Angelique Kidjo

Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo ( born 14 July 1960) is a French-Beninese musician, actress, and activist. Kidjo has won five Grammy Awards and a Polar Music Prize. She has collaborated with artists including Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel, John Legend, Philip Glass, Bono, Yo-Yo Ma, and Burna Boy. She is the second African artist — and the first of African ethnicity — to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She performed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony on July 23, 2021. In 2021, Time magazine included her in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Kidjo is fluent in five languages: Fon, French, Yorùbá, Gen (Mina) and English. She sings in all of them, and she also has her own personal language, which includes words that serve as song titles such as "Batonga". Kidjo often uses Benin's traditional Zilin vocal technique and vocalese.

Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo was born in Ouidah, French Dahomey, in what became Benin. Her father is from the Fon people of Ouidah and her mother from the Yoruba people. Her father was a musician, and her mother worked as a choreographer and theatre director. She grew up listening to Yoruba and Beninese traditional music, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, James Brown, Manu Dibango, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Fela Kuti, Stevie Wonder, Osibisa and Santana. By the time she was six years old, Kidjo was performing with her mother's theatre troupe.

She started singing in her school band, Les Sphinx, and found success as a teenager with her version of Miriam Makeba's "Les Trois Z", which was played on national radio. Aged 20, she recorded the album Pretty with Cameroonian producer Ekambi Brilliant and her brother Oscar. It featured the songs "Ninive", "Gbe Agossi", and a tribute to the singer Bella Bellow, one of her role models. The success of the album allowed her to tour all over West Africa. Continuing political conflicts in Benin prevented her from being an independent artist in her own country and led her to relocate to Paris in 1983.

After moving to France, Kidjo initially planned to become a human rights lawyer, but ended up studying music. While working various day jobs to pay for her tuition, Kidjo studied music at the CIM, a jazz school in Paris, where she met musician and producer Jean Hebrail, with whom she has composed most of her music and whom she married in 1987. She started out as a backup singer in local bands. In 1985, she became the front singer of Jasper van 't Hof's Euro-African jazz/rock band Pili Pili. Three Pili Pili 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 and recorded a solo album called Parakou for the Open Jazz Label. She met Island Records founder Chris Blackwell in Paris; Blackwell signed her to a record deal in 1991. She recorded four albums for Island until Blackwell's departure from the label. In 2000, she was signed in New York by Columbia Records, for whom she recorded two albums.

Kidjo's first international album Parakou, first released in 1989, was the beginning of a series of collaborations with producer and composer Jean Hébrail and featured Jasper van't Hof.

Her first album for Island Records was recorded between Miami and Paris and produced by Miami Sound Machine drummer Joe Galdo and features Branford Marsalis and Manu DiBango on saxophones. It was released worldwide in 1991 and reached number one on the Billboard World Albums chart. Music videos for the singles "We We" and "Batonga" were released and Kidjo made her first world tour, headlining the Olympia Hall in Paris on October 31, 1992. Logozo is ranked number 37 in the Greatest Dance Albums of All Time list compiled by the Thump website.

Released in 1994, the album Ayé was produced by David Z at Prince's Paisley Park Studios in Minnesota and by Will Mowat at Soul To Soul studio in London. It includes the single "Agolo", a song that addresses the issue of the environment, of which the video directed by Michel Meyer gave Kidjo her first Grammy nomination. Kidjo sang on the album in both Yoruba and Fon, often using the Beninese traditional zilin vocal technique. The song "Agolo" was used as the theme tune of the BBC World Service programme Everywoman (broadcast between March 1997 and April 2006).

Kidjo and Hebrail traveled all over Benin in 1995 to record the traditional rhythms that formed the base for the Fifa album. Carlos Santana appears on "Naima", a piece Kidjo wrote for her daughter. The single "Wombo Lombo" and its video directed by Michel Meyer was a success all over Africa in 1996.

In 1998, she began recording a trilogy of albums (Oremi, Black Ivory Soul and Oyaya) exploring the African roots of the music of the Americas.

Produced by Peter Mokran and Jean Hebrail, recorded in New York, Oremi is a collection of songs mixing African and African-American influences. Cassandra Wilson, Branford Marsalis, Kelly Price and Kenny Kirkland collaborated with Kidjo on this project. The opening track is a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child".

