Can passion be shared through song?

“I am a witness of my time,” says Angélique Kidjo, a bona fide world music superstar and activist from Benin who makes her UMS debut with this performance. “When your history is not written, you count on traditional singers to tell you who you are and what is going on in your society. That is what I do with my music.” With James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Miriam Makeba, and Carlos Santana credited as influences, she brings a passion to her art that is filled with her amazing spirit and experiences from her life’s incredible journey. Angélique Kidjo is a UNICEF and Oxfam Goodwill Ambassador, has her own charitable organization dedicated to supporting the education of young girls in Africa, and passionately campaigns for women’s health in Africa. In 2011 she performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and concert and was named by The Guardian as one of the Top 100 most inspiring women in the world. A riveting performer, “[Kidjo’s] supercharged pipes have never sounded better, her irresistible energy and joie de vivre never more palpable.” (Los Angeles Times)

Hailed by Filter magazine for “[combining] New York jazz with West Coast folk and African flourishes,” Meklit Hadero erupted to national notice with the 2010 release of On a Day Like this… on Porto Franco Records. The album announced the arrival, as the San Francisco Chronicle has put it, of “an artistic giant in the early stages.”

Program:
Program Book [PDF]

Also see
Angélique Kidjo website

Angélique Kidjo is a UNICEF and Oxfam Goodwill Ambassador, has her own charitable organization dedicated to supporting the education of young girls in Africa, and passionately campaigns for women’s health in Africa. In 2011 she performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and concert and was named by The Guardian as one of the Top 100 most inspiring women in the world.

Emerging from her adopted hometown of San Francisco, Meklit Hadero erupted to national notice with the 2010 release of On a Day Like this… on Porto Franco Records. Hailed by Filter magazine for “[combining] New York jazz with West Coast folk and African flourishes, all bound together by Hadero’s beguiling voice,” her full-length debut — which also garnered feature-stories on its maker from NPR, PBS and National Geographic — brought Meklit’s music to a whole new audience. It also announced the arrival, as the San Francisco Chronicle has put it, of “an artistic giant in the early stages.”

This performance marks Angélique Kidjo and Meklit Handero’s UMS debut.

Related UMS Education & Community Engagement Events

1/28: UMS Night School Session 5: Global Beats in the Aisles
2/2: Hill Auditorium Celebration

Special message to Ann Arbor