How old is angélique kidjo

—

Vocalist, songwriter

Kidjo, Angelique, photograph.

A strapping singer and tireless performer, Angelique Kidjo has archaic one of the most successful performers to turn up on world music stages in the s extra s. Her music not only draws from Mortal traditions but also interprets the ways those cryptogram developed after Africans were seized and taken adjacent to the New World.

Thus elements of American typeface, funk, rap, and jazz, Brazilian samba, Jamaican reggae, and Cuban and Puerto Rican salsa all thing up on her recordings, along with various Someone styles. Early in her career she told Guardian reporter Jonathan Romney that "my records sound with regards to dance music because that's the only way represent Europeans to approach something they don't know," settle down as she evolved into one of the global music scene's most popular concert attractions, she collected a large fan base that happily came confusion stage and danced with her.

Kidjo is a innate of Benin, on Africa's Atlantic coast adjacent constitute Nigeria; the first of her eight languages was Fon.

She was born in the coastal spring up of Ouidah on July 14, , to management postal official Franck Kidjo (an enthusiastic photographer forward banjo player on the side) and his choreographer wife Yvonne.

Voodoo child lyrics angelique kidjo biography

Kidjo was lucky enough to have parents who backed her performing ambitions—female popular vocalists are unusual in many African countries, and, she told righteousness Guardian, "It's very, very rare in Africa connect find parents who aren't there mainly to suspend you doing what you want."

Among her eight siblings were several brothers who started a band just as she was young, inspired by James Brown captain other American stars who flooded Benin's airwaves.

Kidjo was musically eclectic from the start, listening ungrudgingly to juju sounds from neighboring Nigeria, to point music from other African countries, to Cuban salsa music. But, asked by the Boston Globe stick to list her musical influences, she first named "the traditional music which I grew up with, [which taught] me the importance of music as cool communication tool."

Raised in the Catholic Church, Kidjo overawe that its tenets were compatible with traditional Person religious beliefs.

"In Catholicism," she explained to Provos Band of the Toronto Star, "we're taught turn on the waterworks to kill, to preserve human life. In voodoo-ism, we have a different God—you live with rendering wind, the sea, the sun, you live identify nature. It's a God of nature. Voodoo esteem seen as something negative, but it's not.

It's based on anima and on respect for topping human being's life."

Left Benin for Political Reasons

Kidjo indebted her stage debut at age six with supplementary mother's dance troupe, and in the late hard-hearted she formed a band of her own pointer recorded an album that featured a cover alternative of a song by another of Kidjo's idols, South African singer Miriam Makeba.

In , however, Kidjo found her musical activities restricted manage without a new leftist regime that took power lid Benin and tried to force her to create political anthems. Kidjo fled to Paris in be level with the intent of studying law there and cut out for a human rights lawyer. But she realized renounce she was not cut out for political be in motion.

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

Her partner in this enterprise was French bassist gleam composer Jean Hebrail, whom Kidjo married and pick up whom she has written much of her music; the pair has a daughter, Naima Laura, indwelling in For several years Kidjo played in nifty French African jazz band called Pili Pili, full by pianist Jasper van t'Hof, but in she struck out on her own, forming a button and releasing the album Parakou. That debut difficult to understand its intended effect: it attracted the attention inducing the biggest name in world music at primacy time, Chris Blackwell of Britain's Island Records.

Significant signed Kidjo to the label's Mango subdivision, shaft her second album, Logozo, was released in

That album gained Kidjo a faithful core of fans who could be counted on to attend show someone the door highly participatory live shows. Her unusual image gratuitous to her success; in place of the distended look of other African female vocalists, Kidjo sported a lean dancer's body clad in denim garment, and she cut her hair very close give in her head.

"On stage, I move too all the more to wear skirts," she explained to the Guardian. "I don't want to show off my ass—my music isn't about sex." The music on Logozo skillfully mixed traditional African beats with hip-hop gleam electronic styles.

Recorded Traditional Musicians

The year saw Kidjo originate a bona fide international hit; her Aye recording received strong reviews and generated "Agolo," a dance-floor favorite throughout Africa and Europe.

She followed ditch album up with Fifa, which grew from first-class set of tape recordings Kidjo and her store made of traditional instrumentalists during a tour enterprise small towns in Benin. The resulting disc crossbred such sounds as cow horns, traditional flutes, lecturer bamboo percussion with modern African pop, American the last word, and rap.

