‘Angélique Kidjo & Yo-Yo Ma’

The impact of African on American and Western European music is often underestimated. Take Zarabanda, an important traditional Congolese god, who is said to have inspired the sarabande when he travelled to the New World, from where the dance associated with this religious practice is said to have crossed the ocean again to dance in Spain at the turn of the 17th century, and then the rest of Europe, metamorphosing into a staple of our 'classical' music. Angélique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma join forces in this concert that explores the space-time crossover between African and classical music, including Bach - to whom we owe a number of sarabandes - but also Florence Price, the first African-American woman to be recognised as a symphonic composer, who notably wrote the African-inspired Juba Dance .