Fatherhood Quote by Angélique Kidjo

Kidjo is smuggling a whole worldview into the plain, almost parental phrasing of “my father used to say”. It’s a familiar setup - the kind of inherited wisdom that sounds small enough to fit at the kitchen table - but it opens onto something politically charged: a refusal to treat “the world” as a single dominant story. “The world is big” isn’t geography, it’s a warning against provincialism, the soft tyranny of assuming your norms are default.

The verb choice matters. She doesn’t say “learn about” or “respect” other cultures. She says “envision”, as if culture is a lens you put on, not a museum you walk through. That framing subtly flips the power dynamic: you’re not the neutral observer looking at “diverse” others; you’re the one whose vision needs recalibrating. Diversity here isn’t a checkbox, it’s an epistemology - a way of knowing.

Context sharpens the intent. As a Beninese artist who built a global career by moving between West African traditions, French-language circuits, and American pop and jazz ecosystems, Kidjo has lived the stakes of cultural translation. For musicians, “envisioning through cultures” is also technique: rhythm, language, call-and-response, and vocal timbre become passports and arguments. The subtext is that cosmopolitanism isn’t a brand; it’s discipline. You earn it by listening hard enough to let other worlds rearrange your own.