You left Benin in 1983 to study jazz in Paris, and ended up finding Africa elsewhere: in jazz music in France, then the blues of the US, the carnival and candomblé of Brazil, the salsa of Cuba. Is this testament to the resilience of African music?
Exactly! And it is also a testament to the resilience of the human soul. Slavery had deprived African people of their rights and dignity, but they found a way to resist and keep their identity and pride alive through music. In a way it is the dialectic of the master and the slave: today the whole world has embraced the rhythms and the melodies of the slave to whom humanity was denied. In every country I visited in the Americas I felt at home, musically. I was able to start a dialogue through songs, even when I was not speaking the language.
