Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: What up, y'all, it's unpaid bill for Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: As you may have seen throughout June, we are celebrating
Speaker 2: Black Music Month by releasing an episode every day, So
Speaker 2: every day you either hear especially picked QLs Classic, and
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays we are dropping new two part episodes with
Speaker 2: Wayne Brady and the legendary James Poyser, both of which
Speaker 2: were filmed at Studio. Black music is deeply important to
Speaker 2: me and has been an influence throughout my entire career.
Speaker 2: It's also something we celebrate here at QLs. Today we
Speaker 2: look back at our twenty eighteen conversation with the incredible
Speaker 2: five time Grammy Award winning Angelie Quijo. We spoke about Afrobeat,
Speaker 2: Lakuti and more.
Speaker 3: Supremo Sun Sun Suprema, Roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Suprema
Speaker 3: Roll Call, Suprema Su Su Supremo, Roll Call, Subprema Son
Speaker 3: Supremo roll Just so.
Speaker 1: That you know, Yeah, Angel Leek, you, Joe, Yeah, my
Speaker 1: roots just might be Yeah and Ben and come.
Speaker 3: To Supremo Roll Suprema Son Son Supremo roll call.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, I booked an African diva.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then I didn't show up. Yeah, I'm at home
Speaker 1: smoking's a Teeva.
Speaker 3: Supremo roll call out Supremo Supremo roll call.
Speaker 1: Out paid Bill. Yeah, and I'll tell you so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wrote my college thesis on Angelikio.
Speaker 3: Supremo, son Son Supremo roll call Supremo Son Son Supremo role.
Speaker 1: Boss Bill is excited. Yeah for this here show Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to learn. Yeah, what I do not know?
Speaker 3: Roll so some Supprimo roll call Supreme got killed here
Speaker 3: seven Supremo roll here.
Speaker 5: I come, Yeah from Africa. Yeah, I've got something.
Speaker 6: Yeah to tell you, dude, son Son Supprimo roll call
Speaker 6: Suprema son Sun Supremo roll call Suprema son Son.
Speaker 3: Supremo roll call Suprema son Son Supremo roll call.
Speaker 2: Wait, Sativa, Wait, whatever's happened You ever cough so hard
Speaker 2: that you have a headache?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think I love Vessel. Greatth that's good.
Speaker 5: Come on with that.
Speaker 1: We got Sugar Steve and and the Bill Twins. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm feel unpaid in U and Boss Bill. If you
Speaker 1: hear any noise, it's just the boys, because like sound
Speaker 1: of where is Like, why did you call her? She's moving?
Speaker 4: She's not here?
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know, Well, she's moving, and this would
Speaker 1: be it's just that she's not she's This would be
Speaker 1: such a great nerve to participate in. I mean, we
Speaker 1: we have royalty with us, and and why he's not
Speaker 1: here for this? And I guess fan take a little
Speaker 1: still tending to his uh kitchen countertop.
Speaker 5: Anyway, it's not easy, guys, Come on ye.
Speaker 1: Anyway tonight or today, we're in the presidence of royalty. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have the undisputed queen of African music.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And according to Time magazine, she is Africa's premiere diva.
Speaker 1: I don't know if what's the jury when the word
Speaker 1: term eva. It's over with diva, isn't it already?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Enough of that, okay, okay, so we'll just say that
Speaker 1: according to Time magazine, you're just the premiere. I will know.
Speaker 5: I'm not a premier.
Speaker 1: I'm just a regular scene that okay, Okay, she's one
Speaker 1: of those Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: No, I'm always humble because this life is like that.
Speaker 5: One day you're up, the next day you're down with
Speaker 5: your nose in the Doukie.
Speaker 7: All right, well, waiting and gentlemen, fresh forky News's welcome,
Speaker 7: right the Queen of the Queen of all Angeley Qujo
Speaker 7: the quest.
Speaker 5: Love Supreme, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, now I'm paid, Bill, Yes, and you rarely
Speaker 1: take the take. You're rarely out of the batter's box
Speaker 1: first on the show. But here I am. You did
Speaker 1: your final college thesis on our subject today.
Speaker 2: I did explain this, okay. Well, I was really into
Speaker 2: West African music in college. I went to Ghana for
Speaker 2: a semester when I was in a sophomore or junior
Speaker 2: or something like that. Wait you what, Yeah, I went,
Speaker 2: I've been to Africa more than anybody in this room beside.
Speaker 1: Are you serious? Yeah?
Speaker 2: But so I went to wait, I'm not using this
Speaker 2: just to play your new themes. By the way, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of random ship that goes on in my life.
Speaker 1: And here's why.
Speaker 4: Alright, okay, what's just happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah I didn't get you didn't know that? Now that
Speaker 1: worked because I felt like I was so high, no
Speaker 1: more than normal or just like I'm paying Bill is
Speaker 1: random round me?
Speaker 2: He's just so wait, So I I how many times
Speaker 2: have you been to Africa three, three times, twice twice. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's the North Coast anyway, that's important. I wrote my
Speaker 2: thesis about what I called Transatlantic diasporic feedback, which is
Speaker 2: a smart way of saying, we all know how West
Speaker 2: African African music affected the States, but then in turn
Speaker 2: how the States how the music went back around and
Speaker 2: affected West Africa. So like people like Fale and people
Speaker 2: like Angelikijo who like by Funk and like also with
Speaker 2: African music, but like other stuff that happened, and then
Speaker 2: and then there's another trip across the Atlantic, and it
Speaker 2: kind of keeps on going in this big.
Speaker 1: Circle, and so dog chasing it. Yeah, so I wrote
Speaker 1: my thesis about that. That's beautiful. Okay, Well anyway, Angeline,
Speaker 1: that was like the movie previews. Now I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 5: But I think that is interesting that you thought of
Speaker 5: doing that. But most of most of the time, people
Speaker 5: don't even understand, don't even realize that the music they
Speaker 5: have been listening to for so many years or centuries
Speaker 5: comes from Africa. And I always tell people no music
Speaker 5: will exist in America without the blues. Everything started with
Speaker 5: the blues and with the blues, blue grass is not
Speaker 5: white people's music. It's black people and music. All the
Speaker 5: music in this country, it's black people. That's sorry.
Speaker 1: A lot of my UH students the first year started
Speaker 1: teaching at U n Yu didn't know that. Three students
Speaker 1: didn't know that the banjo came from Africa, like a
Speaker 1: lot of instruments that are used in country Western music.
Speaker 5: They don't even know that.
Speaker 1: They didn't know that. Yeah, they didn't. So how are
Speaker 1: you today?
Speaker 6: Me?
Speaker 5: I'm cool, apart from the rain that makes me stay
Speaker 5: in the car for more than and now I have
Speaker 5: to get here. And my bladd I was crying for
Speaker 5: help when I walked in here. I mean, come on, guys,
Speaker 5: just for you, I do that request of you know that? Right?
Speaker 1: Yes? Just for me?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because every time he invited me, I always have
Speaker 5: to go for traffic. But something going on with these
Speaker 5: guys sounds about right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you made it. I'm glad you made it.
Speaker 1: So you're you've been in New Yorker for a second? Correct?
Speaker 1: How long have you been?
Speaker 5: I've been here since nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I guess twenty one years makes you that.
Speaker 1: My official rule is that if you're a transplant, uh
Speaker 1: from out of New York, you can officially start calling
Speaker 1: yourself a real New Yorker. Yeah after twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh so I'm only on one ninth year.
Speaker 5: I am broken. I'm from Brooklyn, y'all.
Speaker 1: I feel like you always changed.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: Not from you, I hear it from a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I've heard. I heard no the number of years it
Speaker 1: takes to claim New Yorker status. I've been here for
Speaker 1: sixteen years. I think I'm in New Yorker.
Speaker 5: Now, once you past ten years, you're in New York.
Speaker 1: Sorry, buddy, Yeah, because I can't. I've reknew my driver's
Speaker 1: license here twice. I'm still a Pennsylvania residence. My tax like,
Speaker 1: I'm still a Pennsylvania because, uh, I'm too lazy to
Speaker 1: go to DMV.
Speaker 5: I guess I don't know, but he's so close it
Speaker 5: doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but how long have you been? I was gonna
Speaker 2: to ask. I grew up on Long Island, which all
Speaker 2: New Yorkers don't know he exists.
Speaker 1: No, you're really a New Yorker. Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: an accent. My mom does, I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 5: Okay, I don't even know you have an accent. I
Speaker 5: have so many accident a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: Accent too, just a tiny one.
Speaker 5: I don't care. I have accent and I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1: We're part of Brooklyn Park Slope. Oh okay, nice cool Brooklyn?
Speaker 1: Is there an uncruel Brooklyn?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What's what's hitting for Vincent Hurst these days? Like I
Speaker 1: live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in brooks Bushwick, and you don't
Speaker 1: wear an ounce of cameo or not since like two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. Okay, No, I've seen them brothers in Bushwick,
Speaker 1: like they still have like one leg rolled up in
Speaker 1: a Dutch a Dutch in their ears. It's changed a
Speaker 1: little bit. Okay. So there's are like pickle shops and okay,
Speaker 1: I see, I understand. One day I'll check the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: no you yeah, We'll go to Brooklyn Bowl, don't you
Speaker 1: like once a month? Yeah? I guess. I don't know
Speaker 1: if Williamsburg really counts as super like Brooklyn. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so suburb, Okay, I see, yes, the Manhattan suburb. So
Speaker 1: I have to say that in the years that I've
Speaker 1: been collaborating with you and you know, doing stuff and
Speaker 1: shows with you, you and I have never ever, ever
Speaker 1: talked about your story and what brought you to prominence
Speaker 1: and dominance UH across the world and especially in the
Speaker 1: in the world of African music. First of all, Okay,
Speaker 1: when they say African music, I almost feel like it's
Speaker 1: being too broad.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's acolic, reducing Africa to one thing that
Speaker 5: Westerner can understand you and absorbs without asking themselves questions.
Speaker 1: We're idiots. Okay, we're idiots.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, you, no you. I'm saying it. But
Speaker 5: I'm talking about Westerner because who tell the story of
Speaker 5: Black people from the beginning? The Westerner from the beginning
Speaker 5: when they set a foot in Africa. We were doing
Speaker 5: because they come with a plan, and that plan was
Speaker 5: to enslave us, to colonize us, and to take our
Speaker 5: wealth away, the resources away, and keep the hands on
Speaker 5: it and continue telling the story of us not being
Speaker 5: smart enough, being shylish. We have no culture, we have
Speaker 5: no civilization, we have no library, we have nothing. We
Speaker 5: are savage people. When you are dehumanized from the beginning,
Speaker 5: how do you reclaim your your humanity? As as Curry
Speaker 5: James was telling me when I was sitting down with him,
Speaker 5: he said, we never win any battle we've been We've
Speaker 5: been defeated. So it's very hard for us to tell
Speaker 5: our story from the point of being defeated because we're
Speaker 5: never given a chance to do whatever we wanted to
Speaker 5: do the way we wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: Get work, work, work, Yeah, okay. So I just recently,
Speaker 1: up until maybe five or six months ago, was told
Speaker 1: that my family history starts in Benin. Benin, you're from?
Speaker 1: How many How large is the the territory that you're from?
Speaker 5: Well, I know in kilometter, I don't know. In one
Speaker 5: point six million kilometer is the country? It is the
Speaker 5: small country we are. We are close to pretty much
Speaker 5: twelve million, and we have fifty different languages. Whoa, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: I may take one five miles you go to the
Speaker 5: next village. Different rhythm, different drums, different languages, everything is different.
Speaker 5: So out of the fifty, I only speak four, but
Speaker 5: those four allowed me to be able to move completely
Speaker 5: in the south all the way to the center of
Speaker 5: the country. But as soon as I hit the northern countries,
Speaker 5: I need an interpreter because I don't speak any of
Speaker 5: the language from the north.
Speaker 1: How many languages are would you your assessment? How many
Speaker 1: languages are in the continent of Africa.
Speaker 5: Some people say fifteen hundred, and I said, there's more
Speaker 5: than that, because every little village the language. Sometimes what
Speaker 5: happened is that it's like between Latin and French. The
Speaker 5: language of my father's phone was at the beginning, it's
Speaker 5: called Peter. It was a tribe and it was very
Speaker 5: difficult for people to understand. So step by step when
Speaker 5: colonization coming, is that being diluted and a little bit
Speaker 5: to make it more understandable. So it turned to French
Speaker 5: instead of being the peda language, but the better language.
Speaker 5: When you speak the better language, you understand a lot
Speaker 5: of languages from the southern part, like Eva, like Nagou,
Speaker 5: many different languages in the south. And what is interesting
Speaker 5: to me is how as a little girl born in
Speaker 5: the city, I was able to be surrounded by different
Speaker 5: languages in one street, the street I grew up in.
Speaker 5: So I have in front of my house, I have
Speaker 5: the Muslim I have the mosque, I have people from
Speaker 5: the Mono that comes from between Ghana Togo and being
Speaker 5: in that kind of and then I have been from Nigeria.