In 2000, Kidjo traveled to Salvador de Bahia to start recording the Axe percussion grooves for this album, based on Afro-Brazilian culture. She worked with songwriters Carlinhos Brown and Vinicius Cantuária. On the Brazilian version of the album Gilberto Gil joined her on "Refavela" and Daniella Mercury on "Tumba". Dave Matthews appears in the song "Iwoya".

Produced by Steve Berlin from Los Lobos and by the pianist Alberto Salas, released in 2004, Oyaya! mixes Latin and Caribbean music with African guitars. French Guyanese musician Henri Salvador joined Kidjo on the song "Le Monde Comme un Bébé".

Kidjo released the album Djin Djin on May 1, 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 refers to the sound of a bell in Africa that greets each new day. The album, produced by Tony Visconti, won a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding World Music Album.

Õÿö, released in Europe on January 18, 2010, and in America on April 6, 2010, pays tribute to the music of Kidjo's childhood in Benin. It mixes traditional music, Miriam Makeba's songs, classic soul of the 1960s and 1970s; including a song from the 1952 Bollywood film Aan, "Dil Main Chuppa Ke Pyar Ka". Dianne Reeves appears on Aretha Franklin's "Baby I Love You", Bono and John Legend on Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up", for which Kidjo recorded a video with the Fela! dancers and Roy Hargrove on Santana's "Samba Pa Ti". Produced by Kidjo and Jean Hebrail, the album was arranged in conjunction with the Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke. Õÿö was nominated for Best Contemporary World Music Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards.

Spirit Rising, the live album from Kidjo's PBS Special performance, was released in North America on February 22, 2012. It features a collection of songs from her entire career played live in Boston with special guests Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend, Dianne Reeves, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride and Josh Groban. Kidjo sang a version of "Redemption Song" with the Kuumba Singers.

On January 28, 2014, Kidjo the album Eve, which was dedicated to the women of Africa. Kidjo stated that "Eve is an album of remembrance of African women I grew up with and a testament to the pride and strength that hide behind the smile that masks everyday troubles." She recorded the album in New York with the Beninese percussionists from the Gangbe Brass Band and an ensemble of session musicians. Performers on the album include Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, Dominic James, Steve Jordan, Christian McBride, and producer Patrick Dillett. Guest musicians on the album include Rostam Batmanglij from Vampire Weekend, Nigerian folk singer Aṣa on "Eva", pianist Dr. John on "Kulumbu"; the Kronos Quartet and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. The traditional Congolese song "Bana" features the vocals of Kidjo's mother Yvonne.

The album debuted at number 1 in the Billboard World Music chart. It was rated No. 1 among world music albums for 2014 by Radio France Internationale. Its opening track, "M'Baamba", featured in The New York Times' "Top 10 songs of 2014" list. Eve won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album at the 57th Grammy Awards.

On March 31, 2015, Kidjo released her collaboration with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. The album contains orchestral versions of nine songs from previous albums and two original songs: Nanae and Otishe. All the songs are arranged by Gast Waltzing and David Laborier and the orchestra is conducted by Gast Waltzing. Tony Hillier of Rhythms Magazine described it as "arguably the most ambitious and spiritually arresting album the New York-based West African singer has recorded in a long and distinguished career". The album won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album category.

Released on June 8, 2018, Remain in Light is a track-by-track re-imagination of Talking Heads' landmark 1980 album, one of the most acclaimed albums of the 1980s (placing number 39 on Rolling Stone's 2023 Best Album's of All Time list and earning a retrospective 10 from Pitchfork in 2018). Kidjo partnered with producer Jeff Bhasker to create the record, deeply influenced by music from West Africa, notably Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. With her version of Remain in Light, Kidjo wanted to celebrate the music of Talking Heads and Brian Eno with her own vocals, as well as percussion, horn orchestrations, and select lyrics performed in languages from her home country. Remain in Light features appearances by Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, Blood Orange, Tony Allen, Antibalas Horns, Kidjo's longtime guitarist Dominic James, and percussionist Magatte Sow. Visual artist Kerry James Marshall created the album artwork.

