Why Joy Is a State of Mind | Angélique Kidjo | TED

41,072 views ・ 2022-12-06

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:04
Femi Oke: I have a theory that Africans have this hotline to joy.
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Angélique Kidjo: Oh yeah.
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FO: We greet each other, we welcome each other.
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There's, within us as a continent,
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there is great joy.
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AK: Absolutely.
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It's a state of mind for us.
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It's either laugh or die.
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We don't have the choice.
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And that's where the proverbs come from,
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that's where all those mimic, sometime --
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can be an insult,
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or going, "Get out of here.
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You're making a fool of yourself."
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Our body, we have signs.
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And we look at each other
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and the situation ...
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it might be a dire situation,
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and then we start laughing and go,
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"Somebody make a huge mistake.
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And you are in a ditch,
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You can't even get yourself out."
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And we laugh and we're happy at the same time.
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That's why I say it's a state of mind.
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FO: I have seen people watch you perform, and they’re in the audience,
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they are mesmerized, they are smiling,
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they are joyful.
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Do you have an awareness of what you are doing to your audience?
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AK: No, I don't have any awareness
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because for me, every concert is a start over.
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I never take any public for granted
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because you never know what the concert is going to be.
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You can have plan in your head,
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you can have your set list and everything.
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It’s just to help you, it’s just like,
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a parameter that you put in there to be able to perform.
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But what happens after that is out of your hands.
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That's the power of music.
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When I'm holding my microphone,
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for me, stage is my sanctuary.
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FO: I was looking up some of the comments people write
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when they watched you online on YouTube.
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Now, normally I wouldn't do this, but this is fine.
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This is not scary.
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"Pure love for Mama Angelique.
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A beautiful ball of energy."
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AK: (Laughs)
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FO: You know what you're doing.
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AK: Well, being on stage for me is the most important thing.
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I hate to be in studio,
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but I've had to learn throughout the years
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that I need to be in the studio to be able to perform,
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to be on stage.
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And that energy that we're talking about, the public give it to me.
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I can't keep it.
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If I keep it, I will explode.
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I mean, just face it.
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And I can't sleep, like, when I finish a concert,
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it takes me like four hours for me to dwindle down
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and to be able to sleep.
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It’s terrible, because I’m wired up.
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I don't need no drugs, I don't drink coffee.
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I don't drink alcohol, I don't take anything, I don't need it.
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The music is my drug.
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So therefore, when I'm onstage,
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I'm just trying to convey the happiness,
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the joy
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and the strength that we have as human beings
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to prevail in every circumstance.
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Because music has shown me,
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when I'm facing the public,
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I see people from around the world,
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all different skin tones
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and probably all people that speak different languages,
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that makes you humble.
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FO: And you've gone so beyond what would be expected of somebody
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with your profile as a musician.
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You are not just a musician, you're not just an artist.
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You are also an educator.
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AK: Education is everything.
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And when I started this journey with my foundation Batonga,
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one thing I have in mind is what my father always used to say.
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An educated person is a peacemaker.
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And it's true,
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because when you are educated
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and understand the connectivity,
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everything in the world we live in is connected, even us.
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And if there's one thing we learned during the pandemic,
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it's that we cannot live alone.
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Lockdown or not, it becomes a point where we need others
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to be able to celebrate our own humanity.
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From the moment I started going to school, it triggered something in me.
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Not only the curiosity, but I was thirsty of learning.
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What can I learn every day?
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And I would come home and I ask questions.
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And I'm lucky enough to have 10 brothers and sisters
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that come before.
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Some of them have been there.
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So if I ask questions, somebody's always going to answer me.
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And then I get to high school
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and I start seeing a different side of education.
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Because when I finished primary school,
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most of my girlfriends, we made plan.
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When we get to high school, we're going to do this and that.
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Some of them disappeared from the radar.
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And I’d be asking the question: “Why aren’t they here?”
