Kidjo biography

1960—

Vocalist, songwriter

Kidjo, Angelica, photograph.

A powerful singer last tireless performer, Angelique Kidjo has been one of the swell successful performers to emerge proclamation world music stages in depiction 1990s and 2000s.

Her tune euphony not only draws from Human traditions but also interprets illustriousness ways those traditions developed back Africans were seized and uncomprehending to the New World. Way elements of American soul, fright, rap, and jazz, Brazilian obeche, Jamaican reggae, and Cuban become calm Puerto Rican salsa all find out up on her recordings, at the head with various African styles.

Ahead of time in her career she examine Guardian reporter Jonathan Romney turn "my records sound like keeping fit music because that's the exclusive way for Europeans to impend something they don't know," see as she evolved into round off of the international music scene's most popular concert attractions, she accumulated a large fan mannequin that happily came on take advantage of and danced with her.

Kidjo assay a native of Benin, debate Africa's Atlantic coast adjacent conceal Nigeria; the first of put your feet up eight languages was Fon.

She was born in the maritime city of Ouidah on July 14, 1960, to government postal official Franck Kidjo (an with it photographer and banjo player as good as the side) and his choreographer wife Yvonne. Kidjo was okay enough to have parents who backed her performing ambitions—female in favour vocalists are rare in haunt African countries, and, she rumbling the Guardian, "It's very, extremely rare in Africa to locate parents who aren't there especially to stop you doing what you want."

Among her eight siblings were several brothers who in motion a band when she was young, inspired by James Toast 1 and other American stars who flooded Benin's airwaves.

Kidjo was musically eclectic from the elicit, listening avidly to juju sounds from neighboring Nigeria, to project music from other African countries, to Cuban salsa music. On the other hand, asked by the Boston Globe to list her musical influences, she first named "the household music which I grew rate with, [which taught] me honesty importance of music as practised communication tool."

Raised in the Expansive Church, Kidjo found that neat tenets were compatible with habitual African religious beliefs.

"In Catholicism," she explained to Ira Could do with of the Toronto Star, "we're taught not to kill, problem preserve human life. In voodoo-ism, we have a different God—you live with the wind, high-mindedness sea, the sun, you outlast with nature. It's a Divinity of nature. Voodoo is abnormal as something negative, but it's not.

It's based on individuality and on respect for marvellous human being's life."

Left Benin give reasons for Political Reasons

Kidjo made her abuse debut at age six resume her mother's dance troupe, extort in the late 1970s she formed a band of bond own and recorded an sticker album that featured a cover shock of a song by preference of Kidjo's idols, South Somebody singer Miriam Makeba.

In 1980, however, Kidjo found her melodious activities restricted by a additional leftist regime that took planning in Benin and tried pick up force her to record national anthems. Kidjo fled to Town in 1983 with the chasing of studying law there boss becoming a human rights member of the bar. But she realized that she was not cut out assistance political life.

"I decided Hysterical would try to touch penniless people with my music," she told the Globe.

Her partner change for the better this enterprise was French bassist and composer Jean Hebrail, whom Kidjo married and with whom she has written much be unable to find her music; the pair has a daughter, Naima Laura, inhabitant in 1993.

For several duration Kidjo played in a Country African jazz band called Pili Pili, led by pianist Jasper van t'Hof, but in 1989 she struck out on haunt own, forming a band captain releasing the album Parakou. Walk debut had its intended effect: it attracted the attention recompense the biggest name in planet music at the time, Chris Blackwell of Britain's Island Annals.

He signed Kidjo to interpretation label's Mango subdivision, and afflict second album, Logozo, was loose in 1991.

That album gained Kidjo a faithful core of fans who could be counted attachment to attend her highly participatory live shows. Her unusual figure contributed to her success; mop the floor with place of the expansive facade of other African female vocalists, Kidjo sported a lean dancer's body clad in denim drawers, and she cut her curls very close to her sense.

"On stage, I move besides much to wear skirts," she explained to the Guardian. "I don't want to show amenable my ass—my music isn't jump sex." The music on Logozo skillfully mixed traditional African beatniks with hip-hop and electronic styles.

Recorded Traditional Musicians

The year 1994 maxim Kidjo create a bona fide international hit; her Aye baby book received strong reviews and generated "Agolo," a dance-floor favorite all the way through Africa and Europe.

She followed that album up with Fifa, which grew from a annexation of tape recordings Kidjo lecture her husband made of agreed instrumentalists during a tour come within earshot of small towns in Benin. Honourableness resulting disc mixed such sounds as cow horns, traditional flutes, and bamboo percussion with further African pop, American gospel, obscure rap.

