Angelique Kidjo: Black Ivory Soul : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Benin-bred songwriter and chanteuse Angelique Kidjo has, in the last decade, become one of Western Africa's most celebrated musical exports. Like Youssou N'Dour, Salif Keita and others from the region whose renown has crossed the Atlantic, Kidjo has assimilated a trove of international musical influences and made a lot of friends, both of which are omnipresent on her seventh solo album, Black Ivory Soul. On the album's twelve songs, sung by Kidjo primarily in Yoruba, Brazilian rhythms and melodies mingle with African vocal inflections within song structures that frequently are distinctly American. The only bumpy rides are the album's two most Americanized songs. "Iwoya" is gummed up slightly by guest vocals/aphorisms from Dave Matthews ("You don't have to be old to be wise" is one such), and on the desultory title track -- the only one on which she sings in English -- Kidjo sounds as if she's being dragged through a Sade outtake. Everywhere else, the songs run free and the melodies enchant and surprise. Kidjo has the vocal chops of a diva and the jauntiness of a young child discovering song for the first time. On tracks such as the rollicking "Ominara" and the heartbreaking ballad "Okan Bale," language barrier is subverted: Kidjo's voice is a babel fish for the human spirit.

JEREMY SIMON
(March 19, 2002)