Arts & Events

On Friday, October 29, Afropop superstar Angélique Kidjo returned to Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall to perform a project everyone told her she couldn’t do. This project involved 

reworking the entire 1980 Talking Heads album Remain in Light, infusing the songs with Kidjo’s intimate knowledge of African polyrythms and combining some of the Talking Heads’ English language with lyrics Kidjo wrote in the languages of her native Benin. or neighboring countries. 

For this concert Angélique Kidjo was joined by Dominic James on guitar, Michael Olatuja on bass, Yayo Serka on drums, and Magatte Sow on African percussions. Special guest artist Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads joined Angélique Kidjo onstage for several of the concert’s songs. The results, in my opinion, were at best a mixed bag. Tour Manager and Sound Engineer Patrick Murray over-amped the music, causing some reverb. Songs such as “Crosseyed and Painless,” “Once in a Lifetime,” and “Born Under Punches” were of the hard-driving, polyrhythmic Afropop & funk variety, which included loud, piercing vocals from Ms Kidjo. Absent throughout this concert was the tender side Kidjo showed in some of her earlier recordings in songs such as “Logozo”or the lovely lullaby she wrote for her then baby daughter Naima. 

The audience at Zellerbach responded energetically to the music, breaking into dancing in the aisles, waving their arms, clapping rhythmically, and singing a chorus or two when egged on to do so by Angélique Kidjo. To my mind, the few highlights of this concert came in encores, including one slow song Ms Kidjo sang accompanied only by guitarist Dominic James and a final encore that involved magnificent African drumming by percussionist Magatte Sow. 

Angélique Kidjo is currently Artist in Residence in Berkeley under the auspices of Cal Performances. In April of next year, Ms Kidjo will present at Zellerbach Hall the West Coast Premiere of Yemandja: A Story of Africa. This work, which Ms Kidjo calls musical theatre or opera, was conceived by Angélique Kidjo, her husband Jean Hebrail, and their now grown-up daughter Naima Hebrail Kidjo, and it traces the harrowing history of slavery in 19th century West Africa. Interestingly, when I visited a former slave castle on the shores of Ghana, the Ghanaian tour guide at the castle pointed out that, sadly, Africans had long enslaved one another even before Europeans descended on the continent and began shipping thousands of Black Africans into slavery abroad. It is indeed a harrowing history.