“Who is Angélique Kidjo?” “Who she be?” “Who be that sef?” That’s like asking, Who is Fela Kuti? Who is Ousmane Sembène? Who is Ebenezer Obey? Yet, questions of the sort, sarcastic at soul, have been thrown around in certain Nigerian social media corners, ever since Nigeria’s pop prince, Wizkid, lost the Grammy’s Best Global […]
That’s like asking, Who is Fela Kuti? Who is Ousmane Sembène? Who is Ebenezer Obey?
Yet, questions of the sort, sarcastic at soul, have been thrown around in certain Nigerian social media corners, ever since Nigeria’s pop prince, Wizkid, lost the Grammy’s Best Global Music Album category to Benin Republic’s Kidjo (Kidjo’s Mother Nature album beat Wizkid’s Made In Lagos). That was Wizkid’s first Grammy loss, and Kidjo’s fifth Grammy plaque.
Those who recourse to psychology for insight into human behaviour may conclude that the question — “Who is Angélique Kidjo?” — recalls the first stage of grief in that popular Kübler-Ross model: denial. The question seems a willful denial of Kidjo’s pop music stature. It is, maybe, how aggrieved Wizkid fans have decided to negotiate the Grammy loss.
Setting the psychobabble aside, it’s more likely that that question is being asked out of sincere ignorance. Social media, after all, is the largest conference of youths — see this 2021 Statista survey on Twitter’s youth population — and Kidjo, now 61 years old and who began her music career in the early 1980s, isn’t exactly the Gen Z’s musician archetype. Many of the songs that shot her into fame and embossed her name on the list of all-time greats aren’t likely to be familiar to twenty-something-year-olds. Hence the query: Who is Angélique Kidjo?
Well, Kidjo is the movingly assertive voice behind these tunes.
We Are One
This song belongs on a pharmacy’s shelf: it cures everything. Hate, malaise, self-doubt, and many other communicable diseases of the soul. This timeless classic is sure to unlock certain memories yoked to childhood. It’s part of the Return to Pride Rock album (1998), which was released as an accompaniment of Disney’s animated film, The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride.
Marty Penzer, Thomas Snow, and Jack Feldman are to credit for its composition. Kidjo brings their words to life in her performance. Relying on her native Fon and English, she sings about the interconnectivity of the human race. This insistence on interracial oneness is a standout motif in Kidjo’s works. Even while not singing, as in this 2015 Al Jazeera interview, she insists on the point.
Agolo
Agolo’s music video, directed by the French Michel Meyer, won Kidjo her first Grammy nomination in 1994. It’s the kind of music video that’ll both intrigue and terrify a child and a superstitious adult, in the manner of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The symbolisms, appearing in surrealist swirls, inspire Illuminati accusations. There are hypnotic choreographies and religious African masks. The Zangbeto masquerade and the serpent deity Ayida-Weddo are part of the visual treat.
The song is part of Kidjo’s 1994 Ayé album. Alluding to a popular Yoruba folktale — that of the pretty but vain maiden, Olajumoke, who falls in error for a spirit — Kidjo launches an ecological crusade on this track. In this recent interview with The New Yorker, she says of the song, “I’m talking about how we need to take care of the earth.”
Wombo Lombo
This is the second song off of Kidjo’s fifth album, Fifa (1996).
The tune is invoked in Yemi Alade’s 2019 banger, Shekere, which features Kidjo.
Dignity
Kidjo plays tag team with Yemi Alade once again in this track. It’s a song in her latest Grammy-winning album, Mother Nature (2021). Produced by Vtek Da Awesome, Dignity was inspired by the youth-led protests of October 2020 in Nigeria, against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a protest that saw the Nigerian government breathe down violence on the young protesters.
