00:00:00 Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. 00:00:09 Speaker 2: 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. 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. 00:00:47 Speaker 3: Supremo Sun Sun Suprema, Roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Suprema Roll Call, Suprema Su Su Supremo, Roll Call, Subprema Son Supremo roll Just so. 00:01:02 Speaker 1: That you know, Yeah, Angel Leek, you, Joe, Yeah, my roots just might be Yeah and Ben and come. 00:01:09 Speaker 3: To Supremo Roll Suprema Son Son Supremo roll call. 00:01:18 Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, I booked an African diva. 00:01:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, then I didn't show up. Yeah, I'm at home smoking's a Teeva. 00:01:28 Speaker 3: Supremo roll call out Supremo Supremo roll call. 00:01:34 Speaker 1: Out paid Bill. Yeah, and I'll tell you so. Yeah. I wrote my college thesis on Angelikio. 00:01:42 Speaker 3: Supremo, son Son Supremo roll call Supremo Son Son Supremo role. 00:01:50 Speaker 1: Boss Bill is excited. Yeah for this here show Yeah, I'm ready to learn. Yeah, what I do not know? 00:01:57 Speaker 3: Roll so some Supprimo roll call Supreme got killed here seven Supremo roll here. 00:02:06 Speaker 5: I come, Yeah from Africa. Yeah, I've got something. 00:02:11 Speaker 6: Yeah to tell you, dude, son Son Supprimo roll call Suprema son Sun Supremo roll call Suprema son Son. 00:02:24 Speaker 3: Supremo roll call Suprema son Son Supremo roll call. 00:02:31 Speaker 2: Wait, Sativa, Wait, whatever's happened You ever cough so hard that you have a headache? 00:02:38 Speaker 1: Yeah? I think I love Vessel. Greatth that's good. 00:02:45 Speaker 5: Come on with that. 00:02:47 Speaker 1: 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? 00:03:04 Speaker 4: She's not here? 00:03:06 Speaker 1: 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. 00:03:24 Speaker 5: Anyway, it's not easy, guys, Come on ye. 00:03:29 Speaker 1: Anyway tonight or today, we're in the presidence of royalty. Uh. We have the undisputed queen of African music. 00:03:37 Speaker 4: Uh. 00:03:37 Speaker 1: 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? 00:03:48 Speaker 5: Yeah? 00:03:49 Speaker 1: Enough of that, okay, okay, so we'll just say that according to Time magazine, you're just the premiere. I will know. 00:03:57 Speaker 5: I'm not a premier. 00:03:58 Speaker 1: I'm just a regular scene that okay, Okay, she's one of those Yeah, yeah. 00:04:05 Speaker 5: 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. 00:04:11 Speaker 7: All right, well, waiting and gentlemen, fresh forky News's welcome, right the Queen of the Queen of all Angeley Qujo the quest. 00:04:23 Speaker 5: Love Supreme, thank you so much. 00:04:25 Speaker 1: 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. 00:04:42 Speaker 2: 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. 00:04:58 Speaker 1: Are you serious? Yeah? 00:04:59 Speaker 2: 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. 00:05:06 Speaker 1: And here's why. 00:05:09 Speaker 4: Alright, okay, what's just happened? 00:05:35 Speaker 1: 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? 00:05:44 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:06:18 Speaker 1: 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. 00:06:28 Speaker 5: 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 white people's music. It's black people and music. All the music in this country, it's black people. That's sorry. 00:06:56 Speaker 1: 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. 00:07:10 Speaker 5: They don't even know that. 00:07:11 Speaker 1: They didn't know that. Yeah, they didn't. So how are you today? 00:07:16 Speaker 6: Me? 00:07:17 Speaker 5: 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? 00:07:29 Speaker 1: Yes? Just for me? 00:07:30 Speaker 5: Yeah, because every time he invited me, I always have to go for traffic. But something going on with these guys sounds about right. 00:07:39 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:07:40 Speaker 1: 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? 00:07:47 Speaker 5: I've been here since nineteen ninety seven. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: 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. 00:08:05 Speaker 5: I am broken. I'm from Brooklyn, y'all. 00:08:09 Speaker 1: I feel like you always changed. 00:08:10 Speaker 3: That. 00:08:11 Speaker 1: 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. 00:08:19 Speaker 5: Now, once you past ten years, you're in New York. 00:08:23 Speaker 1: 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. 00:08:40 Speaker 5: I guess I don't know, but he's so close it doesn't matter. 00:08:43 Speaker 2: 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. 00:08:49 Speaker 1: No, you're really a New Yorker. Yeah, I don't have an accent. My mom does, I don't. I don't know. 00:08:55 Speaker 5: Okay, I don't even know you have an accent. I have so many accident a little bit of it. 00:09:00 Speaker 1: Accent too, just a tiny one. 00:09:01 Speaker 5: I don't care. I have accent and I'm proud of it. 00:09:03 Speaker 1: We're part of Brooklyn Park Slope. Oh okay, nice cool Brooklyn? Is there an uncruel Brooklyn? 00:09:13 Speaker 5: Like? 00:09:14 Speaker 1: 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 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, 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 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. 00:10:37 Speaker 5: I mean, it's acolic, reducing Africa to one thing that Westerner can understand you and absorbs without asking themselves questions. 00:10:47 Speaker 1: We're idiots. Okay, we're idiots. 00:10:51 Speaker 5: 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 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 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. 00:11:55 Speaker 1: 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? How many How large is the the territory that you're from? 00:12:19 Speaker 5: 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. 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. 00:13:00 Speaker 1: How many languages are would you your assessment? How many languages are in the continent of Africa. 