Speaker 5: My mom is from Nigeria, so I have I speak
Speaker 5: Yoruba too, and then you have all these people during
Speaker 5: the battle between the Kingdom of the Phone and the
Speaker 5: kingdom of your Yoruba, when they used to fight for territory.
Speaker 5: Every time somebody win the battle, you bring the prisoners back.
Speaker 5: So the prisoners that come from the Yoruba land there
Speaker 5: you find them in the place. The village is the
Speaker 5: vigia that they built is called Ketu and the language
Speaker 5: is called Nago, which drive from Yoruba, but mixed with
Speaker 5: the language that was in the area, so they mix
Speaker 5: it up and it's a completely different language from Yoruba.
Speaker 1: So is it is it quite often that there's conflict
Speaker 1: between the Nigerians and.
Speaker 5: Uh no more. No more. At the beginning it was
Speaker 5: Nigeria been in Togo Ghana there were one country. So
Speaker 5: is the colonizer that put the frontiers, that's separate tribes.
Speaker 5: We are all the same pretty much. If you do
Speaker 5: the DNA test of Nigerian, Ghani and even Cameroonian on
Speaker 5: the northern part of Cameroon and Togo, we're all the
Speaker 5: same people all the way to the north. The north
Speaker 5: of Bening frontiers is the Niger River. So what makes
Speaker 5: it complicated for me to learn in language from Nize.
Speaker 5: Is that you have a lot of trade that go
Speaker 5: from the northern part of Beining to Nigeria. You have
Speaker 5: the Ausa. Ausa is the language. Alousa and Swali are
Speaker 5: the two biggest language in Africa. Because there are languages
Speaker 5: of trade. So if you want to trade from west
Speaker 5: to east, north south, if you speak ourside, you can turn,
Speaker 5: you can do the whole continent. And if speak Sayili too,
Speaker 5: so you have the outside. In the north, you have
Speaker 5: the northern people from Togo that are there. You have
Speaker 5: the northern people from Nize that comes in because they
Speaker 5: are all the nomad they're coming when it's too dry
Speaker 5: in the desert. The closest way place where they can
Speaker 5: get water is in beneath, so they cross the river
Speaker 5: to come in. So it's very very complex the north,
Speaker 5: and they have so many different languages. And the rhythm
Speaker 5: also is completely different.
Speaker 2: Is the.
Speaker 5: Rhythm in the in the south is much more six
Speaker 5: eight and in the northern is more complex. Is you
Speaker 5: have five four, all those kind of different weird rhythm.
Speaker 5: And it's the only place in the whole country where
Speaker 5: women have the music, the traditional music separate from the
Speaker 5: men when they are playing. They want no guys in there,
Speaker 5: and it's like you just don't touch our drum. This
Speaker 5: kind of.
Speaker 1: Serious, really really, Also the drums themselves are totally different.
Speaker 2: The whole rhythmic complexities are completely if you go like
Speaker 2: five miles east or five miles west, because all those
Speaker 2: countries are really close together. So Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria
Speaker 2: are all next to each other and you can get
Speaker 2: two of them by going through them, and then you
Speaker 2: go from an Anglophone to a Francophone to an anglophone country.
Speaker 2: So there's this constant dealing of languages and it's it's
Speaker 2: insane and and not And in addition to Benin, sorry
Speaker 2: to get all gannany, but like that. That country also
Speaker 2: as you go north, has totally different languages and totally
Speaker 2: different drum cultures. By going fifty miles you have Kumasi,
Speaker 2: which is the middle of the country, which has its
Speaker 2: own culture. I love Akra yeah, me too, and Tamala,
Speaker 2: which is closer to the desert, which is more like
Speaker 2: talking drums and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different culture as well. As you go.
Speaker 5: Like like what verse one village that was wait hang
Speaker 5: one second, like your mommy Jamaican, I want to tell
Speaker 5: you know about Look, you know one of the things
Speaker 5: that was really interesting for me growing up in Benin,
Speaker 5: I never wanted. I never went to the north because
Speaker 5: when the colonizer came, they divide the Southerner from the
Speaker 5: northerner and they tell us they told the Southerner, you
Speaker 5: go to the North, They're gonna kill you. They are
Speaker 5: savage people there. So when I was little kid, I'm
Speaker 5: not gonna go to the North. I'm wanna travel, travel
Speaker 5: to desert. My father said, yeah, I like to go.
Speaker 5: My mama said, no, don't send my child there. I'm like,
Speaker 5: what's going on? I have to leave my country because
Speaker 5: of the communist dictatorship, go to France and coming back
Speaker 5: to my country to discover the north. And I discover
Speaker 5: a village insane. It's called Mani Grie. They speak Nago Yoruba,
Speaker 5: but it's different. It's I understand them, but there's a
Speaker 5: certain thing I don't understand. And in that village particularly,
Speaker 5: the only thing that guys are allowed to do when
Speaker 5: they are playing music is to play the equivalent. I
Speaker 5: think the ancest of Bernbau. That's where it comes from
Speaker 5: is that small guitar that got ding ding ring ringing.
Speaker 5: And the only thing he can say the women are singing.
Speaker 5: He's going mmmmm, that's it. You said more that they
Speaker 5: just go like, we don't, we don't ask you to
Speaker 5: sing it shut up.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of not segregation, but it's is.
Speaker 5: That the guys. But the thing is when the guys
Speaker 5: are doing their music, the women are not singing. They
Speaker 5: are cooking.
Speaker 1: So there's no tribes that collaborate with each other.
Speaker 5: And when somebody die, so somebody dies, when somebody have
Speaker 5: a baby, when somebody is getting married, when there for
Speaker 5: something that is not official. Because when I come to
Speaker 5: see them in the village, the women want to pay
Speaker 5: tribute to me. So that's when they come and they
Speaker 5: want sing to me, and they tell the guy, she
Speaker 5: is our sister. We want to sing for you can't
Speaker 5: come in. But we are the main attraction here. So
Speaker 5: that's the choice, and the men respect that, but they
Speaker 5: are there.
Speaker 1: They do, oh yeah, because I would figure that.
Speaker 5: There's in music. There's not none in music. There's no violence.
Speaker 5: It's just like this, and then everybody respect each each
Speaker 5: person's desire to play the music. They want to play
Speaker 5: at that time, and that's what is really interesting. And
Speaker 5: it's also a Muslim village and.
Speaker 1: Even now and today like that that is still respected.
Speaker 5: Well, you want to go, come with me. I take
Speaker 5: you there. You see for yourself.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you you there?
Speaker 5: It was three years ago, boss Bill.
Speaker 1: When's the last time your boss? One day? Two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, two thousand one.
Speaker 5: Okay, So let's go to Benin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 5: From beginning. You gotta go see it.
Speaker 1: Well, I was asking because I think the story that
Speaker 1: was told to me was that when the last slave ship,
Speaker 1: American slave ship, the Clotilda, was gathering their last flock,
Speaker 1: their last cargo of slaves, that there were prisoners. I
Speaker 1: guess they were either there were Nigerians captured in Benin
Speaker 1: or Benin in Nigeria. That part I'm still kind of
Speaker 1: rusty on, but I believe that they were Nigerian captured
Speaker 1: in Benin and it was two hundred of them and
Speaker 1: they were taken to Alabama and then at the last
Speaker 1: not at the last minute, because slavery was illegal by
Speaker 1: that point. It's kind of like the the grand great
Speaker 1: great Grandfather's the last sleep he was allowed to start
Speaker 1: his own European practice in Little Africa in Alabama. Have
Speaker 1: you got a chance to see that village at all
Speaker 1: or what? It's No.
Speaker 5: I've been to Alabama, but I stopped.
Speaker 4: I was in.
Speaker 5: Birmingham and this is more near Mobile, so I think
Speaker 5: I have to go back there. Because I went to
Speaker 5: visit the memorial of those young girls in school. It
Speaker 5: was it was just a moving moment for me. What
Speaker 5: is really sad for me when I go to those
Speaker 5: places that we in Africa we got no idea what's
Speaker 5: going on, what goes on when people left? We have
Speaker 5: no idea, and we are so ignorant about the history
Speaker 5: of African American is painful. And I came here in
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty seven. I knew very little. I knew a
Speaker 5: little bit because I always ask questions, and because music
Speaker 5: has attracted my attention to the fact that they African
Speaker 5: people in America, that they are doing the music that
Speaker 5: speaks to me that I can bring to the traditional musician.
Speaker 5: It's the funniest thing ever. I brought James Brown in
Speaker 5: the middle of my village. Their group on it, man
Speaker 5: is just like how you go, what the hell? They
Speaker 5: don't understand nothing. They're going to say, love back, come blind.
Speaker 5: They played. I'm like, oh tru damn, what is that?
Speaker 5: It was even groovier than James Brown's stuff. So I'm like,
Speaker 5: we have so much in common, yet the job of
Speaker 5: brainwashing us and dividing us has been done so smartly
Speaker 5: that we keep believing the people that enslave us what
Speaker 5: they tell us is the truth. I have a different
Speaker 5: take on this because I grew up with my both
Speaker 5: grandmother died over one hundred years and the first time
Speaker 5: I heard the World's slave, I'm what is that? I
Speaker 5: was nine years old because my brother taught himself to
Speaker 5: play guitar. But I listened to all the guitar players
Speaker 5: and he was a huge fan of Jimi Hendrix, and
Speaker 5: he was born bold and he never had any hair.
Speaker 5: So one day the axis of love what that?
Speaker 1: That's what that?
Speaker 5: I don't come home. I'm like, this guy is Penniees.
Speaker 1: But how are you hearing that? You thought he was?
Speaker 5: You think that, yeah, he was playing. My brother was
Speaker 5: playing the guitar. He put a freaking Afro week on.
Speaker 5: I said, you don't need any Afro week to play
Speaker 5: the guitar. Man, But what the hell is going on?
Speaker 5: He said, I'm gonna look like that guy and sound
Speaker 5: like him. I said, yeah, that guy, by the way,
Speaker 5: he's African. He's Bennie. What is language he is snaking in?
Speaker 5: And he goes, he's not Beniese, he's African American. I
Speaker 5: was nine years old. I look at him. I said,
Speaker 5: I might be nine, dude, I ain't stupid. You can't
Speaker 5: be African American at the same time. And then he said, yes,
Speaker 5: you can't. I said, no, you're lying to me. He
Speaker 5: said no, he's a slave descender. I said, what is
Speaker 5: the slave? What is a descendant? He goes, you don't what?
Speaker 5: Because my nickname in my family went white? How I
Speaker 5: asked so much question every elderly people. As soon as
Speaker 5: I come into the video, they go sh everybody just
Speaker 5: gat around. So he said, go ask Grammar. So I
Speaker 5: went and asked my grandma. My grandma started telling me
Speaker 5: the story of slavery. I'm like, who she's mad because
Speaker 5: I never member. My mom and dad always used to advestment.
Speaker 5: One thing that repeated every day to us is that
Speaker 5: a human being is not a matter of color. Do
Speaker 5: not come back to this house and say you felt
Speaker 5: because you're black, because that's the day you're gonna see
Speaker 5: our hands. Because they never let raise the hand on us.
Speaker 5: I'm like, why they say that. I grew up in
Speaker 5: such a protected, loving, musical, cultural place where the house
Speaker 5: was open to everybody. Today you go to cotton and
Speaker 5: you say you're my friend. My mom said, come on,
Speaker 5: this is the room, it's sleep. That's how my parents are.
Speaker 5: They don't have any kind of fear about any other
Speaker 5: human being. So for me, when I I arrived in
Speaker 5: France and started hearing all those racist slur I was like,
Speaker 5: what does this thing come from? I never felt like that,
Speaker 5: And even the story of slavery, for me, it was
Speaker 5: not true. I did not believe in it until I
Speaker 5: turned fifteen and I said Winnie Mandela on TV talking
Speaker 5: about Nelson Mandela and Jail Path, and I was sitting
Speaker 5: in the living room and I turned around. For the
Speaker 5: first time in my life, I start cursing at my
Speaker 5: parents and insulted them. Think I've never done, and they
Speaker 5: were just like, take a back you were. I was mad,
Speaker 5: I say, you are liars, you're lying to me. That
Speaker 5: Suddenly I realized that I've been I've been living believing
Speaker 5: that my skin color was not going to be any
Speaker 5: liability for me. Ever, that everywhere I go in the world,
Speaker 5: I'll be I'll be welcome with open arms. And then
Speaker 5: I'm not far from where I live, people are still
Speaker 5: on their apathet and what so, and I just go crazy,
Speaker 5: literally go crazy. I was sobbing so much, and I
Speaker 5: walk into my room, slam the door, and I stay
Speaker 5: in that room for two three hours, and I come out.
Speaker 5: I said to my dad, I wrote a song, and
Speaker 5: I was still crying. My father said, let us hear it.
