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Love To Sing's Featured Vocalist of the Week
We are proud to announce this week's featured vocalist:
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| The explosive growth in the popularity of world music during the past several decades has broadened the boundaries of our world, reminding listeners of the vast cultural wealth and diversity in this wired age. The music of African-born songstress Angélique Kidjo offers another perspective: that the world is also much smaller than we think, and that no matter how far flung its peoples may be, subtle lines of interconnection span the globe, uniting its people. This is reflected with her latest release, Oyaya!(which is the word for “joy” in Yoruba, Kidjo’s native language.) Angelique Kidjo, whose work has garnered her three Grammy nominations, has cross-pollinated the West African traditions of her childhood in Benin with elements of American R&B, funk and jazz, as well as influences from Europe and Latin America. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with a diverse group of international artists like Santana and Gilberto Gil. Her duet with Dave Matthews on the song Iwoya,, which appeared on her last record Black Ivory Soul, was a critical success that helped diversify her fan base. The third part in a trilogy that previously explored African roots in music from the United States (Oremi) and Brazil (Black Ivory Soul), Oyaya! fuses African and French lyrics to music that draws upon musical traditions of the Caribbean Diaspora. With her husband, Jean Hebrail, Kidjo penned 13 original songs in a variety of indigenous Caribbean styles, including salsa, calypso, meringue and ska. Kidjo sings the numbers in English, French and African languages Yoruba and Fon. Oyaya! was produced by Steve Berlin, best known for his work with Los Lobos and Los Super Seven, and the String Cheese Incident. Recording primarily in Los Angeles, Berlin and co-producer/arranger Alberto Salas assembled a group of talented Latin and African musicians. The album is dedicated to the memory of the late writer and Billboard magazine editor-in-chief Timothy White, Kidjo’s dear friend and a steadfast supporter of her career. The birth of Oyaya! can be traced back to Kidjo’s own travels and performances in a number of Caribbean nation, but it was her experiences in Cuba that had the most profound effect on the album’s concept and spirit. “I went to Cuba two years ago and met some old musicians there,” Kidjo says. “It gave me strength and inspiration, because you realize that music is really the thread of the memory of humankind. You saw old people that, once they picked up their instruments and started singing, were transformed into something else. You have the example of the Buena Vista Social Club, but actually going to Cuba, you understand why the Buena Vista Social Club worked: It’s not something fake. It’s their life.” Acceptance of life’s ups and downs is the subject of “Oulala,” set to a Dominican meringue beat and featuring steel-drum superstar, Andy Narrell. Sung in Fon, the song tells the story of Aminata, a girl who smiles in the face of adversity. “I tried in that song to explain the capacity of the human being to rebound, despite whatever happens. Aminata can fall, and she will stand up, smiling. Kidjo closes Oyaya! with a timely message in “Bissimilai,” composed in the Puerto Rican plena form and sung in Fon. “I don’t believe in anyone who tells me, ‘You’ve got to kill yourself in the name of God,’” Kidjo adamantly states. “Every time you take a life, you’re taking God’s life.” The track features a chorus of Muslim women, which Kidjo recorded on a trip home to Benin. “The traditional music in that village is very close to gospel music,” she says. Ultimately, that theme of interconnection and universalism is the glue that binds the disparate threads of Oyaya! “There’s only own humankind—I believe that to my gut,” Kidjo confirms. “The reason I believe this so strongly is because I was raised in Africa, and if you are raised in nature, you understand and respect every life. That’s something that some people try to keep away from one another, because once you understand that, there’s no need to hate anybody anymore. There’s no need to say ‘they’ and ‘we’…we are all one.” |
Listen to her here! Tell Angelique you saw her on Love to Sing!
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