Category Archives: Angelique Kidjo

Album Review – Angélique Kidjo

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Angelique Kidjo -‘Remain In Light.’ (Kravenworks Records)

OK, let’s try and take this record at face value. It’s a record that sees American and European music meet African music, coming together to produce a record that shimmers with infectious rhythms, singalong choruses and a general feeling of euphoria. On those terms alone, this would be a pretty damn good record.

The reality is that face value really doesn’t begin to do justice to this album. Remain In Light is Angelique Kidjo’s version of the Talking Heads’ seminal 1980 album of the same name, which was produced by Brian Eno. The final record of a trilogy he produced with the band, it is still an astonishing record nearly forty years after its release.

See: if the original album drew on West African rhythms, particularly the  Nigerian afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, then this album actually takes the album back to Africa. Leaving behind her native Begin in the 1980s after a communist dictatorship, Ms. Kidjo found herself in Paris, where she encountered the music of Talking Heads, and recognised that this was music with its roots in Africa, something the Talking Heads were always open about.

Let’s be upfront about it: this is not simply a cover of the original album. It’s an album that takes it by the hand and travels with it to Africa. It’s not admonishing it, rather explaining where its original roots come from. The songs are all re-interpreted, and even if they are in the same order as they appear on the original album, they sound radically different. Album opener ‘Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)’ comes across as a call to arms. The song for which the album is best known ‘Once In A Lifetime‘ is celebratory in tone, and the haunting ‘Listening Wind’ is even more hypnotic than the original, its lyrics even more appropriate in the near forty years since the album was first released.

This is an album that stands in its own right as a key work. With an impressive team on hand, including legendary drummer Tony Allen, her longterm guitarist Dominic James, percussionist Magatte Sow, as well as Blood Orange and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, this is more than a tribute.

Outstanding. A serious contender for album of the year. I’m off to listen to it again.

****1/2

Remain In Light is released on June 8 on Kravenworks Records

 

Stream the album in its entirety ahead of its release over at NPR

Angélique Kidjo vs. Talking Heads

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Having been somewhat overwhelmed by submissions (just for a change), I am really glad not to have missed out on this.

 

Angélique Kidjo, the acclaimed singer from Benin, will shortly release her take on the Talking Heads’ seminal 1980 album, Remain In Light. Produced by Brian Eno, the album drew on West African sounds, and featured ‘Once In A Lifetime,’ which would become the band’s first hit in the UK, helped by an innovative video.

Angélique worked with 2015 Grammy Producer of the Year Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Rolling Stones, Beyonce) for her version of ‘Remain in Light,’ which brings the landmark 1980 album by Talking Heads full circle, back to the sounds of West Africa that inspired the original.  It features appearances by Ezra Koenig, Blood Orange, Tony Allen, Antibalas Horns, Angélique’s longtime guitarist Dominic James, and Magatte Sow (percussionist for the Black Panther film score). Visual artist Kerry James Marshall collaborated on the album artwork.

On her own version of the “Once In A Lifetime” video, Angelique said: ” In the 1970s, under the dictatorship in my home country of Benin, it was really difficult to find music to listen to from the rest of the world. When I went into exile in Paris in 1983, I discovered so much new music, and among them was the song “Once In A Lifetime”. Initially, it felt strange to me. People said it was Rock and Roll, but it felt African somehow. When I performed in New York in 1992 at SOB’s, David Byrne was the first American artist to come see my show. Many years later, I discovered that Brian Eno and The Talking Heads had been influenced by Fela Kuti and studied John Miller Chernoff’s book African Rhythm and African Sensibility about the power of African music. “Once In A Lifetime” was released at the start of the Reagan presidency, and you feel the anguish and anger in its lyrics. I feel the same tension in today’s political climate. Bringing “Once In A Lifetime” back to the African continent, with the help of superstar producer Jeff Bhasker, Black Panther’s percussionist Magatte Sow and guitarist Dominic James, feels so right today.”

Angelique’s version of the album is released on June 8. You can see the video for her version of ‘Once In A Lifetime’ below. It was directed by 25 year old Antoine Paley, a student at Luc Besson’s Cité Du Cinema film school.

 

…and as a bonus, the video for ‘Born Under Punches’