The last time Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo came to Atlanta, she grooved across the Fox Theatre stage encouraging the audience at Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday celebration to move to the propulsive rhythms of “Afrika,” a call-and-response song she released more than two decades ago.
The international superstar, who hails from the French-speaking West African nation of Benin, said she jumped at the chance last year to celebrate the global peacekeeper who she first met in 2002 at his Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. She has long admired Carter’s work in Africa and his dedication to involving people on the ground in the solutions, not just swooping in with aid and then leaving. Empathy, she said, is the key.
“If you come in and you start treating them like they don’t have a brain … in that humiliation, there is no success,” she said. “I’m always going to be proud of meeting a human being that is humane in that level of power. The work he has done has transformed so many people’s lives, and the only thing I could do is to thank him.”
Kidjo returns to Atlanta March 30 with her “African Symphony,” which contains a new version of “Afrika” arranged for orchestra by Derrick Hodge. A global effort, the work was co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra in Paris, a concert hall in Hamburg and an arts festival in Lyon, France. It premiered at the Kennedy Center in June 2024.
For her Symphony Hall concert, Kidjo will perform with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra. The program features a cohesive group of songs that blend elements of world music, jazz and Afrobeat to celebrate breaking down barriers between cultures and musical genres. It includes Kidjo’s “Agolo” and songs written by Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango and others.
The broad range of music is Kidjo’s way of saying thanks to her forebears and collaborators, and to demonstrate how vastly different types of music can be applied to a classical style. In a way, it’s how she’s spent her entire career: melding genres and breaking down musical barriers.
Credit: Sofia and Mauro
Credit: Sofia and Mauro
“African Symphony” traces Kidjo’s experiences as an artist, and with arrangements of songs made popular by Burna Boy and Rema, she connects her past to the present. After all, being exposed to a broad array of sounds is how Kidjo began forming her artistic approach.
“I could be the musician I am today because I’ve been fed by traditional music in my culture that allowed me as a little child to understand the diverse world of music around me,” she said. “You don’t understand the language. All you understand is the emotion. You don’t even realize when you’re a kid, absorbing that, how impactful that is.”
For the arrangements, Hodge broke each song down to its core elements, exploring the emotions conjured in the tunes. For “Afrika,” he emphasized the depth and weight of the music by writing music for brass, while woodwinds carry the original production elements and flit around in conversation with Kidjo’s voice. He characterizes it as an evolving dance between Kidjo’s singing, her original music and the music of the new arrangements.
“Each song is a different way of celebrating that dance, and that’s what was fun about it. I tried not to go with one formula,” he said, adding that each piece was an opportunity “to make something dance differently.”
Hodge envisioned the songs as a collaboration between Kidjo and the orchestra, not just music supporting her vocals. His goal was to create arrangements that musicians accustomed to playing classical fare could work up without making Kidjo sound like a pop-leaning artist dabbling in classical structures and sounds.
“They see we’re respecting their art form as well,” he said of the musicians. “We’re trying to understand both sides to make sure this is a really beautiful conversation. If there’s love in the music, and you’re very clear in your intentions behind it, it tends to be honored. It tends to cut through any preconceptions about it.”
Kidjo has a long history of bringing her music to the classical world. In 2015, she released “Sings” with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, a Grammy winner for Best World Music Album. Philip Glass wrote “Ife Songs,” three pieces sung in the Yoruba language, for Kidjo, which she premiered in Luxembourg in 2014. Glass and Kidjo collaborated again on a symphony based on David Bowie’s “Lodger” in 2019. She is currently touring with Yo Yo Ma performing a concert titled “Sarabane Africaine.”
These collaborations build on one another, helping her understand the classical world better. She’s learned to wear a single ear monitor during symphony performances so she can be “physically, sonically present” with the ensemble
“I have to envision and embody myself as an instrument among other instruments,” she said.
Her hope is that “African Symphony” will connect with audiences like she did last fall at the Fox Theatre, convincing them to move a little, get carried away by the rhythms and maybe broaden their definition of music altogether.
“We have so much music today at our disposal,” she said. “Let’s be adventurous. Let’s be crazy. Let’s listen to all kind of different things.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Angélique Kidjo. 7 p.m. March 30. $59.50-$191.25. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-733-5000, aso.org.
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