By Steve Knopper
Angelique Kidjo’s law career lasted exactly three months. Actually, she never quite made it to the courtroom — she was studying at the University of .Villetaneuse in Paris when a professor asked her a question that would change her life. What would you do, he said, if you were to represent a person falsely accused, but an oppressive government opposes this person so vehemently that a fair trial would be impossible?
“I said, ‘I’m not going to compromise until that person is free.’ He said, ‘You will not be able to defend that person — ever.’ I said, ‘Forget it. No way.’ He said, ‘You have your answer,'” Kidjo recalls. “So I just quit. It took me two months to think about it. But I realized I will be more useful for humanity — for my peers, for human beings — by becoming a singer.”
It so happened that Kidjo, born in Benin, West Africa, had some talent in that department. She grew up performing with her mother’s theater company and was singing professionally by age 20. After she gave up her dream to be a human-rights lawyer in the ’80s, she started putting out records that mixed the musical cultures of Africa, the United States, Brazil, Portugal, the Caribbean and Latin America — all to a heavy dance beat.
Her latest venture to be more useful for humanity happens Wednesday, when she performs at a Carnegie Hall benefit for New York’s Tibet House, along with David Byrne, Ray Davies, Bright Eyes, Yo La Tengo and others. It’s Kidjo’s third performance for this cause, which pushes for Tibet’s freedom from oppressive China. “We’re talking about a little, tiny piece of China that belongs to the monks. They don’t have any army. They don’t want to fight,” Kidjo says from her home in Paris. “What is the danger that Tibet is causing to China?”
Many have raised that question since 1949, when China invaded the peaceful haven for Buddhist monks and the Dalai Lama. (He left the country for exile in India in the ’50s.) Since then, the much larger country has arrested and tortured Tibetan activists and converted sacred areas into low-class tourist spots.
“Our job at Tibet House is not at all to agitate on a political level,” says Tibet House president Robert Thurman, a Buddhist studies professor at Columbia University (and, by the way, father of actress Uma). “It’s to do whatever we can to make Tibetan culture known and make resources available to preserve it.”
Tibet is on Kidjo’s mind during a half-hour interview in which she vents her outrage over human-rights violations around the world. Her recent albums have explored the cultural impact of African slavery — 1998’s “Oremi” delved into American blues and covered Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” — and 2002’s “Black Ivory Soul” dealt with musical connections between Africa and Brazil. Kidjo’s next CD, “Oyaya,” due in May, means “joy” in the African language of Yoruba. It explores Caribbean music and culture.
“I’m just following the root of the slaves through music,” she says. “Slavery is over, but yet there’s a great sense of guilt and hate on both sides, which is completely the wrong way to see things. Because if you think of it like that, you’re never going to heal.”
Steve Knopper is a freelance writer.