Speaker 5: So I start singing the song. And I finished the song,
Speaker 5: and my father said to me, well, I understand you,
Speaker 5: mad I understand, and you said, whatever feeling you have tonight,
Speaker 5: I get it. But one thing I have to tell you,
Speaker 5: you never, as a musician praise hate nor violence. What
Speaker 5: you're saying not gonna go on my house. You're never
Speaker 5: gonna sing that song unless, as an artist, you realize
Speaker 5: that your role is to build bridges, to hold the
Speaker 5: kid to a closed door for people to come together,
Speaker 5: because it's a gift that is given to you with love,
Speaker 5: not with hate. Unless you go back in that room
Speaker 5: that you come from and rewrite this song and think
Speaker 5: about what that anger can be turned to into positive,
Speaker 5: what strength it can give you, what you think the
Speaker 5: future can look like, and you rewrite the song. If
Speaker 5: you don't do that, you know what I'm gonna sing
Speaker 5: under my roof anymore. So I went back and I
Speaker 5: rewrite the song, and it becomes for me to be
Speaker 5: able to live with it an anthem of peace, where
Speaker 5: I said in that song, the song comes out everywhere
Speaker 5: the same way the bird flies in the sky, the
Speaker 5: same way. There's no frontchier's no color. Wherever they go,
Speaker 5: they go free. And I'm dreaming of the world where
Speaker 5: we all, as human being we can move around free
Speaker 5: with no fear that I'm dreaming of the world where
Speaker 5: it's not there will never be anymore ever oppressor or
Speaker 5: oppressed people. My father said, now I like that song,
Speaker 5: you can sing it.
Speaker 1: So you're saying at that moment when you saw Winniam Anddella,
Speaker 1: you were fifteen years old.
Speaker 5: This time, so it called my life bar It's like
Speaker 5: two costmos come together. So suddenly what my grandmother's told
Speaker 5: to me, I'm like, it's kind of the same thing.
Speaker 1: So were you not aware of what was going on
Speaker 1: next door in Nigeria with what failure I was doing
Speaker 1: with his music.
Speaker 5: And oh yeah, fella, yes, I knew what I mean
Speaker 5: when I was a teenager. I knew because when Zombie
Speaker 5: come out first of all, when first Fellows Fellas music started,
Speaker 5: it was a kind of revolution, a huge revolution because
Speaker 5: for me, for years, the music that was coming from
Speaker 5: Nigeria was fuji music and juju music, and we were
Speaker 5: like dring and we were like you know, benez Obey,
Speaker 5: we were all dancing on that music and juju music.
Speaker 5: I mean most I just like dancing it. And then
Speaker 5: fella comes in and it was come ona, come Ona.
Speaker 1: So it sounded radical to you at the time.
Speaker 5: Oh man, I like it because the first song I
Speaker 5: heard was open and close. We drave our parents crazy
Speaker 5: because we invented so nasty dance. I tell you, even
Speaker 5: how what we're doing it, you're not gonna listen to
Speaker 5: that music anymore if you don't like that. We're like, yeah, right,
Speaker 5: as soon as you go to work, we're gonna call it.
Speaker 5: Crank it up and then move body and open it up.
Speaker 5: I mean's just like chrisy. And then it gave us
Speaker 5: as a younger freedom of making our own music, music
Speaker 5: on top of it and dancing it because we see
Speaker 5: it fella dancers dancing. We were like, it was an
Speaker 5: eye opening for me as a young girl, what you
Speaker 5: can do with music, how you can empower people with
Speaker 5: music too. Then he wrote the song zombie mm hmm,
Speaker 5: because I always you to go back and forth on
Speaker 5: vacation in Nigeria, because I have part of my family
Speaker 5: in Nigeria. So we arrive in Legos one day and
Speaker 5: my auntie said, you come in that house, you close
Speaker 5: the door, you don't go out. I'm like, Auntie, we
Speaker 5: gotta go see the other cousins as you are living
Speaker 5: this house. What's going on me? I'm curious that care
Speaker 5: you tell me no or be it? Oh, you better
Speaker 5: wait for something that's gonna happen to you. And I
Speaker 5: know all the way to sneak out of that house
Speaker 5: because all my cousins or this ship we do the
Speaker 5: presid don't see. So they were sitting in the living
Speaker 5: room out there. We get into the street. Oh my god.
Speaker 5: The house of my auntie was not far from the shoe,
Speaker 5: not far from the shine where all the taxi comes to.
Speaker 5: And all those people were there and then you see
Speaker 5: the military out there, and it was working from the military.
Speaker 5: So I'm being talk unless you tell them to talk
Speaker 5: to their fast like this, and they would chase their
Speaker 5: deby running. And at one point I'm like, you don't
Speaker 5: leave here, They're gonna kick you. And then at that
Speaker 5: time my mom realized I was no longer serious, screaming
Speaker 5: in my name, your father gonna kill me. Man, something
Speaker 5: happened to this child. And I came by. He said,
Speaker 5: why are you? I said, I didn't go to know,
Speaker 5: I went to the toilet. I didn't go anywhere. I
Speaker 5: just went to the toilet, really, I says, more and
Speaker 5: I was colored with us. So what was the toilet?
Speaker 5: I said. We went to the next labor there because
Speaker 5: somebody was in the toilet. Way, just we make up
Speaker 5: your mind makes up because you're gonna get a slap
Speaker 5: on your head. So fella, that's what fella did. And
Speaker 5: also by me growing up listening to me and Makay.
Speaker 5: But but when she came here, I was eight years old.
Speaker 5: What I was with my mom. They have a group
Speaker 5: of women asking for women to write to vote to
Speaker 5: decide who they're gonna marry. No more arranged marriage. And
Speaker 5: I was eight when I'll be singing the retreat song
Speaker 5: of Miriam Makayba with them because they're like, we can't
Speaker 5: saying when you're from in front, you're singing, everybody stop
Speaker 5: and listening to our message. Just keep on singing. That's
Speaker 5: I was sitting in the front. I don't understand nothing
Speaker 5: about what they were saying. I'm like, I'm not doing
Speaker 5: my homework. I'm here having fun. I'm singing. That's it.
Speaker 5: I'll be singing and then I start having that political
Speaker 5: conscience actually about what you can do with music for
Speaker 5: people to empower people first and to make people aware
Speaker 5: of what is going on because the menus, most of
Speaker 5: the time, what they're telling the man not be the truth.
Speaker 5: So fell off Miriam, Aritha Franklin, Didna Simon. They were
Speaker 5: the women musically that opened my eyes to a lot
Speaker 5: of things.
Speaker 1: How how would American artists in the seventies, uh, trickle
Speaker 1: to the culture in Africa? Like was there and was
Speaker 1: there a radio station.
Speaker 5: Or the radio? I mean our radio was playing every music.
Speaker 5: I mean it was the I'm talking about it now
Speaker 5: and then looking back, I'm like, I didn't even realize
Speaker 5: how revolutionary It was at that time before the communist
Speaker 5: regime arrived and say no more music from outside. I
Speaker 5: mean they would do a traditional music program and then
Speaker 5: right after there they would go to chuck Berry or
Speaker 5: they would go to the Rolling Stones, or they'll go
Speaker 5: to the Beatles, or they go to Amazing Grass from
Speaker 5: as Afroncan to Crazy. For me towards the norm, it
Speaker 5: was okay, it was really what it is and those music.
Speaker 5: I was listening to them home because my brother they
Speaker 5: have a musical band. Way before the playlist moved. They
Speaker 5: started and my father bought the instrument for them. The
Speaker 5: first time I saw a drum kid and far fista organ,
Speaker 5: the bass, a guitar, percussion. It was because my father
Speaker 5: bought the instrument. The boxes eat outside and I come
Speaker 5: from school. I started booking myself. I'm and when they
Speaker 5: opened everything, I sat down the rehearsal room looking at
Speaker 5: the drum kid, going is it one person that played
Speaker 5: out or two?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: One person? I said, how many arms?
Speaker 1: Wait? How many? How many siblings do you have in
Speaker 1: the family?
Speaker 5: We are ten, seven boys and three girls. And where
Speaker 5: do you fall seven?
Speaker 1: You're the seventh child, and I have three brothers.
Speaker 5: After me.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so I said that now I don't want
Speaker 1: to sound like the ignorant Americans.
Speaker 5: Who let me tell you African, let me tell you
Speaker 5: how Aretha Franklin has impacted.
Speaker 1: Save me.
Speaker 5: Thank you all of those. I mean. There was a
Speaker 5: period of LPs and some LP will come with two
Speaker 5: songs and some some will come all the whole song,
Speaker 5: and I just get my brother's I drive them nuts.
Speaker 5: I'm like, can you get any LP out in this
Speaker 5: house that have some women on the cover. I'm sick
Speaker 5: and title seeing boys on the covers, man boys band
Speaker 5: from CONSI to two, my jesty here and this there,
Speaker 5: they're no woman that does music. And my brother said,
Speaker 5: you better start bringing some city in the LP here
Speaker 5: with women, because this little girl, you're gonna break all
Speaker 5: this stuff down. So they start bringing the French female singer.
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, okay, I take that. Why's there any
Speaker 5: black women playing? Right? And a friend of them come
Speaker 5: from New York, from America and brought amazing grace of
Speaker 5: Aretha Frances I was not home where the album came in.
Speaker 5: The singer of the band of my brother. His ego
Speaker 5: can't even fit here, he said. I can't sing anything.
Speaker 5: I'm the best singer in the world. I'm like, I
Speaker 5: would look at me and yeah, sometimes you sing off key,
Speaker 5: but I'm a little ger. I can't say that right.
Speaker 5: So I came back from school and they were having
Speaker 5: that hitting discussion because my brother wanted to do some
Speaker 5: of the song of the Amazing and the guy said,
Speaker 5: that woman singing, sit crazy me. I can't sing that.
Speaker 5: I'm like, huh, a woman. I'm going to see that me, mister,
Speaker 5: I know everything. Oh, I'm going to find out who's
Speaker 5: whooping his boat right there. And I grabbed the city
Speaker 5: from the table, and I from the first time I saw,
Speaker 5: I read the frank and I'm like, thank you, sister,
Speaker 5: you whooping this guy's board. I like it so much
Speaker 5: I can't even scream up enough. And then I sat
Speaker 5: and I looked at him and said, and I said
Speaker 5: to him and said, don't you sing everything? He said,
Speaker 5: why you know about singing? I said, I can't sing better?
Speaker 5: Now you are to him my brother, I said, shut up,
Speaker 5: because my daughter, my brother always telling him, come and
Speaker 5: listen to the note sometime you're And he said, but
Speaker 5: she's the woman. What woman knows how to sing? This
Speaker 5: one is just screaming. I said, no, she is screaming,
Speaker 5: she's singing, and you can't. He was so mad and
Speaker 5: did that day my brother said he didn't come for
Speaker 5: the two revers of that. I'm like, well, you know
Speaker 5: that he can't sing, I said, but you can't say
Speaker 5: everything that you think. I mean, you have flitted a
Speaker 5: little bit.
Speaker 1: I said, was her singer? Was he okay?
Speaker 5: He was the lead singer?
Speaker 1: Or was he okay? Was he a good singer?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: He wasn't. Impersonator. That's the different thing singing. And because
Speaker 5: he likes to do James Brown with the cape with
Speaker 5: the thing and he come up, that guy's stupid, man.
Speaker 5: I mean they play what they played, they have red
Speaker 5: clean on the floor. He were white or white James Brown.
Speaker 5: And I'm like one day and I was like looking
Speaker 5: at him and said, this guy is just a fool.
Speaker 5: And he did the what do you call that? Splitting
Speaker 5: the pango on direct. I'm loving this.
Speaker 1: He's idea on what's happened? I feel it.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the gold man that you're gonna take some.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you I know how much that that album
Speaker 1: means to you? Have you ever been fortunate enough to
Speaker 1: see the documentary that Sidney No No, No, No, No,
Speaker 1: The The The Amazing Grace. So basically Sidney Pollack directed
Speaker 1: had eight cameras on her at the whole time. The
Speaker 1: funniest part of that documentary is the fact that the
Speaker 1: rolling Stones are the deacons. Like there's a scene where
Speaker 1: like Mick uh, the drummer, Charlie Watts Keith and the
Speaker 1: bass player, Yeah, Brian Jones, Uh, McK taylor, the bill
Speaker 1: thank you, Yeah, they like the church is in like
Speaker 1: the hood of south central Los Angeles, and and then
Speaker 1: you see the rolling Stones get out of like a
Speaker 1: rolls voice limousine and they're ushered and flanked them between
Speaker 1: like the deacons on the side of the choir, and
Speaker 1: it's it's I mean, I saw a good ten minutes
Speaker 1: of this. A friend of ours, a friend of the show,
Speaker 1: Matthew uh has the complete movie. What oh yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know he has the complete movie. But for
Speaker 1: the longest, for some reason, uh Aretha keeps uh these
Speaker 1: injunctions from stopping it from being shown. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be shown on its on its fortieth anniversary at
Speaker 1: cons Film Festival, but even at the very last minute,
Speaker 1: right before they were about to like press the thing
Speaker 1: like a judge in Juckson came through and like prevent it.
Speaker 1: I guess there's she gets last rites options. So for
Speaker 1: some reason, not obviously it's money or you know, she
Speaker 1: doesn't want that footage to be seen. So, but it's
Speaker 1: the ten minutes I saw some of the most life changing,
Speaker 1: probably the best footage of any seventies act I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And this includes like watching Michael Jackson do the robot.
