(Razor & Tie/Shock)

Kidjo’s life story, condensed

Angélique Kidjo makes ecstatic pop music by blending influences from her native Benin with high-gloss Euro-disco production; her most famous song is Wombo Lombo, the soundtrack to a million P.E. teachers’ and motivational corporate speakers’ slideshows. Her newest album, the diacritic-heavy Õÿö, is something of a change in pace: this is a collection of songs that influenced her long musical career, re-recorded in her inimitable style (some with new Yoruban lyrics provided courtesy of Kidjo). The liner notes provide a neat little snapshot of each song, so I won’t repeat the details here: suffice it to say that there’s a lot of nostalgia for Kidjo’s Beninoise childhood, something understandable given that she fled the country’s murderous dictatorship in the 1980s for the bright lights of Paris (first) and New York (later). As such, there’s some expected touchstones (Nigerian Highlife, as Benin borders Nigeria, and American funk and soul numbers courtesy of Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown), as well as a smattering of unexpected numbers (Bollywood theme Dil Main Chuppa Ke Pyar Ka appears here). Really, this album is a victory lap for Kidjo, who has long been the Beninoise singer par excellence, and as such you can expect it to be a little self-indulgent. Disappointingly, though, there’s no sense of dialogue with this music: these reinventions are Kidjo all the way, and so what could have been a fascinating album turns out to be merely good, after all.

***½

CHAD PARKHILL

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