Angélique Kidjo has released the official music video for “Bando [Orchestral]”, her collaboration with Pharrell Williams and Quavo, and the visual is every bit as interested in community as it is in music.
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Paul Hunter, the video was filmed in La Grande Borne, a public-housing development in Grigny, on the outskirts of Paris. Rather than turning the neighbourhood into a backdrop for a story about hardship, the video puts its residents, energy and sense of pride at the centre of the frame.
The release comes ahead of Kidjo’s performances at Standard Bank Joy of Jazz in Johannesburg on 25 and 26 September.
A different picture of life in the projects
“Bando” takes its name from a term commonly used for an abandoned house, but Kidjo’s song looks beyond the physical meaning of the word.
The track is concerned with the people and creativity that emerge from communities shaped by poverty and inequality, while holding onto the belief that where someone starts should not determine where they end up.
That idea carries directly into the video.
Shot during a historic heat wave, the production brought Kidjo, Pharrell Williams and Quavo into La Grande Borne, where local residents came out to dance and participate in the filming.
The result is a visual built around movement, celebration and togetherness. Children, families and residents occupy the streets, giving the video a sense of place that feels lived-in rather than constructed.
For Kidjo, that distinction matters.
“Most of the time, people only talk about the pain and the struggle of people in the projects,” she says. “But there’s also pride and joy and celebration.”
Paul Hunter puts the community in the frame
Hunter brings considerable music-video history to the project. His credits include The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize”, Mariah Carey’s “Honey”, D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” and Michael Jackson’s “You Rock My World”.
But “Bando” does not lean on spectacle for its impact.
Instead, Hunter focuses on people being together, capturing the relationships between generations and the everyday moments that give a community its identity.
“The visual world of ‘Bando’ is rooted in culture and community,” Hunter says.
That approach gives the video a documentary-like quality. There is performance, but there is also observation. The camera isn’t simply showing audiences what the neighbourhood looks like. It is showing how people inhabit it.
Turning survival into celebration
The new version of “Bando” also expands the sonic scale of Kidjo’s original track.
Produced by Pharrell Williams, the orchestral rendition brings in Voices of Fire, the gospel choir founded by Pharrell’s uncle Bishop Ezekiel Williams, alongside L’Orchestre du Pont Neuf, led by composer and conductor Thomas Roussel.
The arrangement turns the song’s recurring declaration, “We’ll survive”, into something larger and more collective.
It is a fitting extension of the visual. Both versions are interested in resilience, but neither treats resilience as simply enduring hardship. There is room for joy, creativity and ambition too.
For Kidjo, art itself can become a form of agency.
“So much of the art that we love comes from people who created something out of nothing,” she says. “When you have so little, making art becomes a way to have agency and protect your humanity.”
From Paris to Johannesburg
The “Bando” release arrives during a major period in Kidjo’s career.
The five-time GRAMMY winner recently became the first African musician and first Black African to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with the ceremony taking place on 18 August. Hollywood also declared the date Angélique Kidjo Day.
Now, her next major stop is South Africa.
Kidjo will perform at Standard Bank Joy of Jazz in Johannesburg on 25 and 26 September, bringing the catalogue and four decades of cross-cultural collaboration that have established her as one of Africa’s most influential global artists.
For audiences encountering “Bando” before then, the video offers a useful introduction to the spirit behind the song: not a story about communities waiting to be rescued, but one about people already creating, celebrating and imagining beyond the circumstances around them.
