Through their beautiful collaboration, two musical legends Angélique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma show us how cultures that seem worlds apart are connected through music. In their program Sarabande Africaine, this week in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Berkeley with musical guest Sinkane, they bring together classical and West African music in a riveting set of performances.
The acclaimed cellist and renowned vocalist first met on a rainy day in Paris at the famous Arc de Triomphe, where they performed in front of world leaders to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. The two very different musicians from different backgrounds clicked instantly.
“We start talking, and I’m like, this is the mirror of what I grew up with,” Kidjo says. “All the values that I have, he has them in different ways. We were both global artists, and we have that humility to understand that whatever music we do, we are always at the service of the music.”
“It’s the mutual respect that came first,” Ma says. “The energy of the sound that comes out and the intention behind that sound is what makes me run toward Angélique.”
It’s fitting this musical connection sparked in Paris, an important city in both of their lives. It’s the city where Ma, the child of immigrants from China, was born. And it’s where Kidjo moved to in her 20’s from her home in Benin, a former French colony in West Africa, due to the political dictatorship in her country.
That day in 2018 when they first met, Kidjo sang the powerful song Blewu, inspired by the original version by Bella Bellow of Togo. It’s become the opening song of Kidjo’s concert with Ma, a song she says is about gratitude.
“That song, every time I sing it, I’m thanking the ones that have come before us,” Kidjo says. “And that special day, I was thanking the African soldiers that came to World War I, that died for the freedom and the democracy we enjoy today. I’ve been taught that freedom is at the heart of everything.”
That same day, Yo-Yo Ma played a Bach sarabande, a style with a fascinating history. Though it’s remembered as a courtly dance from the Baroque period in Europe, the roots go back to African rhythms carried across the Atlantic to the Americas during the slave trade. In the 1500’s and 1600’s, those rhythms mixed with local traditions in Central and South America, where it took on a new life. It then came back to Europe, where it transformed again.
“In the 1700’s, Bach was actually trying to create a multi-cultural piece of dances in the Bach cello suites – from France, from Italy, from Spain, from Scotland, from the Celtic music, the jigs, and at the heart of it was the sarabande, and that was Bach’s choosing,” Ma says.
“That’s what culture does,” Ma says, “it turns what you think is ‘the other’ into us. It takes away the fear.”
This extraordinary program revives often-erased African culture, history and music, which significantly influenced western musical traditions. Kidjo sings in the West African languages of Ewe, Mina, and Yorùbá. She brings to life the story of the Yorùbá kingdom, in “Yemandja from Ifé,” a trio of songs composed for her by Philip Glass.
“It’s about the beginning of the Earth, Mother Earth as an ocean,” Ma says. “Suddenly we are into nature. We hear the ocean. We hear the waves. We hear Angelique narrating that story. It’s unbelievable, and it makes perfect sense. And it’s not about the breaking of genres, it’s just simply us.”
Another lovely song in their repertoire is Kidjo’s take on Ravel’s Bolero, called “Lonlon,” sung in the Mina language of West Africa.
“This song started bubbling in me when I arrived in France in my first music school,” Kidjo says. “The teacher one day played Ravel’s “Bolero.” I start tapping, and one of them in the class says why don’t you stop tapping? You African people are not evolved enough to do this kind of music.”
Kidjo replied. “I said, ‘well, I have to tell you something, it’s an African mood, it’s repetitive. So, this is African.’ And, I get ‘Whoa.’ That day, I was like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I shouldn’t have opened my mouth and said that.’ But I made a promise to myself I will show people that Ravel did something that classical music could do and should do,” she says.
Kidjo titled her adaptation “Lonlon,” which means love. “My first encounter with it and the response I received was hatred,” she says. “And what I’m saying is that love has come and asked you to give, to move forward, to do things, because we all have a responsibility to love ourselves and to love others.”
Ma’s cello and Kidjo’s voice on the song “Aisha” bring together the melodies of Bach’s Concerto No 5 with the Yoruba language of West Africa. It’s a poem about a young girl composed by Kidjo.
“When I read it, I’m in tears,” Ma says. “I think Bach’s music brings solace. And to put that music and the words together, it is so poignant. It’s our own sarabande in a way, because it’s the heart of the concert.”
Press play above to listen to Angélique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma’s conversation with Sonia Narang.
