Sarabande Africaine - Angelique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma

Angélique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma first met under the Arc de Triomphe, gathered with dozens of world leaders to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. Ma played a Bach sarabande; Kidjo sang “Blewu,” an Ewe dirge, in memory of the many and often-forgotten African soldiers killed in the war. It was a fitting beginning to a conversation between Kidjo and Ma about the ways in which African culture is so frequently erased—in historical memory as in music—despite its enduring, essential presence in what we think of as the Western tradition. 

In the years since, Kidjo and Ma have explored the intersections of their voices, their stories, and their musical sensibilities, developing new, collaborative arrangements of iconic music from each of their traditions, music that surfaces the many centuries of interaction between African musical idioms and what has come to be defined as Western classical music. 

For example, the sarabande—the dance at the heart of J.S. Bach’s suites for solo cello—traveled from Africa to the Americas, then back to Spain, where it made its way into European courts. Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony was inspired in part by Black American spirituals; Gershwin reimagined Gullah Geechee songs. Meanwhile, Miriam Makeba grew up listening to Western classical music; Kidjo’s “Aisha” reinterprets Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 5, with lyrics in the Yoruba language.

Two endlessly curious musicians come together to search beyond the edges of their musical backgrounds, exposing the ways we have all been connected for a very long time; it’s a collaboration that asks us to joyfully question the tenets of genre and tradition that underpin our cultural thinking.