Speaker 5: And so, I mean, she's great, that's I mean, she's
Speaker 5: the ultimate. I mean she she's just there's no words.
Speaker 1: Have you met her?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah. We did a show at Radio City Hall
Speaker 5: for Nelson Mandela's birthday and the lineup was intimidating. She
Speaker 5: sung right after Steve Wonder and Alicia Kiss and myself
Speaker 5: were to go right beef after Aretha and my husband
Speaker 5: was sweating, going, how are you gonna do this? I'm
Speaker 5: like a man, She's giving me the back tone and
Speaker 5: I'm taking it. We're putting flame on that tone. Man,
Speaker 5: even light up the place.
Speaker 1: I was about to say you, I can't even imagine,
Speaker 1: like your your show is so high powered, and so
Speaker 1: I I can't imagine you being stopped or I am
Speaker 1: getting nervous about anything, and starts struggling.
Speaker 5: She sings, I mean because she's such a good singer,
Speaker 5: she's such a great performer. She has something that is
Speaker 5: if it's not given to you by nature, as no
Speaker 5: way you can be like that. You know, the people
Speaker 5: said they have it and they're wasted, don't know how
Speaker 5: to use it. She's in control of every part of
Speaker 5: her body in that voice. Every word that comes out
Speaker 5: of the mouth of Aretha, it doesn't come out because
Speaker 5: it can't come out. It just come out before it
Speaker 5: has to as to. So when she finished and she goes, Halleluiah,
Speaker 5: I'm like, hallelujah. I mean, I'm coming, man, and I
Speaker 5: look as Alicia said, girlfriend, are you ready? She goes,
Speaker 5: let's go kill it, and we walk on. That's taking bamn.
Speaker 1: Wow. It inspired you.
Speaker 5: I inspired us, both of us so much. We look
Speaker 5: at each other. We're singing this song differently, because when
Speaker 5: you come after somebody like that, you don't want to
Speaker 5: shame her. You want to shine, to prove to her
Speaker 5: that everything she does we admire, and then we're gonna
Speaker 5: continue doing it with the continuation of whatever she gave
Speaker 5: us to person.
Speaker 1: So that's it. That's very noble, because I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people would just be like, nope, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ld you.
Speaker 5: And music is not competition for me if you're there
Speaker 5: to do competition, if you're not there to empower people.
Speaker 5: My mother used to say phrase to me for years.
Speaker 5: I'm like, what did she mean? It took me years.
Speaker 5: One day I was about to go and stay in
Speaker 5: Boston a Somerville theater. And as I was getting because
Speaker 5: till then, even though my show are really great and everything,
Speaker 5: I used to be a little bit stressed before I
Speaker 5: go on stage. And as I was staying on the
Speaker 5: wing of the stage before I go on stage, I
Speaker 5: heard that voice of my mother saying, before you set
Speaker 5: a foot on the stage, you have to be able
Speaker 5: to think of yourself and be naked spiritually. And then
Speaker 5: suddenly it hits me. It hits me like bell I
Speaker 5: walk on that stage, no fear, my feet barely touched
Speaker 5: the ground. I'm like, I'm free, no more fear. I'm
Speaker 5: never gonna be afraid of going on stage because what
Speaker 5: she means by that is that you are not on stage,
Speaker 5: you look at your belly button and how beautiful your
Speaker 5: dress is or what if you wear is. You are
Speaker 5: there to be humble at the service of the music
Speaker 5: and the song that you are doing, to be able
Speaker 5: to open yourself to the public. The more open you are,
Speaker 5: the more you give, the more you get. And from
Speaker 5: the moment I understood that it transformed completely in my life.
Speaker 5: And what amazes me is people that come back and say,
Speaker 5: you never can see what we see when your show
Speaker 5: is over. When we are walking the street with people,
Speaker 5: the smile they have on their face is just like
Speaker 5: you can't even put in the bottle. I don't think
Speaker 5: about it when I'm on stage. My stage is my sanctuary.
Speaker 5: My stage is my heaven on earth. And I always
Speaker 5: tell my musician, if you have an issue, check it
Speaker 5: on the garbage before you work on that stage. It'll
Speaker 5: be waiting for you can pick it up when you
Speaker 5: come up. When you come on my page, you make
Speaker 5: faces you don't know me. I don't have to talk
Speaker 5: and look at you men, and you know you don't
Speaker 5: do it right. You can leave if you don't like it,
Speaker 5: you can go. No one is indispensable, and even not me.
Speaker 5: So when we are on stage. What we do, we artists,
Speaker 5: is to play to entertain and at the same time
Speaker 5: knowing because we don't know that we are empowering people.
Speaker 5: And that's what we do the best. That's why music
Speaker 5: specifically and arts in general are the first thing that dictator, dictators,
Speaker 5: auto returning regime the target. Because we set people three,
Speaker 5: we tell people what time it is. We give them
Speaker 5: the strength to go in the street in march, to
Speaker 5: speak out the mind. And I don't want that. Do
Speaker 5: you remember any speech of JFK. As smart as he is,
Speaker 5: You don't martinly thinking we love him, but we remember
Speaker 5: phrases of his. But songs you listen to from sixty
Speaker 5: to seventies, you tick and sing them?
Speaker 1: Is it true? That?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: That's the power of music right there?
Speaker 1: Do you remember your very first performance on the stage?
Speaker 5: Oh Jesus, how long ago was? I was six years old.
Speaker 5: My mom have a theater group till today. She's the
Speaker 5: only woman in West Africa that has had such a
Speaker 5: large theatre group ever. And she wrote the piece. She
Speaker 5: did everything by herself. She learned how to do lighting,
Speaker 5: she does the costume everything. It was her passion. So
Speaker 5: a little girl in the theater group of my mother
Speaker 5: that sing a song that I knew before she started
Speaker 5: saying it, and I knew every part of the piece.
Speaker 5: And I will tell my mom why I'm not the
Speaker 5: one singing it. And my Mama, is that because you
Speaker 5: ain't playing the part? I said, what is? What does
Speaker 5: mean playing the part? She said? Can you shut up?
Speaker 5: Then I finish what I'm doing. I'm like, every time
Speaker 5: you don't want to answer me, I have to shut up.
Speaker 5: But I'm gonna ask the question tomorrow and the day
Speaker 5: after tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Every day I see why they called you? Why now
Speaker 1: shoot man?
Speaker 5: Oh geez. And then every time there's a player, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna just to piece her off. I'll be messing up
Speaker 5: with the costumes because she has nobody. So see, after
Speaker 5: seeing she would put this mixed them. And then one
Speaker 5: day the girl had malaria crisis something like that.
Speaker 1: So I am you didn't you?
Speaker 5: I was trying the costume. She came and dragged me
Speaker 5: by my feet and say, come on, you want to sing? No,
Speaker 5: this is your turn, come and sing. I said, no,
Speaker 5: I ain't singing. She goes, yeah, you swinging. No I'm not, Yes,
Speaker 5: you're singing. She put the dress on me, and I
Speaker 5: swear she shoved me that stage. She shoved me literally
Speaker 5: on the light. For the first time, I realized I
Speaker 5: have a skeleton. She was looking at me like this
Speaker 5: in the wings you want to play the fart. Thank
Speaker 5: God for me. There only one light in that theater.
Speaker 5: The spotlight was right on my face. I can't see nobody.
Speaker 5: People know in my I'm the clown. Two hours making jokes,
Speaker 5: cracking up jokes, and people start laughing. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: they ain't seeing me. I can do my thing as
Speaker 5: I do, and I sing and I stopped singing. Or
Speaker 5: whom yeahdy sound on that old beth Man Joe Man
Speaker 5: wag bed yeah yeah, boon dilla, I go thrown. Oh
Speaker 5: I means he whom yeah, I tell you, I try
Speaker 5: home so her bear door d who I g there? Well,
Speaker 5: y'all boom got gone, boom tha gone, lady or me
Speaker 5: and my child file o chow. When y'all are you
Speaker 5: throw away Jude ju boom chair, y'all all we bore
Speaker 5: Lord Donnie throw away it up?
Speaker 1: Chow?
Speaker 5: When y'all are you throw away y'all?
Speaker 4: All? Hell?
Speaker 5: Or who's up bad? When my child who he had
Speaker 5: me and I alway coy man oh, I means he
Speaker 5: who Yeah, I tell you, I try home. So her
Speaker 5: beard door d who I wear the way and I finished.
Speaker 3: I just.
Speaker 5: Run upstairs and my mama was like this. I said, Mama,
Speaker 5: how did he go? She just shaking her head. I'm
Speaker 5: not gonna take this off my head. I took it
Speaker 5: food dive back to the COSTU.
Speaker 1: Wait, you didn't wait to see if the audience applauded.
Speaker 5: In a version, I was gone and I'll come back,
Speaker 5: I said, I'm going back there.
Speaker 1: There. So I have to ask you said that most
Speaker 1: of the that was in six eight what you were clapping,
Speaker 1: So was that typical of the rhythms.
Speaker 5: That's typical of the rhythm form my village?
Speaker 2: But also that's like a backwards clave, like a backwards
Speaker 2: rumblave that's in six eight. It depends on how you
Speaker 2: hear it, because that's the other thing. It's like you're
Speaker 2: thinking about it, like, where does your one line? What
Speaker 2: she was just singing, can you sing it again?
Speaker 1: Where's one? Yeah? You got so, where's your One's not there?
Speaker 5: It's not there.
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like the perception of where one is
Speaker 2: is a completely different thing, and that you have to
Speaker 2: completely abandon all of that.
Speaker 1: Oh, so she could easily join the roots because nobody know.
Speaker 1: I mean, she join like that, abandon the one a
Speaker 1: band with no one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think the thing that he's right
Speaker 5: about that because my husband and I we've been working
Speaker 5: together forever with Marrid for twenty thirty one years, and
Speaker 5: the first time we met, he knew nothing about African music,
Speaker 5: nothing at all. He just listened to Van der Graff
Speaker 5: or whatever he tried to I'm not your music. If
Speaker 5: you're not diad me, this is not a kind of music.
Speaker 5: Don't be playing the actually for me. I want something else.
Speaker 5: So I start in teaching him traditional music, and when
Speaker 5: he started listening to it, it transformed completely his life.
Speaker 5: And when we went to be in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: I always tell him, forget to count, don't count. If
Speaker 5: you go to Africa, you coun't you you're out of
Speaker 5: the door.
Speaker 1: It's like it's part of the bottom. It's feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when you do it.
Speaker 5: Like a drummer right now, so bad you can't No,
Speaker 5: you can't just play, just play.
Speaker 1: I mean, but half sciences.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well in sciences, wait, you know what the drums
Speaker 5: and the music in Africa, they are coded their cycle
Speaker 5: all the time. Like you're playing, somebody's playing the clavet
Speaker 5: the person stand up and go pee. Somebody coming black
Speaker 5: there because he knows where his body is. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's such you gotta feel it in your body. And
Speaker 5: that's why when I'm dancing, I can't be dancing six
Speaker 5: eight and doing any rhythm on top of it because
Speaker 5: the one I don't count. It's just my body that
Speaker 5: I follow. So I mean, when we start doing this
Speaker 5: field trip recording songs and music everywhere, that's when he
Speaker 5: realized exactly what I was saying versus village in my
Speaker 5: village where I come from, the village where my father
Speaker 5: come from, is the village where you have the gate
Speaker 5: of No returns, the memorial that have been built by
Speaker 5: the President Soglu that no one wants, especially not the
Speaker 5: French wanted, because he said, we cannot be in denial
Speaker 5: of this country's past. Slavery have happened here and we
Speaker 5: have no memorial for it, and we need to build
Speaker 5: place for that, and not far from the beach where
Speaker 5: they take the slave, where you have the Gate of
Speaker 5: no Return. We have a village that belonged to us
Speaker 5: that it's called as is a que mm hm and
Speaker 5: you only can get that that by both little boats
Speaker 5: because it's between mangroves and swamps. And you have a
Speaker 5: kind of island that that village is. And in that
Speaker 5: village one of the rhythms of my family is made
Speaker 5: of How can I explain this? I would say, a
Speaker 5: symphony of cowbell. You have carver that I high like this.
Speaker 5: You have big one all the way to the small one,
Speaker 5: and there are like that big sound playing right and
Speaker 5: you have two drums in the middle of it. Okay,
Speaker 5: I can. I'm visualized. I have the sound of it
Speaker 5: in the in the computer and you look at the
Speaker 5: pro tools. It's is the craziest thing ever. Everybody is
Speaker 5: sharp on time. It's crazy. The wave I like. And
Speaker 5: then I tell him, I tell you, don't count. He said,
Speaker 5: how do they do that?
Speaker 1: So you're saying, without counting, they're somehow in sync with
Speaker 1: each other because.
Speaker 5: We live together, we breathe that we were born in it.
