Angélique Kidjo has won the Grammy for the best global or world music album five times. No African artist in the category has won more.
Her wins came for Djin Djin in 2008, Eve in 2015, Sings in 2016, Celia in 2020 and Mother Nature in 2022. Four of them are in the category now called Best Global Music Album. Ladysmith Black Mambazo of South Africa sits one behind her, and Mali’s Ali Farka Touré and South Africa’s Soweto Gospel Choir have three each.
From Cotonou to Paris
Kidjo was born in Ouidah, Benin, in 1960 and grew up in Cotonou in a family full of music and theatre. She sang with her brothers’ band as a child. In 1983, with Benin under a Marxist-Leninist military government that pressed artists to make political songs, she moved to Paris.
In Paris she studied jazz and began building an international career. Her early 1990s albums, including Logozo in 1991, and songs such as “Agolo” and “Wombo Lombo” made her one of the best-known African voices in the world. She sang in Fon, Yoruba, French and English, and mixed West African rhythm with funk, jazz and pop.
The five albums
Djin Djin (2007) won Best Contemporary World Music Album in 2008. It featured guests including Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel and Carlos Santana.
Eve (2014) was dedicated to African women and featured recordings of women’s choirs from villages in Benin and Kenya. It won Best World Music Album in 2015.
Sings (2015), recorded with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, set her songs to orchestral arrangements. It won the next year.
Celia (2019) was her tribute to the Cuban salsa queen Celia Cruz, tracing the African roots in Cruz’s music. It won in January 2020, over nominees including Burna Boy’s African Giant. Kidjo used her speech to praise Burna and the new generation of African artists.
Mother Nature (2021) brought in younger African stars, including Burna Boy, Yemi Alade, Mr Eazi and Sampa the Great, and won Best Global Music Album in 2022.
More than a singer
Kidjo has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002 and founded the Batonga Foundation to support the education of girls in Africa. She has performed at the Nobel Peace Prize concert and at the kick-off concert for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and she has recorded Talking Heads’ entire album Remain in Light in a reinterpretation that brought its African influences to the front.
The generation she named
Kidjo has spent the last decade connecting her career to the younger artists who followed her. Burna Boy won the Global Music Album Grammy the year after she beat him for it. Tems, Wizkid and others have since taken African music to places Kidjo could only imagine in 1983.
She left Benin because she did not want to sing propaganda. Four decades later, she holds the record in the Grammy category built for music like hers.
