Beninese-French singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo is a force of nature. Now in her early 60s, her voice is as strong and percussive as ever, her dancing as energetic and playful, her enthusiasm as infectious and her message of empowerment and justice as heartfelt and resounding.
In her concert at Perth Concert Hall last Thursday night, she was the embodiment of this year’s Festival theme of Ngaangk (the sun), a female deity in Noongar cosmology who is equally a source of warmth, light, nourishment and protection.
Despite the somewhat formal ambience of the venue, by midway through the concert she had us all on our feet dancing and singing along, sometimes even in Fon or Yoruba (Kidjo sings in multiple West African and other languages, including French and English).
Local Noongar singer-songwriter Maatakitj (alias Clint Bracknell) kicked off the evening with a half-hour set featuring his own brand of desert blues in a series of songs in Noongar language about Country, animals, spirits and waterways. He was backed by fellow Noongar artists Della Rae Morrison and Kylie Bracknell (who also provided intros to the songs and encouraged the audience to clap along or click our fingers to mimic the sound of rain). Perth-based percussionist Arunachala played an impressively huge pumpkin drum and provided drive and texture to the sound.
After interval, Kidjo erupted onstage, accompanied by a lean but seasoned four-piece band, featuring Thierry Vaton on keys, David Donatien on percussion, Gregory Louis on drums and Gregory Louis (outstanding) on bass (the latter featuring plenty of slapping and sliding, as well as some chunky melody lines). Personally, I found the overall mix somewhat bland, and would have welcomed a guitar or horn to give things more colour, but this was more than compensated for by Kidjo’s voice, dancing and sheer charisma.
They opened with a hard-driven version of the Talking Heads classic ‘Crosseyed and Painless’ from that band’s seminal Afro-beat-based album Remain In Light (which Kidjo recently returned to its African roots in a reimagined track-by-track cover album of her own). Another song from that album later in the set was ‘Once in a Lifetime’, which, in keeping with Kidjo’s predominantly upbeat style felt a lot more light-hearted than the darker, more neurotic and surreal David Byrne original.
Songs from her recent album Mother Nature included the title track, a reggae-based call to action in response to climate change; the joyous ode to the mother continent, ‘Africa, One Of A Kind’; the stirring summons to gender-based solidarity, ‘Choose Love’ (‘Brothers, why are we fighting each other? Sisters, why do we let the men take our power? Let’s be stronger than our fathers!’); the lilting song of encouragement to African self-reliance ‘Do Yourself’; the tighter, bouncier ‘Free and Equal’, juxtaposing words from the US Declaration of Independence and the UN Declaration of Human Rights with the realities of racial injustice highlighted by Black Lives Matter; the seductive dance number ‘Take It Or Leave It’; and the universalist love song ‘Meant for Me’ (‘I don’t care if you’re rich or poor, I don’t know what’s your DNA, I don’t care if your beauty fades, all I know is you’re meant for me’), which had the audience loudly echoing the refrain.
Kidjo also paid tribute to the Cuban “Queen of Salsa” Celia Cruz with a sizzling rendition of ‘Bemba Colora’, followed by the slower, more sultry ‘Sahara’ (both sung in Spanish), after sharing a story about being inspired when she was a schoolgirl by seeing Cruz – the first woman she had ever witnessed singing salsa – on tour in Zaire in the 1970s.
Later, she delivered a high-energy version of Afro-pop classic ‘Pata Pata’ by another of her role models, the pioneering South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba. Other songs from her own back catalogue include the irresistible hymn to Mother Earth ‘Agolo’ (which brought any remaining stragglers to their feet) and the Afro-Brazilian anthem ‘Afirika’ (which once again had us singing along to the refrain: ‘Ashé é Maman, ashè é Maman Afirika!’)
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Encores include a further medley of earlier career hits ‘We We’, ‘Batonga’ and ‘Adouma’, followed by a final speech decrying hatred and racism, before closing with another Afro-pop anthem to solidarity ‘Flying High’ (‘One love, one world, we have to live together’). All in all, it was a night of joy and hope, pride and defiance, and perhaps even a little anger and impatience, for a safer and more just world.
Angélique Kidjo performed at Perth Festival on 29 February. She will be touring to Melbourne on 5 March.