Speaker 5: It's like, for example, I give you an example another
Speaker 5: example in the northern part of Bennie, where the rhythm
Speaker 5: is completely different from the southern part. Okay. There's the
Speaker 5: rhythm that is called teke alke is a rhythm okay,
Speaker 5: and it's played like two drum in the front and
Speaker 5: stick along like that. There can be eighty of them
Speaker 5: singing and dancing. And when the rhythms split it up right,
Speaker 5: they'll go. They're dance and they're dancing. They're not looking
Speaker 5: at each other, and they all coming. They clack, they
Speaker 5: all the stick come together. You have one sound, no fla.
Speaker 2: You want a comparison, I think what it is, it's
Speaker 2: like everything is by feel in the same way. What
Speaker 2: you're known for is like when you play with d
Speaker 2: and like you're never on the beat right these things.
Speaker 2: He's always behind the beat. And it's a feeling that
Speaker 2: you feel that you're famous for that this is your ship.
Speaker 2: You're on the back side of the beat. It's a feeling.
Speaker 1: So is this.
Speaker 2: It's exactly the same thing. It's just like you're born
Speaker 2: and you're born into your father was a drummer. I
Speaker 2: can't make you could try a mathematical sense of this.
Speaker 2: You could try to and people have done it, like
Speaker 2: like scholars who go to Africa to study of the music,
Speaker 2: They're like, this is.
Speaker 1: Alan Lomec's been around the villages.
Speaker 5: But the thing is, you studied that and you write
Speaker 5: it down. When you played, it's not the.
Speaker 2: Same, right, And when they would look at it and
Speaker 2: be like, who that What the hell is that, it's
Speaker 2: like it's like twelve a versus six eight, because that's
Speaker 2: the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like she's saying, it's it's a six, but it's
Speaker 1: I couldn't read it but in my head. And now
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out. When she said that, I
Speaker 1: was like, I wonder if only because I've spent meticulous
Speaker 1: amounts of time, like decades of having inner clock in
Speaker 1: my head when I'm drumming. I don't even know if
Speaker 1: I can drum without the inner monologue.
Speaker 5: You can, you can.
Speaker 2: The other thing that you're not getting is that you
Speaker 2: should comment on this is that is that often it's
Speaker 2: tied to the dance, and so like more often than not,
Speaker 2: the drumming is tied to the dance. So where they
Speaker 2: are stressing certain beats is where they feel it. So
Speaker 2: it doesn't have anything to do per se. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: accents a lot of times come.
Speaker 5: From But the thing is, when we start playing for example,
Speaker 5: it's let me set it for we are. For some reason,
Speaker 5: it's always a circle, and I never understand why it is,
Speaker 5: but that's the way it is, right only in the
Speaker 5: nov that you have lines like that, but people stand
Speaker 5: like that. The teka is one san louis another one
Speaker 5: sinan louis something they put on the feet all the
Speaker 5: way up here and then they do the rhythm and
Speaker 5: it is not it's like that, all of them and
Speaker 5: it's one sound. Okay, So here it is when you
Speaker 5: are in Africa and in the middle of these things
Speaker 5: you have been you haven't been taught to think about counting.
Speaker 5: It's just you. You, you breathe it. It's you're born
Speaker 5: in it, and you don't ask the question at all.
Speaker 5: So for me, since I've been a little girl, I
Speaker 5: have been always exposed to that rhythm. So this is
Speaker 5: how we start. We come together. We start playing. You
Speaker 5: have the cowbell, you have the drums, you have people
Speaker 5: that claps, you have people that saying. So you start
Speaker 5: playing back to to go back to, back to, back
Speaker 5: to come back to good, to come back to good,
Speaker 5: to go back to good. And then you have the
Speaker 5: dancer coming. And then he said the drummer, the principal drummer.
Speaker 5: He takes his cue from the feet of the guy.
Speaker 5: When he starts going to it's changed in me that
Speaker 5: it's the same rhythm, but it's completely brings brought somewhere
Speaker 5: because the guy he can decide to this slowly in
Speaker 5: that he can everything changes.
Speaker 1: Wow, some people are born with it and maybe it's
Speaker 1: maybe it is my mind is yo. I knew I
Speaker 1: was going to learn something, but damn I didn't. You
Speaker 1: gotta come to mean, I gotta smoke weed. I think.
Speaker 1: I think when you have a lot of thoughts in
Speaker 1: your head, and you know, being a sober guy, that
Speaker 1: I am like, I'm almost thinking that I have to
Speaker 1: clear Like even if I wanted to clear my mind,
Speaker 1: like there's no amount of meditation that will ever not
Speaker 1: make me think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's okay. So that's what a music is about.
Speaker 1: Is counting overthink it or underthinking it or constricting. I
Speaker 1: think the lesson I'm learning now is that counting is
Speaker 1: overthinking it.
Speaker 2: But that's just how you were taught, how you were born,
Speaker 2: and like that's what you came up in. And he
Speaker 2: she's saying that hers is completely different.
Speaker 5: And what you counting. I can't do it too without
Speaker 5: any problem. Why I don't read music and I can
Speaker 5: play with classical orchestra. I mean I did a piece.
Speaker 5: I wrote a piece with Philip Glass based on three
Speaker 5: poem that I gave to him, the mythology of the
Speaker 5: creation of the world. I calld it the Yoruba. So
Speaker 5: the first piece is Lodu Malus, the second one is Yamanja,
Speaker 5: and the third one is the Shumrie. And knowing Philip Glass,
Speaker 5: he changes from five to four to five six, and
Speaker 5: then you sang it. So I memorize it. I memorized
Speaker 5: the whole thing in my dream. You whake me up.
Speaker 5: I go straight for it because you developed that memorization
Speaker 5: in the wound of your mom. You remember songs that
Speaker 5: you never even know that it has been played because
Speaker 5: you have heard it. So for me, I memor memorize everything.
Speaker 5: Everything that has to be memorized is in my head,
Speaker 5: all the music I listen to, For example, when American
Speaker 5: music starts coming to my house. I don't speak in English.
Speaker 5: I mean I was speaking. I mean pigin from Nigeria.
Speaker 5: I mean proper English. I mean I don't know what
Speaker 5: that is, but I make up my own words and
Speaker 5: it feeds perfectly. That's how I start. When I create songs,
Speaker 5: I create world like my tonga is the world that
Speaker 5: doesn't exist in my language, doesn't exist. I just come
Speaker 5: up with that because it it feels right, and it
Speaker 5: describes something that I've seen that I can't put any
Speaker 5: word in it because the world doesn't exist. And for me,
Speaker 5: when I'm inspired, there's no limit. I don't care if
Speaker 5: it works or not. I just put it there. So
Speaker 5: for I grew up in such a rhythmic surrounding. The
Speaker 5: language phone is the language of the Amazon. It has
Speaker 5: no It's like somebody is just hitting you. Urubi is
Speaker 5: like I wanaoady bo I waaoady bo. Hey reck no
Speaker 5: the phone h That's what I was seen before, all
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff. So you gotta be so tight.
Speaker 5: I have prefered rhythm, and you move me. I look
Speaker 5: at you like I'm moving from here because I know
Speaker 5: he's right, because that's what it is.
Speaker 1: So is westernize basic four four rhythm sort of look
Speaker 1: down upon and.
Speaker 5: The four four you have it in everything, the sixth
Speaker 5: eight you have the four four.
Speaker 1: But I've just been something like okay, So when Billy
Speaker 1: Jean first comes across the pond as a song. And
Speaker 1: I know it's hard to separate the presence and the
Speaker 1: artist that is Michael Jackson, separate from the song. But
Speaker 1: is that seeing as something that's just basic boom cat
Speaker 1: boom cat boom cat boom cat.
Speaker 5: Bo You know? You know what though, it's not the
Speaker 5: boom cat boom boom that's that appear appeal to the
Speaker 5: African people.
Speaker 1: It's the space in between.
Speaker 5: No, it's the basics, dom doom. The bass always sings.
Speaker 5: You're never gonna hear any music in Africa the best
Speaker 5: going boom boom, boom boom. People gonna go, what the
Speaker 5: hell is wrong? You just was saying, Man sing that
Speaker 5: make up based thing and the thing that it's really
Speaker 5: interesting to me. I never realized that till I started
Speaker 5: writing music with my husband and one of the bass
Speaker 5: line because I can't play the bass, but I can
Speaker 5: sing it for you. And I can't play the drums,
Speaker 5: but I can sing it for you. So that's how
Speaker 5: I write my song so Very a song that we
Speaker 5: wrote on the album I that had been produced by
Speaker 5: David c in Presley Park, and it's called a Manja
Speaker 5: Hey David, go what is that baseline? I said, if
Speaker 5: you start counting one, two, three, you don't, you're not
Speaker 5: gonna get it. So he was the one playing, So
Speaker 5: I come up as I was singing the song or
Speaker 5: your fair fair fair ojo. Go on, let me hell
Speaker 5: jr fair fair fair ojo. Go on, let mell jr
Speaker 5: fa fa fat ojo. Come on, let me lo ojo fair.
Speaker 5: You best go the bass, go, don't do do doom, doom, do, don't,
Speaker 5: don't d doom, dumb, don't do, don't, don't, don't, damn do, don't,
Speaker 5: don't dumb dumb dumb dumb do dum dunn dumb dumb
Speaker 5: dumb dumb do do, don't dumb, don't, don't don't. The
Speaker 5: best is always giving the cue to the percussion and
Speaker 5: the drums. The first go, do do, do, do, don't, don't,
Speaker 5: don't do. Then don't don't doo doo doo do don doom, doom,
Speaker 5: damn doom, dad, don don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't,
Speaker 5: don't d don't, don't, don't don't.
Speaker 1: I changed it all the time, so it never goes,
Speaker 1: and it never goes in a loop circle. No old
Speaker 1: David z as match.
Speaker 5: And it was fun. Because I have fun, I cannot
Speaker 5: be able to dance. I always said, astell, if you
Speaker 5: remove the keyboard and you remove the guitar, you leave
Speaker 5: me the percussion in the drums, I'm cool.
Speaker 1: That's a drums and bass or that's the key to life.
Speaker 1: So why did you move? You moved to Paris in
Speaker 1: the early eighties. What caused your uh? Well?
Speaker 5: I moved to Paris in nineteen eighty three because of
Speaker 5: the communism addicted to shipping benin uh in the seventies.
Speaker 5: When they arrived, my home becomes an open jail. The
Speaker 5: freedom of speech was on because you can't speak. Everybody
Speaker 5: spying on you. My father has been asked to do politics.
Speaker 5: They say, I don't do politics. I'm a retired from posts.
Speaker 5: I'm a postman. I don't want to sleep with blood
Speaker 5: on my hand. Please, I don't do politics. So therefore
Speaker 5: it created the surrounded of paranoia. The phone what tapped
Speaker 5: or not? The thing is brothers, family has start eating
Speaker 5: at each other and you find yourself in jail. I
Speaker 5: mean because basically they tell you your father have to
Speaker 5: be called comrade, your mom have to be called comrade.
Speaker 5: Everybody have to become comrade. You see anybody on the street,
Speaker 5: you say hey, camera, I'm like, what the hell? And me,
Speaker 5: I've been told by told by my father that I
Speaker 5: can never bring my music to be associated with the
Speaker 5: political party because they come and they go. I have
Speaker 5: to be neutral. All I have to do is just
Speaker 5: be the voice of the voiceless. And every artist in
Speaker 5: being in at that time, all of us have been
Speaker 5: elegantly urge, if it's possible to put it like that,
Speaker 5: to write propaganda song, which I refused to do. So
Speaker 5: it coincided with the release of my first album Pretty.
Speaker 5: So I was trained in West Africa, Cameroons, every coast,
Speaker 5: all different places. I was always able to dodge the
Speaker 5: political gathering where you have have you have to sing too.
Speaker 5: And then one day I was stranding, been in and
Speaker 5: have to do it. And after that I just said
Speaker 5: to my parents, saw me throw it. My father and
Speaker 5: mother said you gotta go because then I'm gonna open
Speaker 5: my mouth and I'm gonna finish my life in jail
Speaker 5: for sure. So it took them one year to plan
Speaker 5: my escape, and we were waiting for a location that
Speaker 5: we'll coincide with that and one of my cousins was
Speaker 5: getting married and she lived close to the airport. So
Speaker 5: my mom and dad has been made the weakness of
Speaker 5: the couple, and that was our our reason to plan this.
Speaker 5: So everybody knew about it in the village, in the
Speaker 5: street where I grew up, because everybody's spine. Our house
Speaker 5: was already a movie there, because people from every kind
Speaker 5: work of life would come to the house, white, black, yellow, blue,
Speaker 5: whatever color you are, you come to the house. So
Speaker 5: we were we were already it was suspicious before the
Speaker 5: military regime arrived. So the day of the wedding we
Speaker 5: went to the city hall, marriage went to the church,
Speaker 5: and then the evening was the moment where my father
Speaker 5: put the car in the house. I put my my
Speaker 5: evening dress and in the plastic bag I put my
Speaker 5: traveling cool clothes. He put the suitcase in it and
Speaker 5: everybody saw us going to the party. So my flight,
Speaker 5: the flat that I took to live is still lived
Speaker 5: Stilly to Paris eleven fifty five. Still it's still the
Speaker 5: flight still exist. And what happened when the military regime started.