00:13:11 Speaker 5: 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 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, 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 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. 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. 00:15:00 Speaker 1: So is it is it quite often that there's conflict between the Nigerians and. 00:15:08 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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 also is completely different. 00:16:34 Speaker 2: Is the. 00:16:36 Speaker 5: 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, and it's like you just don't touch our drum. This kind of. 00:17:00 Speaker 1: Serious, really really, Also the drums themselves are totally different. 00:17:05 Speaker 2: 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 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 talking drums and things like that. 00:17:48 Speaker 1: It's a totally different culture as well. As you go. 00:17:52 Speaker 5: 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 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 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, 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 just go like, we don't, we don't ask you to sing it shut up. 00:19:27 Speaker 1: So it's sort of not segregation, but it's is. 00:19:30 Speaker 5: That the guys. But the thing is when the guys are doing their music, the women are not singing. They are cooking. 00:19:38 Speaker 1: So there's no tribes that collaborate with each other. 00:19:41 Speaker 5: 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 come in. But we are the main attraction here. So that's the choice, and the men respect that, but they are there. 00:20:10 Speaker 1: They do, oh yeah, because I would figure that. 00:20:13 Speaker 5: 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. 00:20:28 Speaker 1: Even now and today like that that is still respected. 00:20:31 Speaker 5: Well, you want to go, come with me. I take you there. You see for yourself. 00:20:34 Speaker 1: When's the last time you you there? 00:20:36 Speaker 5: It was three years ago, boss Bill. 00:20:38 Speaker 1: When's the last time your boss? One day? Two thousand and one, two thousand one. 00:20:46 Speaker 5: Okay, So let's go to Benin. 00:20:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go. 00:20:56 Speaker 5: From beginning. You gotta go see it. 00:20:57 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 you got a chance to see that village at all or what? It's No. 00:22:15 Speaker 5: I've been to Alabama, but I stopped. 00:22:17 Speaker 4: I was in. 00:22:18 Speaker 5: 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 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 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? 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 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? 00:24:03 Speaker 1: That's what that? 00:24:05 Speaker 5: I don't come home. I'm like, this guy is Penniees. 00:24:08 Speaker 1: But how are you hearing that? You thought he was? 00:24:10 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 00:28:25 Speaker 1: So you're saying at that moment when you saw Winniam Anddella, you were fifteen years old. 00:28:30 Speaker 5: 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. 00:28:40 Speaker 1: So were you not aware of what was going on next door in Nigeria with what failure I was doing with his music. 00:28:48 Speaker 5: 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 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. 00:29:30 Speaker 1: So it sounded radical to you at the time. 00:29:32 Speaker 5: 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. 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 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 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. 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 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? 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 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 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 the women musically that opened my eyes to a lot of things. 00:32:54 Speaker 1: How how would American artists in the seventies, uh, trickle to the culture in Africa? Like was there and was there a radio station. 00:33:07 Speaker 5: 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 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, 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? 00:34:13 Speaker 4: No? 00:34:13 Speaker 5: One person? I said, how many arms? 00:34:17 Speaker 1: Wait? How many? How many siblings do you have in the family? 00:34:20 Speaker 5: We are ten, seven boys and three girls. And where do you fall seven? 00:34:25 Speaker 1: You're the seventh child, and I have three brothers. 00:34:27 Speaker 5: After me. 00:34:28 Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so I said that now I don't want to sound like the ignorant Americans. 00:34:38 Speaker 5: Who let me tell you African, let me tell you how Aretha Franklin has impacted. 00:34:46 Speaker 1: Save me. 00:34:46 Speaker 5: 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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. 00:37:15 Speaker 1: I said, was her singer? Was he okay? 00:37:17 Speaker 5: He was the lead singer? 00:37:18 Speaker 1: Or was he okay? Was he a good singer? 00:37:20 Speaker 3: No? 00:37:21 Speaker 5: 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 the pango on direct. I'm loving this. 00:37:49 Speaker 1: He's idea on what's happened? I feel it. 00:37:54 Speaker 5: Well, that's the gold man that you're gonna take some. 00:37:59 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. And this includes like watching Michael Jackson do the robot. 00:40:36 Speaker 5: 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. 00:40:42 Speaker 1: Have you met her? 00:40:44 Speaker 5: 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 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. 00:41:17 Speaker 1: 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. 00:41:33 Speaker 5: 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 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. 