Angélique Kidjo (born July 14, 1960) is a Grammy Award-winning Beninese singer and songwriter, noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos.
Kidjo was born in Ouidah, Benin. By the time she was six, Kidjo was performing with her mother’s theatre troupe, giving her an early appreciation for music and dance. Continuing political conflicts in Benin led Kidjo to relocate to Paris around 1982. She started out as a backup singer in local bands, before establishing her own band. In 1985, she became the frontsinger of the known Euro-African jazz/rock band Jasper van’t Hof’s Pili Pili. Three studio albums followed: Jakko (1987) Be In Two Minds (1988, produced by Marlon Klein) and Hotel Babo (1990).
By the end of the 1980s, she had become one of the most popular live performers in Paris. She is married to musician and producer Jean Hebrail with whom she has daughter Naïma (born 1993), and is currently based in New York.
Her musical influences include the Afropop, Caribbean zouk, Congolese rumba, jazz, gospel, and Latin styles; as well as her childhood idols Bella Bellow, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Miriam Makeba and Carlos Santana. She has made her own renditions of George Gershwin’s Summertime, Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child, and The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter, and has collaborated with the likes of Dave Matthews and the Dave Matthews Band, Kelly Price, Branford Marsalis, Robbie Nevil, Carlos Santana, and Cassandra Wilson. Kidjo’s hits include the songs “Agolo”, “Ayé”, and “Batonga”.
Kidjo is fluent in Fon, French, Yoruba, and English and sings in all four languages; she also has her own personal language which includes words that serve as songtitles such as Batonga. Malaika is a song sung in Swahili language. She often utilizes Benin’s traditional Zilin vocal technique and jazz vocalese.
In February of 2003, she performed a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” at the famed Radio City Music Hall in New York City alongside Chicago blues guitar legend Buddy Guy and New York rock guitarist Vernon Reid (of Living Colour) in what would become part of Martin Scorsese’s “Lightning In A Bottle: One Night In The History Of The Blues”, a documentary about blues music that features live concert footage of other rock, rap, and blues greats.
Angelique Kidjo released an album titled Djin Djin on May 1st, 2007. Many guests appear on the album including Josh Groban, Carlos Santana, Alicia Keys, Joss Stone, Peter Gabriel, Amadou and Mariam, Ziggy Marley, and Branford Marsalis. The title, Djin Djin, refers to the sound of a bell in Africa that greets each new day. The album is produced by Tony Visconti, who is known for producing David Bowie, Morrissey, and T. Rex, among others.
In 2007, she covered John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” for the CD Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur.
In 2007, she toured North America extensively with Josh Groban’s “Awake” show.
On 7 July, 2007, Kidjo performed at the South African leg of Live Earth.
Annie Lennox has joined forces with Angelique Kidjo and 22 other female artists to raise the awareness of the transmission of HIV to unborn children in Africa.
Bono of the Irish rock band U2 has described Kidjo as “the galvanizing voice of sub-Saharan Africa” and considers her the “vanguard of the crusade for Darfur”.
Awards
Octave RFI (1992)
Prix Afrique en Creation (1992)
Danish Music Awards: Best Female Singer (1995)
Kora Music Awards: Best African Female artist (1997)
Mobo Awards (2002)
Antonio Carlos Jobim Award (2007)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding World Music Album (2008)
Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album (2008)
Grammy nominations include the Best Music Video of 1995 and Best World Music Album in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007.
Angélique Kidjo is the 4th laureate of the Antonio Carlos Jobim Award (2007). Created in 2004 on the 25th anniversary of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, each year the award is given to an artist distinguished in the field of world music whose influence on the evolution of jazz and cultural crossover is widely recognized
