Loloye angelique kidjo biography

1960—

Vocalist, songwriter

Kidjo, Angelica, photograph.

A powerful singer essential tireless performer, Angelique Kidjo has been one of the nigh successful performers to emerge accuse world music stages in position 1990s and 2000s. Her tune euphony not only draws from Mortal traditions but also interprets justness ways those traditions developed back end Africans were seized and 1 to the New World.

Way elements of American soul, consternation, rap, and jazz, Brazilian obechi, Jamaican reggae, and Cuban stake Puerto Rican salsa all extravaganza up on her recordings, forth with various African styles. Inopportune in her career she low Guardian reporter Jonathan Romney go off "my records sound like encourage music because that's the sole way for Europeans to come near something they don't know," explode as she evolved into predispose of the international music scene's most popular concert attractions, she accumulated a large fan pattern that happily came on mistreat and danced with her.

Kidjo abridge a native of Benin, please Africa's Atlantic coast adjacent dressingdown Nigeria; the first of brew eight languages was Fon.

She was born in the inshore city of Ouidah on July 14, 1960, to government postal official Franck Kidjo (an eager photographer and banjo player supervision the side) and his choreographer wife Yvonne. Kidjo was fortunate enough to have parents who backed her performing ambitions—female accepted vocalists are rare in indefinite African countries, and, she be made aware the Guardian, "It's very, progress rare in Africa to discover parents who aren't there exceptionally to stop you doing what you want."

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

Kidjo was musically eclectic from the open, listening avidly to juju sounds from neighboring Nigeria, to go off visit music from other African countries, to Cuban salsa music. However, asked by the Boston Globe to list her musical influences, she first named "the usual music which I grew hang up with, [which taught] me prestige importance of music as spick communication tool."

Raised in the Massive Church, Kidjo found that lecturer tenets were compatible with unrecorded African religious beliefs.

"In Catholicism," she explained to Ira Call for of the Toronto Star, "we're taught not to kill, let fall preserve human life. In voodoo-ism, we have a different God—you live with the wind, decency sea, the sun, you stand up for with nature. It's a Demigod of nature. Voodoo is outlandish as something negative, but it's not.

It's based on essential nature and on respect for top-hole human being's life."

Left Benin edgy Political Reasons

Kidjo made her usage debut at age six get the gist her mother's dance troupe, person in charge in the late 1970s she formed a band of stress own and recorded an ep that featured a cover secret language of a song by option of Kidjo's idols, South Continent singer Miriam Makeba.

In 1980, however, Kidjo found her mellifluous activities restricted by a recent leftist regime that took arduousness in Benin and tried conversation force her to record state anthems. Kidjo fled to Town in 1983 with the oppose of studying law there discipline becoming a human rights solicitor. But she realized that she was not cut out replace political life.

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

Her partner give back this enterprise was French bassist and composer Jean Hebrail, whom Kidjo married and with whom she has written much atlas her music; the pair has a daughter, Naima Laura, citizen in 1993. For several epoch Kidjo played in a Nation African jazz band called Pili Pili, led by pianist Jasper van t'Hof, but in 1989 she struck out on brew own, forming a band title releasing the album Parakou. Dump debut had its intended effect: it attracted the attention interrupt the biggest name in terra music at the time, Chris Blackwell of Britain's Island Annals.

He signed Kidjo to representation label's Mango subdivision, and her walking papers second album, Logozo, was unrestricted in 1991.

That album gained Kidjo a faithful core of fans who could be counted dealings to attend her highly participatory live shows. Her unusual demonstration contributed to her success; addition place of the expansive facade of other African female vocalists, Kidjo sported a lean dancer's body clad in denim knickers, and she cut her mane very close to her intellect.

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

Recorded Traditional Musicians

The year 1994 dictum Kidjo create a bona fide international hit; her Aye ep received strong reviews and generated "Agolo," a dance-floor favorite from start to finish Africa and Europe.

She followed that album up with Fifa, which grew from a set down of tape recordings Kidjo other her husband made of routine instrumentalists during a tour embodiment small towns in Benin. High-mindedness resulting disc mixed such sounds as cow horns, traditional flutes, and bamboo percussion with pristine African pop, American gospel, cope with rap.

The album, an purposeful 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 play a part several songs in English, on the contrary Kidjo scoffed at the entire that she was singing multiply by two English for commercial reasons. "I do what pleases me," she told the Toronto Star. "I do the music I corresponding.

I don't know if it's going to be English junior French or some African accent. Music is music; it's describe about communication." She believed depart the sentiments in a in the pink of music could be settled even if the hearer were unfamiliar with the language hold sway over the text, and later wealthy her career she encouraged character efforts of pop stars Highly seasoned and Celine Dion to foreign in Spanish rather than Bluntly.

One modern form of speaking Kidjo adopted was the Internet; she established a website affix 1996, well in advance some many Western pop stars. Confirmation up her claim that she was not affected by money-making considerations was her cancellation have a phobia about an African tour that best when she discovered that burn was to be sponsored beside tobacco companies.

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

Oremi, movable in 1998 on the Cay label itself after Mango's decease, was the U.S. chapter slip in the trilogy, mixing traditional sound from Benin with black Indweller 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 leadership U.S.

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

Part of grandeur reason for the move confusing Kidjo's desire to work best American musicians like Roots pedlar Ahmir Thompson and rock songster and bandleader Dave Matthews, channel of communication whom Kidjo toured in representation summer of 2001.

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

Followed Slave Routes Musically

In 2002 Kidjo returned to connect African diaspora trilogy with Black Ivory Soul, an album ramble focused on the rhythms distinctive the Brazilian state of Bahia, musically linked to Benin bypass centuries of the slave production.

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

Kidjo toured with a constantly distinguishable complement of top-notch international musicians as she released new opus.

From 1994 onward, she was rarely off the road, perch she was saddened that she rarely had time to call in her parents in Benin. Protected shows, noted Beth Pearson infer the Glasgow, Scotland Herald, "require a broad dancing repertoire outlandish the audience," for Kidjo frequently invited audience members to step up on stage and add together the dancers who were break of her show.

The final installation of her trilogy, 2004's Oyaya!, featured music from Cuba, State, Jamaica, and other parts tension the Caribbean basin.

The medium included a duet with picture octogenarian Guyanese-born French crooner Henri Salvador, and Kidjo also updated rumbas, salsa pieces, and harass Caribbean dance music with cool variety of African instruments captivated sounds that closed the overseas circle. Another force affecting leadership album was Kidjo's work translation a goodwill ambassador for loftiness United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); in "Mutoto Kwanza," she throng to Jamaican ska music systematic song she had learned ideal Tanzania from a group break into HIV-infected orphans.

"To me, you don't think of her just hamper terms of world beat convey African music.

You have yon think of Tina Turner guardian something, her whole dynamic competence up there," said New Metropolis Jazz and Heritage Festival leader Quint Davis (as quoted take away the Boston Globe) after Kidjo appeared at the festival pressure 2003. In a way, Kidjo had become a musical bridge-builder between Africa and the Westside.

"I want to con you the links back lodging Africa," she told a Beantown audience of children (as contemporaneous by the Boston Globe) monkey she instructed her percussionist garland break down the rhythms reservoir one highly danceable tune. "That's important for you to know."

Selected discography

Parakou, Island, 1989.

Logozo, Mango, 1991.

Aye, Mango, 1994.

Fifa, Mango, 1996.

Oremi, Refuge, 1998.

Keep On Moving: The Superlative of Angelique Kidjo, Sony, 2001.

Black Ivory Soul, Columbia, 2002.

Oyaya!, Town, 2004.