Speaker 5: The military coup was was perpetrated by military that comes
Speaker 5: from north northern Parst so the division comes into the politics.
Speaker 5: So in every powerful position they put the Southerner and
Speaker 5: a Northerner, so they spy on each other. So I walked.
Speaker 5: My father dropped me four so I checked my luggage
Speaker 5: and then I have to go through customs, and I
Speaker 5: was praying because there I can, I will end up
Speaker 5: in jail, because before you leave the country you need
Speaker 5: the authorization of the government. And you said to them,
Speaker 5: when what you're going to do, where you're going, how
Speaker 5: long you're going to be going, and when you're coming back.
Speaker 5: You don't come back. Your parents are the one that
Speaker 5: they put it. They put in jail.
Speaker 1: Oh where?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh man.
Speaker 5: So I didn't have that paper in my passport. So
Speaker 5: I walked to the custom and I saw one of
Speaker 5: the friend of my brother they used to do music with.
Speaker 5: He saw me. He almost have a heart attack. He goes,
Speaker 5: what are you trying to do? You have the authority?
Speaker 5: I said no, He goes, my you one second, you'll
Speaker 5: have the guy here. He just stepped to the toilet.
Speaker 5: Run disappear, just disappear. I didn't see you. I don't
Speaker 5: want to see what. Just go and I ran. I ran,
Speaker 5: So I never run that first in my life. And
Speaker 5: I walked into that plane and dive under the seat
Speaker 5: and crawl down there till the plane take off, and
Speaker 5: pretty much before we learned I came, I came out.
Speaker 5: I was so scared that the police was still there looking.
Speaker 1: For me, even in Paris. You thought that you weren't
Speaker 1: safe yet.
Speaker 5: Until I get off and I see my brother, I
Speaker 5: was not safe. Yehad and I walk out. It was
Speaker 5: September eleven, nineteen eighty three, and I saw my brother.
Speaker 5: My brother say, you made it. But for six years straight,
Speaker 5: I couldn't speak to my parents because we didn't know
Speaker 5: my brother and my parents if the phone were tapped.
Speaker 5: So my brother he left from to go so they
Speaker 5: didn't have anything on him. They didn't know when it
Speaker 5: was and then they have a call to speak about
Speaker 5: this or about that. So I arrived in Paris and
Speaker 5: I decided that if I want to do music, I
Speaker 5: want to learn to know. My father told me, whatever
Speaker 5: you choose, if you become a human right lawyer, or
Speaker 5: you become a singer, whatever it is, go to school
Speaker 5: and learn to know your capacity, were your strength, and
Speaker 5: your weakness to be a better person. I want you
Speaker 5: to so I start going to music school, and I
Speaker 5: spent a trimester at the university to learn a little
Speaker 5: bit about law, and I realized at that point the
Speaker 5: law don't serve justice, and if you want to be
Speaker 5: a human right lawyer, you have to study politics. I'm like,
Speaker 5: it's too much for me. I don't want to go there.
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna focus on singing. And my first year
Speaker 5: in France, oh my god, I cried every day. People
Speaker 5: were so races. I'm like a crazy man, and and
Speaker 5: I was. For the first time. I take vocal class
Speaker 5: because I never had any vocal teacher, and the teacher
Speaker 5: was like, I come from the classical school of Italy,
Speaker 5: so you're gonna I'm like whatever. As long as I
Speaker 5: know how to do scales, I'm started. And that's when
Speaker 5: people start telling me all this crazy stuff. They come
Speaker 5: one day, some two or three of them, the same guys,
Speaker 5: the stupid guys. They come and say, so, actually, tell us,
Speaker 5: how do you go do your groceries? How do you
Speaker 5: go to the market there? You have cars or you
Speaker 5: go on the back of elephants. I say yes, and
Speaker 5: then the wings of the monkeys.
Speaker 1: Everyone started that.
Speaker 5: Africa, Yeah, nineteen eighty three. I'm not just crazy. And
Speaker 5: sometimes the teacher, the vocal teacher, will play some open
Speaker 5: back singing all those stuff, and then one day you say, okay,
Speaker 5: I want you to listen to this song and tell
Speaker 5: me what you think. So she played ravel Boolero and
Speaker 5: when it's finished said, this is African man, and oh
Speaker 5: what did I say? MA, I'm like okay, and I
Speaker 5: shut up. I didn't say anything anymore. That's why I
Speaker 5: did my version of Bolleroo revel b put lyrics on it,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, hit this, I just settle my mind
Speaker 5: issue letter on. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna stay there.
Speaker 5: Last I always got the last word. And in the
Speaker 5: same period we go sometime I make some friends, a
Speaker 5: good friend that you always used to say to me,
Speaker 5: They're stupid, man, they live on another world. Just leave
Speaker 5: them alone. So, because the parents have one of the
Speaker 5: things that they entitled to everything, they want to say,
Speaker 5: do I care? They don't pay marry what. I don't care.
Speaker 5: So we went to a party and then at that party,
Speaker 5: I heard once in a lifetime talking head and I
Speaker 5: was like, this is African No no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: no no no, it's up. So African melody is ridiculous.
Speaker 5: So I like, hm hmm, I like this, this is Africa.
Speaker 5: And they say he don't say this in front of
Speaker 5: other people. And then people say, yeah, but well, Africans,
Speaker 5: you know you're not sophisticated enough to understand all of
Speaker 5: these things. You can't do this, And I say, well,
Speaker 5: I'm just saying you're stopping me from saying what I
Speaker 5: think to say. So that's how my life started in
Speaker 5: in Europe, and I was lucky to work with a
Speaker 5: piano player called Jaspevanov. That guy is the crazy dude,
Speaker 5: but men independency have it both hands. He can play
Speaker 5: something completely crazy. He be playing this. He got a
Speaker 5: song and goes on the left eie, you go dead
Speaker 5: and dead and then drag good dun dun. Yeah you're
Speaker 5: gonna kill me. Yeah, it's just that crazy. And that
Speaker 5: for him from him because he did an album with
Speaker 5: Ashy Ship called Mamaruse and he comes from that world
Speaker 5: of I mean free jazz. And he went to Africa
Speaker 5: with the guitar player from uh Belgium called Philip Catherine.
Speaker 5: He came back he said the first time we met,
Speaker 5: he said, I have to apologize to you. We're white people,
Speaker 5: didn't create nothing. We just we just dipped from all
Speaker 5: you from Africa. I'm like, oh, really, okay, I said,
Speaker 5: he said, man, please teach me some of your stuff.
Speaker 5: I want to make music. I can't live my life
Speaker 5: being the free jazz musician anymore. So we started to
Speaker 5: a Pilli Pilly was the name of the band, and
Speaker 5: we I wrote a lot of songs with them, and
Speaker 5: we Phillip Pilly. So after that, you know, I started
Speaker 5: making money to pay my graduation. But I have to
Speaker 5: go do hair, I have to clean hotel room, I
Speaker 5: have to do babysitting and all the things that I
Speaker 5: and I was a big star when I left my country,
Speaker 5: But me, it doesn't mean nothing to me. I knew
Speaker 5: that I had to do something from scratch again. Yeah,
Speaker 5: because I'm like now I'm in. I mean, I'm an
Speaker 5: adult for real. Mom is no longer there. I gotta
Speaker 5: pay my rent, I gotta pay my food, I gotta
Speaker 5: pay my transportation. I got everything, And I like the
Speaker 5: responsibility that it bestowed open me to do that. And
Speaker 5: one of the things that was really important for me
Speaker 5: to bring up here is that my mom and dad
Speaker 5: before I left, I knew they were worried. And I
Speaker 5: know my parents and then won't tell you why they're worried.
Speaker 5: And I went to them one or two days before
Speaker 5: I left. I said, momy, that what is going on?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 5: And they said, we just worried that in France, if
Speaker 5: it's too hard for you, maybe tempted to go through
Speaker 5: prostitution or take drug or jail drug. I say, I
Speaker 5: will clean the floor for one dollar a day for
Speaker 5: how long it takes before I come back. Are doing that?
Speaker 5: So for me, doing music was the thing that really
Speaker 5: keep me together. And after that I went to jazz
Speaker 5: school and I start learning jazz. For me, jazz was before.
Speaker 5: When I was listening, I was to Mahalia Jackson. I
Speaker 5: was listening to because my mom my dad loved Mahalia Jackson,
Speaker 5: loved Sydneyhborshame, my mom used to play clarinet and all
Speaker 5: those things for me was jazz. But really knowing more,
Speaker 5: I become just a junkie of music. And it's just
Speaker 5: because for so many years none of no music came.
Speaker 5: I mean, the Talking Heads never made it to be in.
Speaker 5: It was crazy. I mean I missed out so much
Speaker 5: that I started just kind of hurry hurrying up to
Speaker 5: to to catch up with all the music.
Speaker 1: Everything.
Speaker 5: I just I'm taking everything. And then I get to
Speaker 5: the jazz school the first day to register and as
Speaker 5: I was walking the stairs to go to the office
Speaker 5: of admission, the admission office, then one brunette and one
Speaker 5: blonde girl, and I met them halfway. Because it was
Speaker 5: an old building with corners, you never know if you're
Speaker 5: going left or right. So I asked them what was
Speaker 5: the admissions office and they go why I said, I said,
Speaker 5: because I have to go register, and they said you're African.
Speaker 5: I said yes, and they look at me and said,
Speaker 5: what are you doing here? Jazz is not med for
Speaker 5: African people. I'm like, okay, doesn't matter. I just walked
Speaker 5: up and I do yeah, and the founder of the
Speaker 5: school listened to it and he didn't say anything. I
Speaker 5: finished with my registration in pay and then he came
Speaker 5: to me and said, don't listen to them. That is
Speaker 5: ignorant speaking every school and year and we do music here.
Speaker 5: I will help you put a song together, and I
Speaker 5: know you can't do it. And at the end of
Speaker 5: that year, they all picked el pick up this all
Speaker 5: this song like okay, just got him, just go ahead,
Speaker 5: And I came with George Benson this masquerade and I
Speaker 5: nailed them on the wall.
Speaker 1: Nice, nice, Wait, besides the overt cultural racism, Uh, where
Speaker 1: were the other cultural differences as far as that you
Speaker 1: face the first time when you got to Paris, that
Speaker 1: you weren't used to.
Speaker 5: The difference of people indifference completely. People weren't friendly, people
Speaker 5: weren't indifferent completely. I mean, when I get out of
Speaker 5: my building, my house, my apartment, you cross your neighbors
Speaker 5: on stairs, you say good morning. Everybody just go like
Speaker 5: like you just have it gone. You're gonna shoot them there.
Speaker 1: I'm like, just how you make it out? In Brooklyn? Right, Brooklyn?
Speaker 5: We say hi to each other. I tell you, man
Speaker 5: in Man Street, we are a polite we know each other.
Speaker 5: Come on, it's like the village man works. Okay, but no,
Speaker 5: but you got there's a difference. There's a profound difference
Speaker 5: here in America. When you make eye contact with people,
Speaker 5: there's a nod or there's a can can't recognition somehow,
Speaker 5: you know, in France it's just like you can be
Speaker 5: transpar and nobody cares. And everywhere she performed, I mean
Speaker 5: one thing that really really struck me to the point
Speaker 5: where I just like, how am I gonna live in
Speaker 5: this country? I was in the subway going to school
Speaker 5: and there is at one station a girl walked into
Speaker 5: the station and she's just sobbing so much it barely
Speaker 5: could set. So I stood up and gave her my seat,
Speaker 5: and she was crying, and I was there, and it
Speaker 5: was looking at her, turned the head and there's something
Speaker 5: profoundly wrong with this crying. It's not like crying for
Speaker 5: by crying. It's there something bad about this. So when
Speaker 5: she came out of the subway, she was stumbling, so
Speaker 5: I get out. It was not my station. I get
Speaker 5: out and grab her because she was going to fall
Speaker 5: on the tracks. So I brought her to sit and
Speaker 5: I gave her my handkerchief and I sit there and said,
Speaker 5: I hold her. And she was shaking so much, and
Speaker 5: I said, what's going on? Can I help you? She
Speaker 5: couldn't speak, But I stayed there and I missed my class,
Speaker 5: but I was not gonna let her there because I
Speaker 5: didn't know what was going on. And finally she said
Speaker 5: to me that she's orphans of both of her parents.
Speaker 5: The only person she still have alive was her brother,
Speaker 5: and she just get into accident and he's very critical
Speaker 5: in hospital. And I said, let me take you to
Speaker 5: the hospital. See but I can't stay alone. I say,
Speaker 5: I'll stay with you. So I have to find a
Speaker 5: way to call my brother because I was living with
Speaker 5: my brother. I could not live without him knowing where
Speaker 5: I was. So when we get to the hospital, I said,
Speaker 5: this is what happened, and this is where I am.
