Khadja Nin does not miss music
ACTIVIST HAS FOUND HER GOAL
KHADJA Nin has settled in her life as a village woman.
The Burundi star who scaled the charts and crooned her way into our hearts with hits such as and in the 1990s, tells me she doesn ’ t miss music.
She now lives in a village called Segou in south central Mali next to the Niger River.
“I have no office, I have nothing. I ’ m free. I wake up in the morning and have breakfast, then I call my children. I have a fantastic life.
“I never really have a plan, I could maybe go to the market or visit the ladies or see if there ’ s a well [that needs] to be dug.”
Nin, looking regal in a dramatic black doek, is curled up on a plush sofa at the five-star Saxon Hotel. She ’ s in town to make noise for her home country, which is experiencing unrest following President Pierre Nkunziza ’ s unconstitutional push to run for a third term.
The 55-year-old mother of two and grandmother finds herself in the shoes of her hero, Miriam Makeba, a superstar musician who was also an activist.
Nin was on the sidelines of the AU summit, hoping that African leaders would intervene in her homeland.
Whether her lone voice will reverberate loud enough outside the walls of the Sandton Convention Centre, where the summit was held this year, and advance peace in her country remains to be seen.
When she is not in Segou, Nin leads a charmed life in Monaco where she has been for 18 years with her former racing champ husband Jacky Ickx.
She is friends with Princess Caroline of Monaco. She describes Princess Charlene, the South African wife of king Albert, as an African mother she is proud of.
But Nin keeps going back to her life in Segou. She also waxes lyrical about the beauty of the Malians and their rich musical legacy and culture and natural beauty that includes Dogon Country and Timbuktu.
Nin tells me she hung up the microphone so that she could be more fulfilled. “We have only one life and we don ’ t even know how long it will be. In that time you have to do all you want to do. I was lucky enough that my music career was a success and it was a full-time job, but I wanted to go back to Africa and try to give something back.”
Now in Segou she is part of the village. At the height of the ebola outbreak that ravaged West Africa, Nin says she recorded three films in English, French and Bambara as a contribution to the fight against it.
She says she gets surprised when people remember her music. The last time she released an album was in 1998. She won ’ t commit to studio time but hints that she could do so in celebration of the return of peace in Burundi.