Angelique Kidjo

thumb|Angelique Kidjo 01 Angélique Kidjo (born July 14, 1960), is a Beninese singer-songwriter, actress, and activist who is noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Kidjo was born into a family of performing artists. Her father was a musician, and her mother worked as a choreographer and theatre director. Kidjo has won five Grammy Awards. Quotes  Your brain is your greatest weapon. Connect it to your heart, and you can go anywhere.    I never use someone just because they are great musicians. I work with people who have the same kind of feeling towards the music that I do, and the subject that I’m speaking of at that time.      Everyone wins when children – and especially girls – have access to education. An educated girl is likely to increase her personal earning potential and prepare herself for a productive and fulfilling life, as well as reduce poverty in the whole community. Investing in girls’ education also helps delay early marriage and parenthood. Our booming economies in Africa need more female engineers, teachers and doctors to prosper and sustain growth. I come from this diversity and richness that's Benin, where there are fifty different languages. I speak four of them. I never know in advance which language will come when I start to write.The song leads me to the language.    It’s just that I love to sing. I love to bring Africa to the world. The beauty of Africa, not the music that people are very content about seeing and talking about.    We Africans have to be able to deal with our problems. Help from outside is alright, but we have to learn to be responsible for our own attitudes.    Benin has little tradition of harmony in the south where I come from. The north has a lot more, but the south has more rhythms, which are absolutely fantastic and people don't know them. There's one village specifically dedicated to the drum. When you get there you can go and choose your tree, cut it down and make your percussion from it. The challenge for me is adding the harmonies that the rhythms give.   People say 'la musique africaine', but I say 'les musiques africaines'. They refuse to recognize that Africa is a continent with a huge number of different cultures and languages and music. That's always been the difficulty of my career. People expect all Africans to have the same sound more or less, as if you can lump them all together.https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0452300/quotes/?ref_=nm_dyk_qu My dream is that the music that comes from Africa becomes the identity card and the fingerprint of the continent We must make African music better''- Angélique Kidjo [Interview] 13 August 2024 "Who are they to tell me what is African and what isn't?" Slavery, a crime against humanity, is being denied and that is why people remain so ignorant of Africa The problem we have in Africa is that unless you are a traditional musician telling the stories of your people through songs, you have no respect in society Angélique Kidjo asks: 'Who are they to tell me what's African?' 29 April 2010 I was lucky enough to have parents and a family who always made me feel like I had the same rights as everyone else and that I could do whatever I wanted with my life I am in favor of a holistic approach to education: young African girls need to go to school, but I would also like to see the society and the local communities be equally responsible for our youth's education I come from a place where storytelling is used to bear witness to and bring about change in our society For me, the African woman is the backbone of our continent: she has the power to transform things, in the household as well as at the national level. When we support them in this process, we see incredible things happen. If I can, with my music, encourage others to take action, that's already a victory. progress is not a linear process Our job is to grow the flame of equality and justice for all every day When people own and contribute to social change, they become guardians of that progress, and they'll do whatever it takes to safeguard it and nurture it. This is what I believe in global citizenship is the key tool for peace, justice, and progress Work together to define the future that you want to build Moving beyond your privilege and putting yourself out there for a cause that impacts thousands of people is the greatest thing you can do Angélique Kidjo: The ‘Global Citizen Live’ Special Guest Who’s Helping Girls Become Leaders 14 September 2021 I grew up in a culture that's always been with me, wherever I've been. I knew where I came from, even if I didn't know exactly where I was going. But my culture, for me, has never been a matter of choice: to use it or not to use it. It's part of me. Slavery was not only an economic loss for Africa, but it was also a huge cultural loss for me, there can be no traditional music without modernity Human memory is incredible: despite attempts to eradicate the cultural identity of Africans during slavery, it has survived Angélique Kidjo on music, activism, and empowering Africa’s next generation 8 February 2025 References External links Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:Singer-songwriters Category:Gospel singers Category:Reggae singers Category:Women activists from Benin Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Women born in the 1960s Category:UNICEF goodwill ambassadors Category:Actresses from Paris