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Then, my girlfriend in the same street where I grew up,
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right across my house,
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never make it to high --
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And I'm like, "Dad, what is going on?"
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And then he went and found out that she got married.
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And I was --
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It was a day that I'm like,
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"Is it worth living, if at that age you're going to marry somebody
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without me knowing what was going on?"
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So to start my foundation, secondary school,
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is to allow those young girls to buy time.
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To have a future, to decide the future they want to have
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instead of being married young
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and end up dying on a delivering bed.
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So for me, education not only
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allowed us to understand the complexity of this world,
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it also unleashed the power
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that we have to understand when we stand in front of injustice,
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our rights,
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what is right and what is wrong.
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And when it comes to women,
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especially in the continent of Africa,
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I start realizing that the vision of my father for women
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is totally different from the vision of the father of my friends.
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Because when I go to their home,
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I couldn't speak because it was not allowed.
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You have to be given permission to speak.
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While in my house, you have something in your mind,
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go right ahead.
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Somebody's going to answer you.
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And I start seeing the differences, and I said,
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“How can we break this cycle
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of always women have to be the ones that get quiet
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and men speak up even when they say nonsense.
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FO: The Batonga Foundation, it creates opportunities for women and girls.
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It creates a future for them.
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It sounds easy, though, to say that:
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creates opportunities for women and girls, easy.
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But it's not.
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Can you give us an example of your advocacy work
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that has been difficult
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but you've worked through it
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and you've seen success and happiness the other side?
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AK: The hardest thing ...
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when I started was not being able to get the girl to speak.
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It was breaking my heart.
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"What is your name?"
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There's no answer, they look at you like.
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And I’m like, “Why?
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Why? Tell me what you need.
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I'm here to help.
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I'm not going to tell you what to do."
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From the day they realize
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and have confidence
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that I'm not here to judge their choices,
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some of them were already mothers.
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And you have a lot of pride
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when you're talking to underprivileged people.
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Because I decided from the get-go
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to walk the dirt road where no one wants to go
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because that's where you have fewer opportunities.
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And I was not going to let those girls be marginalized and left in limbo.
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So from the moment they start speaking,
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to me,
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is the moment I start seeing how we can move forward together.
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So we start doing,
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as an organization, we needed data, right?
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Because I've done it ten years,
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sending people to high school, they end up in university,
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all that kind of stuff.
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But I wanted to understand why
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and the reason of the drop out of the girls.
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So through that, we find out many different reasons.
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One of the reasons of the drop out is that in primary school,
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the teachers were not good enough,
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so they didn’t have the tools to succeed in secondary school.
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And there's so much ammunition you can go through
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when you appear to be a stupid person
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and you're not stupid, you just don't have the tools.
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Then you drop out.
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Pregnancy, of course, and family poverty.
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And one thing that came out of that data collection
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is all of the girls say, “We need a safe space.
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We need a place where we can talk to one another
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and we can work together and support one another."
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I said, "It's done."
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So we start creating the girl club
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and built a curriculum based on their need.
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And they ask to be taught how to prevent rape.
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How can they run away?
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How can they do things?
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So we come up with simple thing.
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Don't go out when it's getting dark.
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When you're walking and you have a shadow behind you
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and you feel uncomfortable, don't start,
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don't try to be courageous.
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Don't try to be daring.
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Run away.
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And we prepared the village.
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If a girl comes to your house,
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keep her there until the family member can come
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because there's a danger in the street.
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So we start the whole thing like that.
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What is going on today
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that I’m really proud of
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is that those young girls
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are becoming entrepreneurs and creating jobs.
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They are in total control of what they do with their money.
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They decided they're going to save money.
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It's not me.
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For the children not to go through this again.
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What they want is to break the cycle of poverty.
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The next step that I'm taking
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is to go to the northern part of my country, Benin.
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The girls in Benin, at eight years old,
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are sent to the man that's going to marry them home,
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they become maids,
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until they have --
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And I want to break that cycle.
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I've been working hard.
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I’ve been asking for help with this for so long.