Speaker 5: And then he said, if he's too late, tell me
Speaker 5: I come and get you. The brother make it. He
Speaker 5: was feeling better when I left her, and I said,
Speaker 5: you want to come to my house, you can stay
Speaker 5: with me. And she looked at me and said, no
Speaker 5: one do that here. I said, yes, but where are
Speaker 5: you gonna go? You don't have the key. Your brother
Speaker 5: was the one that have the key. And then I said,
Speaker 5: let's go ask the nurse if if in his stuff keys.
Speaker 5: So we find the keys. I accompany her to where
Speaker 5: she was going and I tell my brother where I was.
Speaker 5: He had God at that time. He said, now it's
Speaker 5: past ten pm, I'm gonna come and pick you up.
Speaker 5: And then and for me, it was just something that
Speaker 5: really no one just cares and That's why my first
Speaker 5: album that I released in France when I was signed
Speaker 5: by Island Record, I call it Tortois Logoso and with
Speaker 5: the free signs see no evil, talk no evil, hear
Speaker 5: no evil. For me, it represents so much this Western
Speaker 5: society that called itself civilized, developed, yet we have lost
Speaker 5: the ability to reach out helping him to somebody that
Speaker 5: is a need because we are just so swamp in
Speaker 5: survival mode. We don't leave. We survive and we have everything.
Speaker 5: People that are poor and ever got the leave, they
Speaker 5: have one. They can have one mill a day. That
Speaker 5: will laugh. We are resilient and that's one thing that
Speaker 5: no one can take from us.
Speaker 1: No one, they can't. There's no way that you can
Speaker 1: take good. Oh no, I was just I was just agreeing.
Speaker 3: Up.
Speaker 1: How did you How did you come across meeting Chris Blackwell?
Speaker 5: Well, that's that's an interesting story. The founder of the
Speaker 5: jaz school where I was had a label called Open
Speaker 5: Right and he produced only jazz right. And then he
Speaker 5: said to me, he came one day and see one
Speaker 5: of my shows. We had a bend together with my
Speaker 5: husband and some friends, and I was doing my own
Speaker 5: music and he said, man, I love the way you sing.
Speaker 5: I want to produce your album. So he produced the
Speaker 5: album one. By the time we finished it was broke.
Speaker 5: So he said, okay, I'm printing five hundred copies of Cities.
Speaker 5: I gave you two hundred and sell three hundred and
Speaker 5: that's it. With the two hundred, I sent it to
Speaker 5: record labels at every record label that exists in France.
Speaker 5: Have my CD promoters and I started playing at the
Speaker 5: New Morning Club and I gave one of my city
Speaker 5: to a guy from Mali called Mamadouconte. He's the one
Speaker 5: that founded the festival Africa e Fect okay, and he
Speaker 5: was the you Soon manager at that time, and then he,
Speaker 5: without telling me anything, send the CD to Chris Blackwell.
Speaker 5: So here I am playing the show at the New
Speaker 5: Morning Club in Paris, and you do two sets. I
Speaker 5: think the first set, the owner of Madame Farie and
Speaker 5: all the team of the club. Everybody had just been hijacked.
Speaker 5: When I walk out the stage, they are very important
Speaker 5: people waiting for your durussing room. I say, really more
Speaker 5: important than God. All right, let's go say So I
Speaker 5: walk in. You have the ear off from UK Island
Speaker 5: and you have the head of Island France and then
Speaker 5: introduce the to them themselves to me, say we really
Speaker 5: want to work with you, you want to sign you
Speaker 5: and I'm like this dude from France. I send them
Speaker 5: ticket to my shows, I send them everything. Nobody reply
Speaker 5: we're coming. We're not coming, just like now, you want
Speaker 5: to work with me? You know me, ma'am. How I
Speaker 5: ask questions? I said, I want to know what I
Speaker 5: was on here. I don't want to win. I want
Speaker 5: to how.
Speaker 1: You didn't trust the situation at all.
Speaker 5: And then I get and I get my hand on
Speaker 5: the fact that Crispy Blackwell sent and say you better
Speaker 5: sign this girl before somebody do. If somebody signed her
Speaker 5: before you, guys are losing your up. I'm like, yeah, baby,
Speaker 5: like this.
Speaker 1: Were you excited because of the the lineage that that
Speaker 1: he had.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know who he was.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what Chris No.
Speaker 5: I just know the label Island. I didn't know who
Speaker 5: he was until the signior to the day we're gonna sign.
Speaker 5: I was kind of reluctant because I never signed any contract.
Speaker 5: Because signing a contract for me and my culture is
Speaker 5: a handshake. So while am I signing a paper for
Speaker 5: I just like hell. And I was just worried that
Speaker 5: signing such a big record company and I lose my identity,
Speaker 5: my cultural identity, that I'll be doing music that I
Speaker 5: don't like. So Chris Blackwall came before we signed and s,
Speaker 5: I'm really happy to have in the family. If you
Speaker 5: have any resistance, if you have any doubt, this is
Speaker 5: the moment to talk to me about it. And I
Speaker 5: just say, I just want to keep my artistical freedom
Speaker 5: and do the music that I love to do. And
Speaker 5: he said, that's no question about it. You do I sell,
Speaker 5: just sign it, put it in. And I'm like yeah.
Speaker 5: And for the first ten years of my career, I
Speaker 5: have the privilege of having Chris Blackwell as my artistical director.
Speaker 5: That guy have an ear. Oh my god. He goes
Speaker 5: on the sixteenth bar, your snare is too loud. I'm like,
Speaker 5: for real, and you listen, Marc.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It's out of face, no no good. And every time
Speaker 5: I do it demo, when I send it to him,
Speaker 5: it's like he's in a candy store because I always
Speaker 5: do my demo so well, because you have to think
Speaker 5: about something. It might be hanging out somewhen, somebody might
Speaker 5: put his hand on it. You don't know who listened
Speaker 5: to what. It gotta be clean, man, it gotta be perfect.
Speaker 5: Even if a producer have to put his hand on it,
Speaker 5: he got something good to work with. Like when I
Speaker 5: did this project, remaining like that I'm doing now the demo.
Speaker 5: The voice of the demo are the final voice on
Speaker 5: the album.
Speaker 1: Not bad.
Speaker 5: My backing singing all is in there. Yeah, percussion from
Speaker 5: being all in there, and I add some more percussion.
Speaker 5: Everything about this album start with a percussion. The drum
Speaker 5: followed char Haynes followed the percussion player. When we were
Speaker 5: doing Once in a Lifetime with the current response with
Speaker 5: the drum, and then he asked, I mean when he
Speaker 5: played he started playing with the percussion player, I was
Speaker 5: sitting down like in the studio leg this is my
Speaker 5: brother's man. This dude a killing this start right there.
Speaker 5: Nobody else can play like that, And I just I
Speaker 5: just raised myself. Really, don't be racist in the other way.
Speaker 1: Just shut up. You work with so many musicians and
Speaker 1: so many different producers. What what are the highlights of
Speaker 1: your your working relationships? Like I know that you did
Speaker 1: a project with Tony Usconi.
Speaker 5: Tony was a wonderful mind though Tony was because I
Speaker 5: told him when blank, I don't lie studio me and
Speaker 5: a studio at all.
Speaker 1: I was about to say the first time you you
Speaker 1: always tell me you don't like the studio. I hate
Speaker 1: the studio, but it's it's where the magic happens.
Speaker 5: That they don't have the freaking daylight. I'm like, if
Speaker 5: it's wearing the snow. Something happened, I don't know, right,
Speaker 5: And it's no public to sing?
Speaker 6: Why not?
Speaker 5: Why should I sing to a wall?
Speaker 1: We in that case, what was it like working at
Speaker 1: Paisley Park? Because you did your whole lap? It was
Speaker 1: it was like your snow in Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Shoot man, my daughter was ten days old when we
Speaker 5: stopped doing it. I just because that album have been
Speaker 5: produced by two different producers, Will More from Soul to
Speaker 5: Soul in London and David Busy, So I was between both.
Speaker 5: I'll grab my child and go do this and go back.
Speaker 5: I love Park. It was the time of revolution, the
Speaker 5: Michael the Drama. We got so much fun. Man, We've
Speaker 5: been talking about music when Prince was not there. We're like,
Speaker 5: come on, come on, let's let's jump. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 5: come on. It was fun park. And the funny thing
Speaker 5: is you see Sting comes in and you have Prince here.
Speaker 5: Sting is just like regular Prince is all maked up.
Speaker 5: I mean, the Christ of the pant is now I'm
Speaker 5: like Jesus Christ. And you look, you see two most
Speaker 5: of music here completely different worlds and not like that.
Speaker 5: That's what music brings me to. I mean, what is
Speaker 5: important for me when I'm doing an album is that
Speaker 5: the producer becomes also as part of the music. It's
Speaker 5: not just pushing bottoms. And if you have any idea,
Speaker 5: I come from a culture where we do things together
Speaker 5: and and my father always used to say to me
Speaker 5: that's the reason why he encouraged me to play soccer.
Speaker 5: He said, you play soccer and everybody works together for
Speaker 5: one goal. You have to learn to do that to
Speaker 5: have people around you that even if you don't think
Speaker 5: the same, you have the same aesthetics. You have you
Speaker 5: have the same goal to achieve, and then you are
Speaker 5: stronger because you bounced off each other. And two three
Speaker 5: brands together is powerful. It's more powerful than any atomic bomb.
Speaker 5: And that's how I like to do my work. And
Speaker 5: I remember the first time he played on my album
Speaker 5: was in quir You remember Quar Studio when I was
Speaker 5: doing the cover of.
Speaker 1: Voodoo Chai, right, and we call it that's you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's me. I'm kind of everywhere.
Speaker 5: But I think I didn't like it. I didn't like
Speaker 5: that process because I didn't come to meet everybody. And
Speaker 5: after that, I'm like, the next album is everybody in
Speaker 5: the studio. Otherwise that's what we did for Black Average.
Speaker 5: So the black As album we recorded, it was the
Speaker 5: funniest thing ever. Out of this world. Here comes am
Speaker 5: here the best player come from French West Indies. The
Speaker 5: percussion player have never been to America. We do all
Speaker 5: the paper for him to come from Salva yea. He
Speaker 5: does not speak a word of English. Go listen to
Speaker 5: that album Rhden section. Oh boy, it is tired or
Speaker 5: what I'm telling you. You don't need to speak the
Speaker 5: same language to do music. And it's the only form
Speaker 5: of art. I mean, I remember, I remember the song
Speaker 5: I cover a song of Gilberto Jill mhm. And then Jesus,
Speaker 5: I'm still listening to it and then I mean, what too,
Speaker 5: and the guitar go adam, he just he sits everybody
Speaker 5: down saying, okay, this is where it is and you
Speaker 5: have the bass player. He was so happy what he
Speaker 5: loves it? How wi is all the drummers that have
Speaker 5: mean I said, don't be messing up with me right now?
Speaker 1: Numbers now now I wish my roll call Angelie.
Speaker 2: How do you pick your covers? Because you're known for
Speaker 2: a lot of like Voodoo Child and the other ones.
Speaker 2: You're known for a lot of your covers. How do
Speaker 2: you pick them?
Speaker 5: Well? The Voto Child wants started pretty I mean, I've
Speaker 5: known Jimmy Hendrix since being in but then I came
Speaker 5: to Price and we had a friend called he's a
Speaker 5: specialist of uh you know Jimmy Henry's mother. Any American
Speaker 5: come some bed yazid man. He's from Benin. There's nothing
Speaker 5: I'm telling you sitting down here. You want to try
Speaker 5: him next time? I tell him when he comes coming
Speaker 5: six to speak to you, there's nothing you would say
Speaker 5: about Jimmy Hendy that he doesn't know. Ever, Really, I
Speaker 5: swear you he got everything. This is this is This
Speaker 5: guy is crazy. I mean, he's he loves Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 5: so much. I'm like, it's not even your brother, dude.
Speaker 5: Come on, And we were listening to us telling him
Speaker 5: how I discovered the music of Jimmy Hendry and he said,
Speaker 5: have some news for you. He started playing me all
Speaker 5: the stuff that I missed because of this tupid communists,
Speaker 5: all those dub and then he puts Voodoo Channel and
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, this is my song right there. I'm
Speaker 5: doing a cover of it. And he looked at me
Speaker 5: and really, I said, what Jimmy really said? Well, let's
Speaker 5: see I'm not Oh, don't dare me. You don't know me.
Speaker 5: Don't do this. It's not good for you. It takes me.
Speaker 5: It can take me ten years. I'm gonna do this
Speaker 5: coover take me six years. I woke up one morning
Speaker 5: and I started singing the guitar in my head with
Speaker 5: words because I said, Jimmy Hendrix can't play the guitar.
Speaker 5: I might also say it damn it. I don't want
Speaker 5: anybody else but Jimmy Hendy's to do it. He can't
Speaker 5: do it. I'm sanging it. So that's what I did.
Speaker 5: I go a mom michiligit for doom va michiligo. A
Speaker 5: mom michiligo for doom va michiligo.
Speaker 1: I mean that to you is been in the spirit.
Speaker 5: It's it's it's the Amazon.
Speaker 1: What other American songs? Because you know we're lost in America.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was been until five months ago.
Speaker 1: So I'm just saying that, what other songs do you
Speaker 1: hear an American culture that you feel in your heart?