Kidjo's tribute to Cuban singer Celia Cruz was released on April 19, 2019. It is produced by David Donatien and featured Tony Allen, Meshell Ndegeocello and the Gangbe Brass Band. The Guardian called the album "magnificent", and the Financial Times gave it 5 stars. The album includes songs spanning all of Celia Cruz's career reinvented with an Afrobeat feel. Of the song "Quimbara", New York Times critic Jon Pareles says: "Backed by Michelle Ndegeocello on bass, the Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen on drums, Dominic James on guitars and the Gangbe Brass Band, Kidjo reconnects the salsa original to West Africa, layering the song with a tumbling six-beat rhythm, a brass-band undertow and a tangle of scurrying guitar lines while she belts with enough grit to rival Cruz herself." Kidjo won the Grammy Award for "Best World Music Album" for Celia on January 26, 2020.

On June 18, 2021, the album Mother Nature was released. It features many collaborations with young African producers and singers including Yemi Alade, Burna Boy Mr Eazi, Zeynab, Shungudzo, Sampa The Great, Rexxie, African legend Salif Keita and French singer Matthieu Chedid. Music videos for the songs "Dignity", "Africa, One of a Kind," and "Mother Nature" featuring Sting have been released. The Independent said: "the 15th album by Angelique Kidjo has the feel of a grand homecoming: celebratory and inclusive, with an acute sense of place and time". The Sunday Times said: "the music ... is infectious ... the rhythms are a combination of modern and traditional fused with state-of-the-art production values. Kidjo's impassioned voice evokes memories of the great Miriam Makeba". The Financial Times called Mother Nature "a rallying pan-African collaboration"

Kidjo released her album Hope!! on April 24, 2026 and had released the album's lead single, "Fall on Me", featuring PJ Morton. On March 27, 2026, Kidjo released the second single and its accompanying music video, "Aye Kan (Are You Coming Back)" featuring Nigerian singer Ayra Starr. On August 28, 2026, Kidjo released the new version of the single "Bando" featuring Pharrell Williams and Quavo and its accompanying music video directed by Paul Hunter (director) and shot in Grigny, Essonne

Kidjo wrote a memoir with Rachel Wenrick titled Spirit Rising. It was published by HarperCollins on January 7, 2014. Desmond Tutu wrote the preface and Alicia Keys the foreword. On the back cover, Bill Clinton is quoted as saying: "The only thing bigger than Angélique Kidjo's voice is her heart. In this evocative memoir, Kidjo chronicles an inspiring life of music and activism, and raises a passionate call for freedom, dignity, and the rights of people everywhere."

January 17, 2014, saw the premiere of IFÉ: Three Yoruba songs for Angelique Kidjo and the Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer at the Philharmonie hall in Luxembourg. Philip Glass wrote the orchestral music based on three creation poems in Yoruba sung by Kidjo. In the program notes, Philip Glass says: "Angelique, together we have built a bridge that no one has walked on before." The piece made its American premiere with the San Francisco Symphony to a sold-out crowd in the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall on July 10, 2015.

Kidjo has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002. With UNICEF, she has travelled to many countries in Africa. Reports on her visits can be found on the UNICEF site: Benin, Senegal, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Syria, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Haiti.

Along with Mary Louise Cohen and John R. Phillips, Kidjo founded the Batonga Foundation, which empowers some of the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach young women and girls in Benin with the knowledge and skills they need to be agents of change in their own lives and communities. Batonga accomplishes this by locating the most vulnerable adolescent girls in Benin and connecting them to girl-centred safe spaces led by Beninese women. These safe spaces provide young women and girls with training that allow them to gain new skills in financial literacy and build social capital.

She campaigned for Oxfam at the 2005 Hong Kong WTO meeting, for their Fair-Trade Campaign and travelled with them in North Kenya and at the border of Darfur and Chad with a group of women leaders in 2007 and participated in the video for the in My Name Campaign with will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas.