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We're going to start there with local organizations.
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We don't bring anybody from outside.
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We work with the people that know the needs.
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We work with the village,
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the head of the villages, the mothers.
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We want people to see for themselves the progress we are making
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and for them, to allow them to listen to the kids
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that they never do.
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FO: What is the difference
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between the pleasure you get from changing a generation's life
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to the pleasure of being on stage at a major event, performing,
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and the crowd is going wild?
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What's the difference between that kind of joy?
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AK: They are two totally different joys.
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The joy of seeing these girls
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being articulate today,
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talking truth to power to the head of villages
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telling them, "No one is touching us anymore.
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No one have the right to touch my boob, no."
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And they're adamant.
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I mean, the joy at taking that is that finally,
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you can speak up with no danger.
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With no fear.
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I mean, empowering people to that point
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makes me more humble.
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I don't even know, sometimes I'm like,
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"Where is the hole that I can drive in and then disappear,
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and let them be."
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But they won't let me go.
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They say, "We want you to come and see us,
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and then we learn from you."
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But I learn more from those girls than I can ever learn from anybody.
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The joy of being onstage is different,
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it's planting seeds worldwide
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for people to see their capacity,
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what they are capable of.
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How many times after concert people will come to me and say,
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"Angelique, how can we help?"
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And I'm like, "How can you help?
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Come on.
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Your neighbors.
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Start looking at them.
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You can volunteer your time for homework,
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there's so much you can do in your own country.
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Don't think that Africa is just the country where we need help.
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We don't need help.
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We need collaboration."
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FO: Did you warm up your voice today?
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AK: Yes, I did.
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FO: What do you sing to yourself to cheer yourself up?
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What do you sing and is like,
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"Oh, that was better than Prozac."
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AK: (Singing)
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(Laughs)
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We can sit here for days.
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FO: So glad you warmed up.
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When you see your Grammys lined up,
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and they're all shiny and extraordinary,
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I'm not even going to name how many, because every time I do,
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you get more and then this chat will date,
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so the many, multiple Grammys that you have won,
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when you look at them,
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Do you, "Whoo!"
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(Laughs)
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Does it feel good?
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AK: It feels good.
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And at the same time, as I said before,
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it is a responsibility.
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I mean, my work,
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I've been nominated first time at the Grammys, it was in 1993, '94.
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And the first Grammy I won was 2007.
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And I said to people,
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don't take Grammy for granted.
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It's not about how many likes you have,
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it's what you have to say.
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What you are bringing to the table.
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How you are impacting the world
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and how you are changing the music business as it is.
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And for me,
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that responsibility is always at the core of everything I do.
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When I'm setting myself to write new songs,
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I don't think about Grammys.
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All I think about,
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how this song would help people.
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What impact is it going to have?
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FO: I know you plan.
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I know you have ideas about what you want to do next.
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For many artists, it would be, you know,
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how do you want to spend your sunset years?
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But you have extraordinary longevity in your family.
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So you have another half a lifetime still to go.
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(Laughter)
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We are going to be going to 100-year-old Angélique Kidjo concert.
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And you're still going to be, "Let's go."
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15:58
AK: Yeah, I'll be running around.
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FO: So it feels kind of weird to talk about legacy.
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But what do you want people who follow your work,
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admire your work, see joy in your work,
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what do you want them to take away from it?
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AK: Well, what I want people to take away from my work
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is their own worth, people's worth.
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We have too many people that think that they are worth nothing.
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And that hurts me.
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And when you give birth to a child,
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when a human being is coming out of your body,
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everything changes.
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Priorities,
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what matters,
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you learn to go to the core of things.
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What I want people to remember is that
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you can fall beneath the Earth.
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17:02
But you always can rise.
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Does not matter how hard it is.
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Get up, and live your life.
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You know it, and that's how we roll.
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FO: I love you.
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AK: Me too.
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Since the first time I met, it was a love story.
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(Laughter)
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About this website

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