00:42:13 Speaker 1: Wow. It inspired you. 00:42:14 Speaker 5: 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. 00:42:33 Speaker 1: 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. 00:42:42 Speaker 5: 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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, 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 to seventies, you tick and sing them? 00:45:45 Speaker 1: Is it true? That? 00:45:47 Speaker 3: Right? 00:45:48 Speaker 5: That's the power of music right there? 00:45:54 Speaker 1: Do you remember your very first performance on the stage? 00:45:57 Speaker 5: 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 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 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. 00:46:47 Speaker 1: Every day I see why they called you? Why now shoot man? 00:46:50 Speaker 5: 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. 00:47:13 Speaker 1: So I am you didn't you? 00:47:17 Speaker 5: 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 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, 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 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? 00:48:30 Speaker 1: Chow? 00:48:31 Speaker 5: When y'all are you throw away y'all? 00:48:33 Speaker 4: All? Hell? 00:48:34 Speaker 5: 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. 00:48:45 Speaker 3: I just. 00:48:48 Speaker 5: 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. 00:48:57 Speaker 1: Wait, you didn't wait to see if the audience applauded. 00:49:00 Speaker 5: In a version, I was gone and I'll come back, I said, I'm going back there. 00:49:04 Speaker 1: 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. 00:49:14 Speaker 5: That's typical of the rhythm form my village? 00:49:16 Speaker 2: 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? 00:49:31 Speaker 1: Where's one? Yeah? You got so, where's your One's not there? 00:49:41 Speaker 5: It's not there. 00:49:42 Speaker 1: That's the whole thing. 00:49:43 Speaker 2: 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. 00:49:49 Speaker 1: 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. 00:50:00 Speaker 5: 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. 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. 00:50:42 Speaker 1: It's like it's part of the bottom. It's feeling. Yeah, So when you do it. 00:50:49 Speaker 5: Like a drummer right now, so bad you can't No, you can't just play, just play. 00:50:54 Speaker 1: I mean, but half sciences. 00:50:59 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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 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 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 then I tell him, I tell you, don't count. He said, how do they do that? 00:53:13 Speaker 1: So you're saying, without counting, they're somehow in sync with each other because. 00:53:20 Speaker 5: 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 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. 00:54:03 Speaker 2: 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. 00:54:18 Speaker 1: So is this. 00:54:18 Speaker 2: 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. 00:54:33 Speaker 1: Alan Lomec's been around the villages. 00:54:36 Speaker 5: But the thing is, you studied that and you write it down. When you played, it's not the. 00:54:39 Speaker 2: 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. 00:54:44 Speaker 1: 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 I can drum without the inner monologue. 00:55:08 Speaker 5: You can, you can. 00:55:10 Speaker 2: 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. 00:55:27 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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 because the guy he can decide to this slowly in that he can everything changes. 00:57:08 Speaker 1: 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. 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. 00:57:53 Speaker 5: Yeah, it's okay. So that's what a music is about. 00:57:57 Speaker 1: Is counting overthink it or underthinking it or constricting. I think the lesson I'm learning now is that counting is overthinking it. 00:58:06 Speaker 2: 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. 00:58:11 Speaker 5: 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 at you like I'm moving from here because I know he's right, because that's what it is. 01:00:29 Speaker 1: So is westernize basic four four rhythm sort of look down upon and. 01:00:39 Speaker 5: The four four you have it in everything, the sixth eight you have the four four. 01:00:44 Speaker 1: 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 is that seeing as something that's just basic boom cat boom cat boom cat boom cat. 01:01:11 Speaker 5: Bo You know? You know what though, it's not the boom cat boom boom that's that appear appeal to the African people. 01:01:22 Speaker 1: It's the space in between. 01:01:23 Speaker 5: 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 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 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. 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, 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. 01:03:04 Speaker 1: I changed it all the time, so it never goes, and it never goes in a loop circle. No old David z as match. 01:03:17 Speaker 5: 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. 01:03:30 Speaker 1: 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? 01:03:45 Speaker 5: 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 they put it. They put in jail. 01:07:50 Speaker 1: Oh where? 01:07:51 Speaker 5: Oh yeah? 01:07:51 Speaker 1: Oh man. 01:07:52 Speaker 5: 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 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 pretty much before we learned I came, I came out. I was so scared that the police was still there looking. 01:08:41 Speaker 1: For me, even in Paris. You thought that you weren't safe yet. 01:08:45 Speaker 5: 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 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 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. 