Creativity Quote by Angélique Kidjo

Kidjo’s line carries the swagger of a performer who’s spent decades watching speeches evaporate while a melody sticks. “Touch people” isn’t a cute metaphor here; it’s a claim about leverage. Art gets under the skin first, then the brain catches up. By leading with feeling, she’s arguing for a kind of cultural activism that doesn’t wait for permission from policy or punditry.

The phrase “showing them this” is doing quiet work. It implies a concrete “this”: an image, a story, a performance, a lived reality rendered visible. Kidjo, coming out of Benin and into a global music industry that loves “world music” as a vibe but often ignores its politics, understands visibility as a battleground. To show is to refuse erasure; to stage something publicly is to challenge what audiences have been trained not to notice.

Then comes the real pivot: “By example”. She’s not promising to “educate” anyone, a word that can sound like scolding. Example is warmer and more ruthless: it bypasses debate and dares the listener to reconcile their assumptions with what’s in front of them. It’s persuasion without the podium, the moral argument smuggled through craft.

“Change their minds” lands last, almost like a consequence rather than a goal. That ordering matters. Kidjo’s intent isn’t conversion through ideology; it’s transformation through encounter. In a moment when activism is often reduced to slogans and outrage cycles, she’s making a case for the slow, destabilizing power of seeing someone’s humanity performed at full volume.