take on dictatorships in Africa.
:19:35. > :19:36.And there are still dictatorships in Africa.
:19:37. > :19:39.But it seems to me, it is more difficult when you address some
:19:40. > :19:42.of the other issues, you talk a lot about the place
:19:43. > :19:45.of girls and women in African societies, you demand equal
:19:46. > :19:48.education, access to education for females, but there are issues
:19:49. > :19:50.that are very difficult in African societies,
:19:51. > :19:54.for example, the legal rights of women, inheritance,
:19:55. > :20:00.polygamy, another issue, are you prepared to go into those
:20:01. > :20:06.areas and to speak loud and difficult truths to Africans?
:20:07. > :20:13.Until we change, whenever I go, the traditions that are not up
:20:14. > :20:33.female genital mutilation, child marriage, how can a man of 45
:20:34. > :20:41.people may not like that, but it's the way it is.
:20:42. > :20:44.Unless we decide to take on the challenge of changing things
:20:45. > :20:47.on our continent, no-one can make the change for us.
:20:48. > :20:53.You can put billions of dollars in Africa,
:20:54. > :20:56.if we are not educated enough to understand the world
:20:57. > :21:00.in which we are living in, the power we have, how we can tell
:21:01. > :21:03.the dictators in our country, go to hell, we do not want
:21:04. > :21:09.Benin has a vibrant and a working democracy, but we still see child
:21:10. > :21:19.trafficking, and in education, it is a completely unfair society.
:21:20. > :21:26.Girls do not get the same fair shake as boys.
:21:27. > :21:32.How can people like you fix this? Billion is in a little better shape.
:21:33. > :21:35.The government that came in place, what they did,
:21:36. > :21:38.But what they forgot to do, included in that package,
:21:39. > :21:48.Polygamy, there are 40% of women in 2006, who said they still live
:21:49. > :22:05.I was sitting in my hotel room, I jumped out of the bed,
:22:06. > :22:12.Since four years, I have been working with UNICEF representation
:22:13. > :22:15.in Italy, in the government of my country, to try to fix that.
:22:16. > :22:18.The main problem regarding child trafficking is that more than 40%
:22:19. > :22:22.of the children that are born, they have no birth certificate.
:22:23. > :22:37.So here comes a government that says we do not have the means,
:22:38. > :22:42.We can provide, with UNICEF from Italy, computers
:22:43. > :22:52.It is up to the government to make sure those children,
:22:53. > :22:59.To have the picture of the child, the family, so that nobody can come
:23:00. > :23:05.I met the Minister of Defence, the Minister of the Interior,
:23:06. > :23:08.and I told them, the ten days they give people to declare
:23:09. > :23:11.the birth of the child, it does not work for everybody.
:23:12. > :23:31.I want to get a sense of your vision of the future.
:23:32. > :23:34.Where are you going to be investing your time and effort?
:23:35. > :23:40.I will be investing my time in the world because Africa
:23:41. > :23:50.But what I do for the girls that I put in school,
:23:51. > :24:07.I don't want it to be anonymous. I want them to give me every cent to
:24:08. > :24:10.go and meet those goals and talk to them.
:24:11. > :24:14.beings are bringing to other fellow human beings.
:24:15. > :24:16.We have to leave the politics out of it.
:24:17. > :24:20.We have to create a different world, that is where the future
:24:21. > :24:24.Thank you very much for being on HARDtalk.
:24:25. > :24:32.You are welcome. We can go on for ever.