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 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 go on the back of elephants. I say yes, and then the wings of the monkeys. 01:10:42 Speaker 1: Everyone started that. 01:10:43 Speaker 5: 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 01:14:31 Speaker 3: What is it? 01:14:33 Speaker 5: 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 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 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. 01:15:35 Speaker 1: Everything. 01:15:35 Speaker 5: 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 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 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, And I came with George Benson this masquerade and I nailed them on the wall. 01:16:50 Speaker 1: 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. 01:17:08 Speaker 5: 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 like you just have it gone. You're gonna shoot them there. 01:17:31 Speaker 1: I'm like, just how you make it out? In Brooklyn? Right, Brooklyn? 01:17:36 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 01:21:08 Speaker 1: No one, they can't. There's no way that you can take good. Oh no, I was just I was just agreeing. 01:21:18 Speaker 3: Up. 01:21:23 Speaker 1: How did you How did you come across meeting Chris Blackwell? 01:21:28 Speaker 5: 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 01:23:44 Speaker 1: You didn't trust the situation at all. 01:23:46 Speaker 5: 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. 01:24:07 Speaker 1: Were you excited because of the the lineage that that he had. 01:24:14 Speaker 5: I didn't even know who he was. 01:24:16 Speaker 1: I didn't know what Chris No. 01:24:18 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 on the sixteenth bar, your snare is too loud. I'm like, for real, and you listen, Marc. 01:25:32 Speaker 1: You know. 01:25:34 Speaker 5: 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. 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. 01:26:14 Speaker 1: Not bad. 01:26:15 Speaker 5: 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 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. 01:26:52 Speaker 1: 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 a project with Tony Usconi. 01:27:14 Speaker 5: 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. 01:27:23 Speaker 1: 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. 01:27:30 Speaker 5: 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? 01:27:39 Speaker 6: Why not? 01:27:40 Speaker 5: Why should I sing to a wall? 01:27:41 Speaker 1: 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. 01:27:51 Speaker 5: 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 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. 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, 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 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 doing the cover of. 01:29:40 Speaker 1: Voodoo Chai, right, and we call it that's you. Yeah, that's me. I'm kind of everywhere. 01:29:50 Speaker 5: 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 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 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, 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? 01:31:22 Speaker 1: Numbers now now I wish my roll call Angelie. 01:31:29 Speaker 2: 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? 01:31:35 Speaker 5: 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 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. 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 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 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 mom michiligo for doom va michiligo. 01:33:29 Speaker 1: I mean that to you is been in the spirit. 01:33:32 Speaker 5: It's it's it's the Amazon. 01:33:34 Speaker 1: 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? 01:33:48 Speaker 5: 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. 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 yeay tu last. 01:34:32 Speaker 1: He said, you make that look so effortless. 01:34:36 Speaker 5: 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 you try shooting him, he can come back and get you and then who's staring the story? 01:35:04 Speaker 1: 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 passion project. 01:35:27 Speaker 3: So what. 01:35:30 Speaker 1: First of all, did you know the history of David Byrne's obsession with Nigerian music? 01:35:35 Speaker 5: And I didn't know. 01:35:36 Speaker 1: You didn't know anything. 01:35:37 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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 gonna be always the one that's gonna remain in light and keep people in light. 01:37:10 Speaker 1: One. 01:37:11 Speaker 5: 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 01:45:35 Speaker 6: So? 01:45:36 Speaker 5: How do we get here? 01:45:38 Speaker 1: Are we wrong? 01:45:39 Speaker 5: Are we right? My god? What have we done? 01:45:46 Speaker 1: 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? 01:46:06 Speaker 2: 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. 01:46:23 Speaker 1: That. 01:46:24 Speaker 5: We have never done our album. We've been talking about we. 01:46:27 Speaker 1: Were I know, I know we're going to do it. 01:46:31 Speaker 5: We're going to do it. 01:46:32 Speaker 1: 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. 01:46:48 Speaker 5: 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 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. 01:47:20 Speaker 1: I don't have a choice. 01:47:21 Speaker 5: 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? 01:47:39 Speaker 1: Well, let's see if you feel that way after this Prince project. Thank you very much for a coming. 01:47:52 Speaker 5: Man. 01:47:54 Speaker 1: 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, thank you Angelic one more time. This is a quest I appreciate it. 01:48:21 Speaker 7: Uh. 01:48:22 Speaker 1: 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 the team at Pandora. 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