Angélique Kidjo - “I Have Always Been At The Service of Music.” 

Every month, OkayAfrica spotlights an exceptional African artist making an impact on African music and culture. From rising stars who are shaping new sounds to established artists driving culture forward, this series is our stage for celebrating incredible and ingenious African artistry.

Angélique Kidjo has been a powerful voice all my life. Like most of my generation, I grew up hearing the distinct sounds of songs like “Agolo” and “Wombo Lombo,” listening to her powerful voice belt out language that was different from mine, but oh, so familiar. 

In an industry where women often have to strive and fight for relevance, respect and even just acknowledgement, Kidjo continues to build on a powerful legacy of love for music, and a deep pride in her culture as an African woman. She has achieved immense success, including five Grammy awards, a Polar Music Prize, and made history as the first Black African artist to be awarded the Hollywood Walk of Fame star. This, as well as her unshakeable commitment to creating delightful music that is true to her soul, is the reason why she’s OkayAfrica’s Artist of The Month for May. 

The Beninese star, in conversation with OkayAfrica, tells us all about her career philosophy, the meaning behind some of her key songs, her thoughts on African music and its global reputation and the making of her most recent album HOPE!!

On Her Long Arc

Angélique Kidjo has managed to walk this tight rope between 'Mother of the Continent' and 'cutting edge artist' so well, for so long. When asked how she has fared in the industry, her answer and demeanor reflect her devotion to music and the ability to keep going, no matter what. “I just love what I do. My father used to say I started singing before I started talking,” she shared. “And I was told since I was a child that the talent that was given to me, I’m not meant to keep to myself and I had to share with the world. I just jumped into it and I’ve figured things out as they come. That’s it.”

This distinct ethos is clear, in her successful career spanning several decades, she has made music that spans Beninese tradition, jazz, funk, Afrobeats, classical, and gospel music. There’s a clear dedication to exploring her gift to its limits. Kidjo shares her perspective, “I have always been at the service of music. I have no control over my inspiration. Sometimes I start doing something and I don’t know where it’s from — it’s like an urge that I can’t help. It’s both simple and complex. The simpler a song is, the better it is, but that’s the hardest thing to do. There’s the temptation to add this and that and make it more beautiful but then you bury the core of the song under your insecurities. Music is pretty straightforward, you either have it or you don’t.”

The 1994 hit song, “Agolo” inspired a whole generation. A lot of the cultural and spiritual symbolism in that video was seen as 'black magic' in Christian/conservative circles across the continent. She shares the inspiration behind the song, citing the life-changing act of carrying and birthing a child, and her concerns about climate change, long before it became this dire.

“I wrote that song when I was six months pregnant with my daughter. I realised that something was wrong – the seasons weren’t the same and people were talking about climate change. That’s when I wrote ‘Agolo,’ which means ‘I’m knocking on the door, can you hear me?’ What the song is saying is we have to love and take care of ourselves and nature,” she says.

For Kidjo, it was imperative that the visuals for such a song represented the rich and special symbolism of her culture, and that of the continent as a whole. “The symbolism was easy because my culture is full of symbols, with the orishas who were there before Catholicism arrived. I infused that cultural symbolism and meaning into the music, into the video,” she said.

“I also thought about how I want to be perceived. Not a lot of people know much about our culture and our continent. They come as tourists, see the cities and walk away. The question was how do we get people interested in our culture? Museums alone cannot do that work, so our music and our vision of Afrofuturism needs to be explicit and beautiful,” she adds, a sentiment that’s obvious in the way she creates and collaborates with artists both from and out of the continent. 

On Africa and the Music Industry

Kidjo’s philosophy on African music is simple. She believes that African music has always been loud, present, is the blueprint. It has impacted the rest of the world — whether people admit it or not.

“We’ve always had ambassadors that pushed the needle a little farther. Miriam Makeba, for instance. Somehow I have the feeling that people are afraid to let go, and see the power of the music that comes from Africa, but it’s happening nonetheless. I’m seeing the shift in the people going to concerts, listening to this music, they can’t help it, it makes them feel good.” 

She believes there’s still a lot of work that musicians and artists from and on the continent need to do to be even more established. “We have to be ready to be there unapologetically, consistent, structured and to deliver always, any time, in any shape or form.”

Kidjo believes in the interconnectedness of African music and sounds, and shares that Afrobeats should be an umbrella term for all the music that comes from the continent, a take many might disagree with. “Afrobeats is an umbrella that covers all forms of music that comes from Africa. We need to be inclusive and break down the walls between us. We have to be graceful, and hold each other up.” 

On her new album HOPE!! and its timing

HOPE!! is dedicated to Kidjo’s late mother, Yvonne, and closes with a philharmonic rendition of “Malaika,” her favorite song. Grief shaped the album’s thesis but it’s also fundamentally a joyful record — an interesting contrast. Kidjo was vulnerable here, sharing how recording took half a decade, but had to be done because that’s what the grief demanded. 

“She always said to me: ‘Don’t stop singing, you were born to do this.’ Grief is a strange thing, but music has always come to my rescue. I’m grateful for the opportunity to create music. If I didn’t have music, I wouldn’t be here. It always lifts me up and I do what I have to do. I have to be the person they wanted me to be, no matter what — that’s what my mum taught me. Living demands courage. And if you don’t have hope, courage or love, you don’t have anything.”

This ethos impacts how she approaches collaborations, many of which are included in the album, with artists like The Cavemen, Ayra Starr, Davido, Fally Ipupa as well as Pharrell and Quavo. Her approach to collaborating is a simple template she applies to everyone; African or not. 

“My mum has guided me all the way through in my collaborations with all these people. It was not planned for me to meet The Cavemen — I didn’t know they were there, they found me in the dressing room, when we were shooting the video of [Davido’s] “Na Money” in Paris — and started singing to me, songs I hadn't sung in years. And that’s how we started working together.”

When asked why the album title has two exclamation marks — the universal sign of emphasis — she says, “Pay attention to something that is in you that is golden — that is your hope. If we lose hope, we lose our lives, we lose everything. Let’s hang on to hope.”

That hope lives side by side with a fierce spirit that refused to be beat down, and a voice that refuses to be silenced. Kidjo invented a personal language with words like “Batonga” that exist only in her music. It’s essentially a private mother tongue she created. 

“It’s just words that I put together to tell people to leave me alone when I was bullied in secondary school by boys. Batonga means “get out of my face.”Nobody was going to tell me what I was going to do or who I was going to be. It was a word of comfort because of people trying to turn me away because of my gender.”

Gender inequality is something women in every industry have to deal with, music is not exempt. When asked about her legacy and being the blueprint for female artists across Africa, Kidjo says, “What I love about it is that they are themselves. I don’t want anybody to copy me, I want the young women of Africa to be and love themselves and to fight for what they want. Times are going to be hard, people will try to push your head under the water, don’t let it happen. You get down to your knees, you come back up, and that’s what Ayra Starr is. She’s smart, she knows who she is and what she wants. She sings beautifully, she’s a great producer. And at this age? I foresee a great future for her if she surrounds herself with the right people, you guys are in for a ride.” 

Last year, it was announced that Angélique Kidjo will be getting a Hollywood Walk of Fame, making her the first Black African artist to receive the honor. As part of the Class of 2026, she is set to receive the star on August 18 in Los Angeles. Her sentiment around it truly encapsulates her heart, her genius and spirit, “I’m still wrapping my head around it. It’s not just my star, it’s our star.”