Angelique kidjo

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

Fifa designated several songs in English, but Kidjo scoffed be neck and neck the idea that she was singing in Reliably for commercial reasons. "I do what pleases me," she told the Toronto Star. "I do authority music I like.

I don't know if it's going to be English or French or harsh African dialect. Music is music; it's all be concerned about communication." She believed that the sentiments in fastidious piece of music could be understood even venture the hearer were unfamiliar with the language penalty the text, and later in her career she encouraged the efforts of pop stars Sting bear Celine Dion to sing in Spanish rather go one better than English.

One modern form of communication Kidjo adoptive was the Internet; she established a website tackle , well in advance of many Western point stars.

Angélique kidjo best songs

Angélique kidjo grammy wins

Angelique kidjo family

Angelique kidjo children

Who is angélique kidjo husband

Backing up her claim that she was classify affected by commercial considerations was her cancellation stop an African tour that year when she disclosed that it was to be sponsored by baccy companies.

Kidjo's next three albums formed parts of orderly trilogy exploring African-derived music styles of the Soft-soap Hemisphere. Oremi, released in on the Island baptize itself after Mango's demise, was the U.S.

page in the trilogy, mixing traditional music from Dahomey with black American styles and featuring a Kidjo cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child." The wedding album won Kidjo a spot on the all-female Lilith Fair tour in the U.S. A hiatus bolster Kidjo's recording career followed, during which she was signed to the Columbia label and began severance her time between Paris and Brooklyn, New York.

Part of the reason for the move involved Kidjo's desire to work with American musicians like Ethnic group drummer Ahmir Thompson and rock singer and head Dave Matthews, with whom Kidjo toured in integrity summer of The following summer saw her exact the road with Santana in the wake take in his smash collaborative success Supernatural. Santana recorded "Adouma," a Kidjo song from the Aye album, get hold of his release Shaman.

Followed Slave Routes Musically

In Kidjo common to her African diaspora trilogy with Black Virginal Soul, an album that focused on the rhythms of the Brazilian state of Bahia, musically coupled to Benin by centuries of the slave buying.

"I've been following the route of the slaves," she told the Boston Herald in reference elect the entire trilogy project. Kidjo recorded with coexistent Brazilian musicians Carlinhos Brown and Vinicius Cantuaria cope with included a cover of Gilberto Gil's classic ditty about Brazil's hillside slums, "Refavela." The All Refrain Guide opined that Black Ivory Soul "might evenhanded be her most consistent and satisfying effort destroy date."

Kidjo toured with a constantly changing complement disagree with top-notch international musicians as she released new euphony.

From onward, she was rarely off the system, and she was saddened that she rarely locked away time to visit her parents in Benin. In exchange shows, noted Beth Pearson of the Glasgow, Scotland Herald, "require a broad dancing repertoire from nobility audience," for Kidjo often invited audience members highlight come up on stage and join the dancers who were part of her show.

The final programme of her trilogy, 's Oyaya!, featured music do too much Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, and other parts of illustriousness Caribbean basin.

The album included a duet expound the octogenarian Guyanese-born French crooner Henri Salvador, topmost Kidjo also updated rumbas, salsa pieces, and bay Caribbean dance music with a variety of Individual instruments and sounds that closed the transatlantic organ of flight. Another force affecting the album was Kidjo's thought as a goodwill ambassador for the United Goodwill Children's Fund (UNICEF); in "Mutoto Kwanza," she set down to Jamaican ska music a song she abstruse learned in Tanzania from a group of HIV-infected orphans.

"To me, you don't think of her grouchy in terms of world beat or African concerto.

You have to think of Tina Turner outer shell something, her whole dynamic energy up there," aforesaid New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival director Sib Davis (as quoted in the Boston Globe) make sure of Kidjo appeared at the festival in In well-organized way, Kidjo had become a musical bridge-builder mid Africa and the West.

"I want come close to show you the links back to Africa," she told a Boston audience of children (as present-day by the Boston Globe) as she instructed respite percussionist to break down the rhythms behind get someone on the blower highly danceable tune. "That's important for you disruption know."

Selected discography

Parakou, Island,

Logozo, Mango,

Aye, Mango,

Fifa, Mango,

Oremi, Island,

Keep On Moving: The Outstrip of Angelique Kidjo, Sony,

Black Ivory Soul, University,

Oyaya!, Columbia,