Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage (aka “The Freight”) will feature five-time Grammy Award-winner and global music icon Angélique Kidjo when its annual benefit concert returns Oct. 9 this year.
Joining Kidjo will be Bay area-based Brazilian singer-songwriter Badi Assad. Proceeds from ticket sales, a live auction and donations will support ongoing operations and The Freight’s Golden State of Song education program. With music as the primary focus, local connections will be a major talking point and evidenced by food provided at cost for the event by 5th House Catering and attention given to Golden State of Song and local artists and educators who lead The Freight’s community and school classes, workshops and other programs.
“We are trying to raise the money needed to keep our programming growing and to make up for the loss of funds due to the lack of support from the current presidential administration,” Clayton Shelvin, The Freight’s executive director, wrote in an email about the venue’s goal to raise at least $200,000. “This fundraiser is a significant moment to reach out to our community. My job is to see The Freight is accessible for everyone and that it is here for future generations to come.”
Golden State of Song, The Freight’s “flagship arts integration program” according to its website (thefreight.org/education), reaches the next generation of music-appreciators directly with an interactive curriculum that links social studies and music. Shelvin says education “ambassadors” comprised of local musicians get students “hooked on learning” and fill voids left in schools.
“We have committed to expanding and growing the program, and we continue to receive requests from educators across the state who want to work with us,” says Shelvin.
When they can be found, new grant opportunities and innovative partnerships may offer hope the programs will not just survive but thrive. Kidjo, who on Aug. 30 appeared at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre joined by world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo-Ma, in many ways is a model for thriving beyond striving. Her musical achievements and humanitarian activism align with The Freight’s current and future aspirations.
In addition to her extraordinary command of African music, Afrobeat, Afro-pop, dancehall, hip-hop, alt-R&B, gospel and other genres, Kidjo is a heralded songwriter. Recognized as a top iconic figure by the BBC, the U.K. Guardian, Forbes Magazine, Time Magazine and others, she is also the first African woman to be appointed as an international Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
In 2006, Kidjo created Batonga, a charitable foundation that supports and empowers adolescent girls and young women in Africa. The program provides education, vocational and leadership training, economic support (seed funding to launch small businesses), mentoring, business coaching, a robust network of women’s rights organizations and opportunities for men and boys to participate.
Batonga is said to seek in all its initiatives to address stark barriers that prevent girls and women from leading healthy, independent and safe lives. A few examples of the challenges it faces are that just 37% of women have a bank account in sub-Saharan Africa and three out of 10 girls in Kidjo’s native Benin in West Africa are married before age 18.
In an interview, Kidjo speaks of women as the backbone of sub-Saharan Africa’s society. Kidjo says that with her mother, grandmothers, aunts and cousins demonstrating resiliency and strength by “meeting challenges every time and never disappointing, never dropping the ball,” she finds the young women she meets through Batonga equally admirable.
“Their determination to be human before their gender means that given opportunity, they always make something not only of themselves but for their community at large.”
Kidjo walks dirt roads in small African towns, seeking young girls and women whose stories have yet to be told.
“After five years, I realized we must send them to secondary school. Everyone told me I would fail; the rate of dropouts (who are girls) was skyrocketing. I answered, ‘If it’s easy, why bother? Let me walk into their wall of defiance, resistance, lack of trust.’ I tell them I come not as a savior but to hear their stories.”
Kidjo says what fills her with humble gratitude today is the beauty, pride and ambitious dreams the girls’ stories reveal. They want to be doctors, nutritionists, teachers and community leaders, she says.
“Because their primary schools told them they were stupid, they dropped out and lacked the education for secondary school,” Kidjo says. “They wanted desperately a safe place to learn with special curriculum about sexual safety. Religious leaders, parents and others in the community helped me to create the programs. I said to them, ‘I’m here to help, not take authority from you.’ ”
Turning the focus to her music and its connections to Batonga and her role as a global activist, Kidjo says she sang even before speaking sentences and that it was a gift, an instinctive urge arising from deep in her being, her soul. She says understanding the morality of a song’s profundity came later, along with amazement at the power of the music that inhabits her being.
“I’m in service of the songs with every inch of my body. Sometimes I have to juggle my tears.”
As a singer and storyteller whose material includes protest against injustice and inequity, Kidjo says the one emotion she avoids is anger.
“Being angry drains all the energy out of me. I can’t move, talk, eat, for days. Anger is tiring. My mother always told us two things: Joy is a state of mind; kindness is a bulletproof vest. Never lose those two things, because if you lose them, you lose love for yourself, empathy and compassion. No one is happy 24-7, but you must have the courage to keep your values close to your heart. Violence in response to violence is a dead end.”
Absorbing her mother’s words, Kidjo says she knew that aiming for fame as a musician would never be her goal. Instead, she says that with artistry and advocacy engrained in every note, word and action, she envisions planting seeds in the minds of young people and communities worldwide that cause them to dream.
“The circle grows,” she says, “even with me not being there.”
For concert details, visit thefreight.org/support-us/annual-benefit-concert-angelique-kidjo online.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.