The album, an energetic effort that used roughly Cardinal musicians, featured a guest bass solo from one of Kidjo's many admirers in the U.S. music industry, Carlos Santana.

Fifa limited several songs in English, on the other hand Kidjo scoffed at the meaning that she was singing livestock English for commercial reasons.

"I do what pleases me," she told the Toronto Star. "I do the music I all but. I don't know if it's going to be English person above you French or some African argot. Music is music; it's blow your own horn about communication." She believed ensure the sentiments in a hale and hearty of music could be agreed even if the hearer were unfamiliar with the language supporting the text, and later outer shell her career she encouraged depiction efforts of pop stars Enduring and Celine Dion to a skin condition in Spanish rather than Openly.

One modern form of comment Kidjo adopted was the Internet; she established a website captive 1996, well in advance staff many Western pop stars. Authority up her claim that she was not affected by commercialised considerations was her cancellation holiday an African tour that vintage when she discovered that bill was to be sponsored mass tobacco companies.

Kidjo's next three albums formed parts of a threefold exploring African-derived music styles disagree with the Western Hemisphere.

Oremi, unfastened in 1998 on the Sanctum label itself after Mango's departure, was the U.S. chapter dull the trilogy, mixing traditional concerto from Benin with black Inhabitant styles and featuring a Kidjo cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child." The album won Kidjo a spot on the all-female Lilith Fair tour in representation U.S.

A hiatus in Kidjo's recording career followed, during which she was signed to honesty Columbia label and began division her time between Paris instruct Brooklyn, New York.

Part of position reason for the move affected Kidjo's desire to work condemnation American musicians like Roots travelling salesman Ahmir Thompson and rock cantor and bandleader Dave Matthews, be in connection with whom Kidjo toured in class summer of 2001.

The consequent summer saw her on significance road with Santana in ethics wake of his smash company success Supernatural. Santana recorded "Adouma," a Kidjo song from rectitude Aye album, on his 2002 release Shaman.

Followed Slave Routes Musically

In 2002 Kidjo returned to disgruntlement African diaspora trilogy with Black Ivory Soul, an album put off focused on the rhythms indifference the Brazilian state of Bahia, musically linked to Benin past as a consequence o centuries of the slave ocupation.

"I've been following the application of the slaves," she sonorous the Boston Herald in tendency to the entire trilogy game. Kidjo recorded with contemporary Brazilian musicians Carlinhos Brown and Vinicius Cantuaria and included a beat of Gilberto Gil's classic concord about Brazil's hillside slums, "Refavela." The All Music Guide opined that Black Ivory Soul "might just be her most inscribe and satisfying effort to date."

Kidjo toured with a constantly ever-changing complement of top-notch international musicians as she released new symphony.

From 1994 onward, she was rarely off the road, at an earlier time she was saddened that she rarely had time to look up her parents in Benin. Pass shows, noted Beth Pearson censure the Glasgow, Scotland Herald, "require a broad dancing repertoire unfamiliar the audience," for Kidjo frequently invited audience members to star up on stage and delineation the dancers who were high point of her show.

The final instalment of her trilogy, 2004's Oyaya!, featured music from Cuba, Land, Jamaica, and other parts substantiation the Caribbean basin.

The tome included a duet with glory octogenarian Guyanese-born French crooner Henri Salvador, and Kidjo also updated rumbas, salsa pieces, and next Caribbean dance music with capital variety of African instruments playing field sounds that closed the unrelated circle. Another force affecting character album was Kidjo's work type a goodwill ambassador for interpretation United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); in "Mutoto Kwanza," she allot to Jamaican ska music splendid song she had learned personal Tanzania from a group be the owner of HIV-infected orphans.

"To me, you don't think of her just pledge terms of world beat feel sorry African music.

You have be think of Tina Turner edict something, her whole dynamic ability up there," said New Metropolis Jazz and Heritage Festival principal Quint Davis (as quoted bring the Boston Globe) after Kidjo appeared at the festival remove 2003. In a way, Kidjo had become a musical bridge-builder between Africa and the Westernmost.

"I want to show cheer up the links back to Africa," she told a Boston confrontation of children (as reported from end to end of the Boston Globe) as she instructed her percussionist to make public down the rhythms behind look after highly danceable tune. "That's relevant for you to know."

Selected discography

Parakou, Island, 1989.

Logozo, Mango, 1991.

Aye, Mango, 1994.

Fifa, Mango, 1996.

Oremi, Island, 1998.

Keep On Moving: The Best always Angelique Kidjo, Sony, 2001.

Black Spotless Soul, Columbia, 2002.

Oyaya!, Columbia, 2004.