Arts & Ideas Rises With Angelique Kidjo

A crowd of people swarmed New Haven Green like ants on a picnic blanket Saturday to witness the opening of the 28th annual Arts & Ideas Festival. ​“Are you ready to rise with me?” asked Rev. Kevin Ewing, A&I’s board chairman. ​“In case you didn’t know it, that’s the theme of this year’s festival.” 

Before long, the attendees would not only feel their spirits rise, but would rise to their feet from the uplifting music and vibrant atmosphere — featuring international superstar Angelique Kidjo and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.

First, however, Healing Drum with Michael Mills and Brian Jarawa Gray opened the evening. ​“We opened the first Arts & Ideas, and it’s wonderful to be back to bring you a celebration of life,” said Mills. They played a fast-paced and lively series of songs on the drums, complete with a call and response from the audience: ​“We celebrate living! We celebrate love!” The crowd was encouraged to clap along, creating an insistent beat that reverberated across the Green.

“See, we’re in this together,” said Mills. ​“You got to do your part, so we do our part.” He turned the drum performance into an interactive act, bringing out the energy from the audience and incorporating it into the set. Mills and Gray were joined by Ken Tedeschi, a trumpeter from the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Together; they had the audience swaying and shouting along.

Next, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra performed Quinn Mason’s ​“A Joyous Trilogy.” The music flowed over the crowd like water running in a stream, by turns lilting and thunderous. At one moment it soared to dizzying heights; the next it dipped into slow, placid valleys of sound.

After ​“A Joyous Trilogy,” it was time for the main event. Angelique Kidjo, acclaimed Beninese-French singer-songwriter and activist, performed a series of her own songs alongside the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Kidjo is a five-time Grammy winner and a Polar Music Prize laureate, known for her diverse incorporation of genres and her distinctly African sound. She opened with the song ​“Bahia,” and her regal stance and powerful voice captivated the audience as she sang: ​“Logbé wa lo si Bahia, gbé gbogbowa po” (“Take us to Bahia, take us all together.”)

Kidjo was as interested in sharing the social messages beyond her music as she was the songs themselves. ​“There is no humanity without freedom, there is no life without freedom … in order for every single person on the planet to be free, we have to respect each other’s freedom,” she said, before launching into ​“Ominira,” which translates to ​“Freedom.” The soulful song encouraged the audience to sway and dance along. Throughout Kidjo’s performance, the crowd slowly migrated closer to the stage, drawn to her voice like bees to honey.

“The next song’s always a difficult song for me to sing,” said Kidjo. She explained that ​“Nanae” is about her father, her ​“first feminist figure,” who encouraged her to be a strong woman. Kidjo shared a few stories about her father and how he refused to treat the women in his life like objects. She urged men around the world to be like him and ​“speak up for women’s freedom.”

The final song before the encore was ​“Afrika,” and Kidjo used it as a platform to expound on the importance of fighting for human rights. ​“I wrote this song on the last day of 1999,” she said, explaining her disillusionment with the idea of entering a new millennium when people were still not treated as inherently equal. ​“Hopefully I’m gonna stop singing this one day, because we understand that to hurt one of us is to hurt all of us, to hate one of us is to hate all of us,” Kidjo told the audience. She then urged them to join her in singing the foot-tapping chorus, ​“Ashè é Maman, ashè é Maman Afirika” (“At mama’s, at mama Africa’s”).

Kidjo was joined for ​“Malaika” and ​“Afrika” by two dancers, Tia Cruz and Charliece Salters. Their rolling rhythms brought the audience up and dancing along, until the Green was submerged by a sea of writhing arms and stomping feet. Children and adults alike flocked closer to the stage, ready to participate in the performance. Angelique Kidjo was helping New Haven to rise up.