She hosted the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's Prize for Achievement in African Leadership in Alexandria, Egypt, on November 26, 2007, and on November 15, 2008, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on November 14, 2009, and in Mauritius on November 20, 2010. She hosted the "Africa Celebrates Democracy Concert" organized by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Tunis on November 11, 2011, and sang at the Award Ceremony on November 12, 2011, also in Dakar on November 10, 2012, Addis Ababa in November 2013 and Accra in November 2015.

Since March 2009, Kidjo has been campaigning for "Africa for women's rights". This campaign was launched by The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).

In 2006, Kidjo founded the Batonga Foundation with the stated goal of empowering and educating adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa. Kidjo invented the word "Batonga" as a child as a response to those who told her that girls did not belong in the classroom. Later, it would become the title of a hit song for her. The foundation has provided girls in five African countries (Mali, Benin, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Cameroon) with scholarships and in-kind support, supplied 8,727 students access to wells and latrines across seven schools in Benin, and offered 222,000 students in Benin's poorest regions Toms Shoes for the walk to school. In 2015 and 2016, Batonga began to focus on education programs aimed at excluded young women and girls, providing girls with safe spaces and mentors, equipping them with life and financial literacy skills, and helping them start small businesses.

In 1996, Kidjo performed in Oslo, Norway, for the Nobel Peace Prize Concert honoring Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta for their work in East Timor.

In 1998, she was part of Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair tour.

In 2002, she performed in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize Concert honoring US President Jimmy Carter.

In February 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 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.

In November 2003, she sang with Peter Gabriel and Youssou N'Dour at the Cape Town 46664 concert for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

In May 2004, she performed at the Quincy Jones-produced concert in Rome called "We Are The Future" in front of 400,000 people. The show took place at the Circus Maximus with appearances by Oprah Winfrey, Alicia Keys, Andrea Bocelli, Herbie Hancock and other international stars.

In 2005, Kidjo appeared at the Africa Unite Live concert in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a concert to celebrate the Honourable Bob Marley's 60th birthday and was a featured speaker at the conference of African Unity held along with the concert.

On February 15, 2010, Kidjo performed in Vancouver for the Winter Olympic Games at the Place De La Francophonie.

On February 28, 2010, she performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic concert hall designed by Frank Gehry.

On June 10, 2010, she was part of the Official Kick-Off Celebration Concert of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, along with John Legend, Hugh Masekela, Shakira, Alicia Keys, Juanes and Black Eyed Peas.

On June 17, 2010, she performed at Les FrancoFolies de Montréal – the Montreal Francofolies festival of French-language music.

On August 30, 2010, Kidjo sang at the 30th Anniversary celebration of Solidarnosc in the Polish city of Gdańsk produced by Bob Wilson and Hal Willner featuring Philip Glass, Marianne Faithfull, Rufus Wainwright and Macy Gray.

In 2023, Kidjo launched her 40th anniversary live concert tour commencing at the Royal Albert Hall on the 17 November 2023 and proceeding with a global tour celebrating the same. The show featured special guests, including Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour, Afropop pioneer Stonebwoy, and British singer-songwriter Laura Mvula. The full concert was recorded and released as a pay-per-view event through On Air and is available to stream in 4K UHD with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos sound.

Kidjo sung an Hans Zimmer's arrangement of Imagine along with John Legend, Keith Urban and Alejandro Sanz during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony on July 23, 2021

On September 30, 2021, Kidjo performed at the opening ceremony of Expo 2020 in Dubai, UAE.

On November 16, 2021, Kidjo performed in Geneva, Switzerland, with the Geneva Camerata in the Concert Prestige n.2 conducted by David Greilsammer, with arrangements by Jonathan Keren, and Francesco Ciniglio as the drummer.

On September 12, 2022, Kidjo performed the 1,000th Tiny Desk Concert for NPR Music.

Kidjo married French musician and producer Jean Hébrail in 1987. Their daughter Naima was born in 1993 in France.

Kidjo performed the original song "How Can I Tell You?" in the documentary Nasrin, released in October 2020, with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.

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 2009, Kidjo released a version of "Redemption Song" on the compilation album Oh Happy Day: An All-Star Music Celebration.

Kidjo was one of the contributors of the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art of New York) project called "Design and Violence" in 2014.

Kidjo was a judge for the seventh annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.