Speaker 5: There are so many of them. I just singing it.
Speaker 5: It have to be there, I mean, versus versus price,
Speaker 5: it's not. When I was doing the the listening wing
Speaker 5: on the album of the Talking Heads, The Vermain to
Speaker 5: Remain Live, I sang and Ezra sign that song with me,
Speaker 5: and that song is a song that is really profound.
Speaker 5: It goes I'm a wabo. Then on sackwayo Baldi tula,
Speaker 5: I'm a wabo no sackway tula o me why oh me?
Speaker 5: Why o me? Why hey me? Why e yay yeah
Speaker 5: yeay tu last.
Speaker 1: He said, you make that look so effortless.
Speaker 5: It's definitely because that's like a my life. You can't
Speaker 5: cast a spell, you can't stop. When a hunter goes
Speaker 5: out to hunt, he's the one telling the story. But
Speaker 5: when you shoot at the black panther and you miss,
Speaker 5: the story is different because that spell you cast before
Speaker 5: you try shooting him, he can come back and get
Speaker 5: you and then who's staring the story?
Speaker 1: Now? The panther there it is. I do want to
Speaker 1: ask you about remaining light? How how long has this
Speaker 1: been passion project? I mean, I'm assuming that for you
Speaker 1: to cover an entire album, it has to be a
Speaker 1: passion project.
Speaker 3: So what.
Speaker 1: First of all, did you know the history of David
Speaker 1: Byrne's obsession with Nigerian music?
Speaker 5: And I didn't know.
Speaker 1: You didn't know anything.
Speaker 5: I didn't know all that till I start working on it.
Speaker 5: Wait what Yeah, when I started working on it, I
Speaker 5: went out and find out, Oh, really, start listening to
Speaker 5: the song first, because the song have to speak to
Speaker 5: me before I get dive into it too, because I
Speaker 5: don't want to know anything about it. Then it can
Speaker 5: it would impact my inspiration. So as as we were
Speaker 5: working on it, I had so many traditional songs that
Speaker 5: I've been sung to me by women when I was
Speaker 5: doing Beninese women and Kenyan women. When I was doing
Speaker 5: my album Eve and that album that I dedicate to
Speaker 5: the resilience and the beauty of the African women that
Speaker 5: want the Grammy. It was not only songs that I
Speaker 5: come back with, life stories too, women that I've been
Speaker 5: going through hell. I've sung with Amazon Descendants in a
Speaker 5: boomy many songs, profound songs, so I put them there.
Speaker 5: I listened to talking and I listened to the women,
Speaker 5: and the song goes, they go together, and the message
Speaker 5: just match so well. And I also I think that
Speaker 5: this project for me is about many things. After the
Speaker 5: last election, I said, I don't want to live in darkness.
Speaker 5: I don't want to live in fear because I had
Speaker 5: never been raised in fear. Whatever gonna happen, my music's
Speaker 5: gonna be always the one that's gonna remain in light
Speaker 5: and keep people in light.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 5: The second reason is that the voice of the women
Speaker 5: have so much wisdom that this album deserved to have it.
Speaker 5: The third thing is when they wrote this album and
Speaker 5: did this album, it was at the reggae era, war
Speaker 5: on drugs, and now we have war on democracy. So
Speaker 5: I started listening to the lyrics differently, and people used
Speaker 5: to tell me those talking Head songs, men, the words
Speaker 5: are absurd. You don't understand nothing, And I'm like, you
Speaker 5: gotta know how to listen to it. You got to
Speaker 5: know how to listen to it. And the first time
Speaker 5: I heard Born on the Punch is I'm like, this
Speaker 5: is corruption big time here. We are all born on
Speaker 5: the punches. Our lyrics have set up a system of
Speaker 5: corruption that deprived us from our rights to thrive, our children,
Speaker 5: to thrive, our society to function, North Southeast. It does
Speaker 5: not matter where it is. It's not an African problem.
Speaker 5: Is the worldwide problem. And that for me, is one
Speaker 5: of the things that we have to shed light on
Speaker 5: because if you look at it, you look at the
Speaker 5: world in which we are living. I'll take it from
Speaker 5: Africa after colonization, and I said, organizations still exists in Africa.
Speaker 5: The independence that we have is just a word with
Speaker 5: no substance because the independence that we had does not
Speaker 5: allow us Africans to set our resources the price we want.
Speaker 5: We don't set the price of our resources. People come
Speaker 5: and take it and pay the price they want it
Speaker 5: that sometimes they don't pay. They don't give money to
Speaker 5: a government that they want to keep in place to
Speaker 5: be able to take what they need from Africa. And
Speaker 5: in order to continue that what they call independence, they
Speaker 5: have to find a way to stop. Every single person
Speaker 5: that's gonna stay gonna say to them, this is not doable.
Speaker 5: Start with Bluemomba Kuiman Krumer, all those educated men, when
Speaker 5: the country colonizing them presented to them what they call
Speaker 5: the colonial Pact, in which basically they have no power.
Speaker 5: You are independent, but you have no power. You can
Speaker 5: have a currency. If you want to build the roads,
Speaker 5: we have to come and do it. Anything you have
Speaker 5: to do, we have to do it for you. You
Speaker 5: cannot make any policy that will impact our interest and
Speaker 5: you have to keep your population on the check. No
Speaker 5: riot in the street against our interests. All those things
Speaker 5: are written in the pact. So when the mover stand
Speaker 5: up against it, they kill him, not I mean with
Speaker 5: the help of CIA. The CI, the guide of CIA
Speaker 5: said we kill him and dump him and asked for
Speaker 5: him not to have any place where people can come
Speaker 5: and say this is our hero. So why did they
Speaker 5: do that? Because they put people puppets in politic in
Speaker 5: high places. They continue doing it. I don't know. If
Speaker 5: you see the documentary UH on CNN about the Cobalt, well,
Speaker 5: you gotta see that the children are working to get cobalt.
Speaker 5: The Cobold people don't even know where it's going when
Speaker 5: they put it on the on the on the bus.
Speaker 5: They have paper and they write the amount, Well, who
Speaker 5: is it going to? You can't find it? I mean
Speaker 5: the head of Testla saying, oh, we always follow the origin.
Speaker 5: And then they're going to say, ask him where it
Speaker 5: is the paper? Say what is your name? So it's
Speaker 5: always everything the business. The way business is done in Africa,
Speaker 5: it's done nowhere. The rule of business don't apply in
Speaker 5: Africa is just we come, we take, we leave. So
Speaker 5: for me, one of the point is, well, the first
Speaker 5: song and I said, I'm going hard on this one.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna do it. And then you have cross cross
Speaker 5: eye penless. Cross eye penless is about calling people names.
Speaker 5: You call us what you call us the N word,
Speaker 5: you call us any kind of name, But what kind
Speaker 5: of name you want us to tell? To give you?
Speaker 5: You start telling me who you are? That question never
Speaker 5: come out? Who are you? How do you see yourself
Speaker 5: compared to us? If you call us name, who are you?
Speaker 5: Why do you call us that name? And who give
Speaker 5: us that name? What gives you the right to give
Speaker 5: us that name? So that said, cross eye penless, your
Speaker 5: eyes are crossed, and goes to the direction that function
Speaker 5: for you. The rest you don't want to know, and
Speaker 5: so on and so forth. So the whole album. I
Speaker 5: listened to it completely differently. The Great Curve is about
Speaker 5: Mother Earth, hm, not only the nature, but the women
Speaker 5: from since since we have been on this planet. Who
Speaker 5: tells the story of the women? Not about the man?
Speaker 5: Adam and Eve's all, my mom says. All our problem
Speaker 5: as women start from there. From the moment a man
Speaker 5: cannot stand for his own tech responsibility, for his own
Speaker 5: desire and have to blame a woman for tempting him.
Speaker 5: And he has a brain to think, knowing very well
Speaker 5: that apple if he takes it, there are gonna be consequences.
Speaker 5: He took it anyway and blame a woman? Did I
Speaker 5: always ask the question did Eve just knock him down
Speaker 5: and put his feet on the throat and shoveled in
Speaker 5: his mouth? So why do we have to be blamed
Speaker 5: for the man's sexual life? I mean there's a war
Speaker 5: rage again in this country against women to go for abortion.
Speaker 5: Abortion is not never an easy decision to make for
Speaker 5: any woman. It takes two today as the tank wor's
Speaker 5: the guy. If the guy is there helping the woman,
Speaker 5: the woman don't think two seconds to go have a abortion.
Speaker 5: So we are blamed for that to everything we blame,
Speaker 5: we are blamed for. So the mead To movement is
Speaker 5: a great movement, but we have to have a mead
Speaker 5: To movement for the mother Earth because the way we're
Speaker 5: treating this planet, oh my God, oh my God, is bad.
Speaker 5: Beyond that, exactly house is in motion is eight thousand,
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight crisis. There's one, there's another one looming,
Speaker 5: not gonna come. And it's always the same. We choose,
Speaker 5: we have chosen as human being when we come to
Speaker 5: this planet, not to go for the greater good, not
Speaker 5: to go for kindness, but to go for the jugular,
Speaker 5: go for the violence. You want something, you want it,
Speaker 5: and then somebody is on your way. We kill, we
Speaker 5: eradicate your raist, and that's it. We did it for
Speaker 5: the Inn and in in in, in Peru. We did
Speaker 5: it I mean everywhere, the general side of the aboriginiest
Speaker 5: people here, the Native Indians in Africa, slavery I mean,
Speaker 5: and we all have made and excused. The word of
Speaker 5: excuse for those crime is business. When you're doing business,
Speaker 5: you're making profit, everything is cool. We worship money more
Speaker 5: than we worship God, more than we worship human life.
Speaker 5: So for me, the whole Many Light album is the
Speaker 5: anxiety of the Reagan era that we are feeling today.
Speaker 5: So how do we reconcile that? That's why my take
Speaker 5: on Once in a Lifetime is so joyful because there's
Speaker 5: something positive about it. It brings us to questions, how
Speaker 5: do we get here? Can we ask ourselves the questions
Speaker 5: and see the symbolism of water in all this? Every
Speaker 5: single human being have to grow up in water before
Speaker 5: you come to be born to this earth. What have
Speaker 5: been at the center of my our migration in this world?
Speaker 5: All of us, from Homo erectus to homosapiens, to the
Speaker 5: town to Davidian. All of the brains we can call
Speaker 5: goes through water. The migrant crisis of today is on water.
Speaker 5: We're gonna be fighting for water pretty soon. We can
Speaker 5: live without gasoline? Can we live without water?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 5: How do we get here?
Speaker 1: Are we wrong?
Speaker 5: Are we right? My god? What have we done?
Speaker 1: Hang on? Yo? This is the wokenst episode of the
Speaker 1: show ever, Like, I h can we go on after this?
Speaker 1: Like like I feel like I need to go home
Speaker 1: and listen to remain in a couple of times exactly now?
Speaker 2: Did you or you should start a coffee table book?
Speaker 2: Of your saying you have ever done that? No people
Speaker 2: have that's next, Yeah, that's I mean, yeah, Well, is
Speaker 2: there anything that you you haven't done? You've worked with everyone, You've.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 5: We have never done our album. We've been talking about we.
Speaker 1: Were I know, I know we're going to do it.
Speaker 5: We're going to do it.
Speaker 1: But okay. So that's like the running theme of the show.
Speaker 1: Everybody does a record request love Yeah, or that I've
Speaker 1: yet to hold up my end of the bargain. Too
Speaker 1: many jobs.
Speaker 5: No, it's not that. Because he liked music. I like
Speaker 5: him for that. I mean, he's open to I mean,
Speaker 5: it was very surprising for me when he he started
Speaker 5: playing with me. I'm like, this guy is American drummer,
Speaker 5: but he's more than that because he listened to so
Speaker 5: different type of music. It's like me, he grew up
Speaker 5: with music parents musicians, and sometimes you can grow up
Speaker 5: with parents musician and you go, I hate music, man,
Speaker 5: I want nothing to do with that. Drive me crazy.
Speaker 5: He listens and he come up to be who he is.
Speaker 1: I don't have a choice.
Speaker 5: He does not copy. He is himself. When you hear
Speaker 5: his drumming, you know it's him. Nobody else plays the drum,
Speaker 5: the way he plays. That's it. And that's the most
Speaker 5: difficult thing to do in our business where you have
Speaker 5: so many talents around. How do you you? How are
Speaker 5: you unique and true to yourself?
Speaker 1: Well, let's see if you feel that way after this
Speaker 1: Prince project. Thank you very much for a coming.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: I need a sandwich. I need to go back to college.
Speaker 1: Anyway we have of Damn, this's public school education in
Speaker 1: my let me having of Sugar, Steve of Chat with
Speaker 1: Sugar and twin Bills. Uh, this is a quest Love.
Speaker 1: Also shout out to fan Tigelow and it's like it's like,
Speaker 1: thank you Angelic one more time. This is a quest
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is quest Love Supreme on Pandora. We'll see you
Speaker 1: the next go round. Thank you. Quest Love Supreme is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by
Speaker 1: the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.