Angélique Kidjo Photo

Angélique Kidjo Bio, Age, Height, Husband, Net Worth, Advocacy, and Songs

Angélique Kidjo Biography

A native of Ouidah, Benin, Angélique Kidjo is a five-time Grammy Award-winning Beninese activist, actress, and singer-songwriter who is noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos.

Angélique Kidjo Age

Kidjo is 62 years old as of 2022. She was born on 14 July 1960 in Ouidah, Benin. She celebrates her birthday on 14 July every year.

Angélique Kidjo Height

Kidjo stands at a height of 5 feet 8 inches (175 cm) tall and weighs 60kg (115 lbs).

Angélique Kidjo Education

Kidjo began singing in her school band, Les Sphinx, and discovered triumph as a teenager with her adaptation of Miriam Makeba’s “Les Trois Z”, which was played on national radio. Kidjo recorded the album Pretty with the Cameroonian producer Ekambi Brilliant and her brother Oscar.

It featured the songs “Ninive”, “Gbe Agossi” and a tribute to the singer Bella Bellow, one of her role models. The success of the album allowed her to tour all over West Africa. Continuing political conflicts in Benin prevented her from being an independent artist in her own country and led her to relocate to Paris in 1983.

Angélique Kidjo Photo
Angélique Kidjo Photo

Angélique Kidjo Family

Kidjo was born and raised in Ouidah, Benin by her parents. Her mother is from the Yoruba people in Nigeria and her father is from the Fon people of Ouidah. She has a brother called Oscar Kidjo.

Angélique Kidjo Husband

Kidjo married a loving and devoted French producer and musician Jean Hébrail in 1987. They were blessed with a daughter Naima was born in 1993 in France.

Angélique Kidjo Net Worth

Kidjo has an estimated net worth of $5 million.

Angélique Kidjo Advocacy

Kidjo has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002. With UNICEF, she has traveled to many countries in Africa.

Along with Mary Louise Cohen and John R. Phillips, Kidjo founded The Batonga Foundation, which empowers some of the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach young women and girls in Benin with the knowledge and skills they need to be agents of change in their own lives and communities.

Batonga achieves this by locating the most vulnerable adolescent girls in Benin and connecting them to girl-centered safe spaces led by Beninese women. These safe spaces provide young women and girls with training that allows them to gain new skills in financial literacy and build social capital.

She campaigned for Oxfam at the 2005 Hong Kong WTO meeting, for their Fair Trade Campaign and traveled with them in North Kenya and at the border of Darfur and Chad with a group of women leaders in 2007, and participated in the video for the in My Name Campaign with the will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas.

She hosted the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Prize for Achievement in African Leadership in Alexandria, Egypt, on November 26, 2007, and on November 15, 2008, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, on November 14, 2009, and in Mauritius on November 20, 2010. She hosted the “Africa Celebrates Democracy Concert” organized by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Tunis on November 11, 2011, and sang at the Award Ceremony on November 12, 2011, also in Dakar on November 10, 2012, Addis Ababa in November 2013 and Accra in November 2015.

Since March 2009, she has been campaigning for “Africa for women’s rights”. This campaign was launched by The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).

On September 28, 2009, UNICEF and Pampers launched a campaign to eradicate Tetanus “Give the Gift of Life” and asked Kidjo to produce the song “You Can Count On Me” to support the campaign. Each download of the song donates a vaccine to a mother or a mother-to-be.

In June 2010, she contributed the song “Leila” to the Enough Project and Downtown Records’ Raise Hope for Congo compilation. Proceeds from the compilation fund efforts to make the protection and empowerment of Congo’s women a priority, as well as inspire individuals around the world to raise their voices for peace in Congo.

Angélique Kidjo Remain In Light

Kidjo has partnered with producer Jeff Bhasker (Rihanna, Kanye West, Harry Styles, Bruno Mars, Drake, Jay-Z) to create Remain In Light – a new project that finds the Benin-born artist reclaiming rock for Africa, bringing Talking Heads’ landmark 1980 album full circle. That record is a track-by-track re-imagination of the original, considered to be one of the greatest albums of the ’80s and deeply influenced by music from West Africa, notably Fela Kuti’s afrobeat.

With her version of Remain In Light, Angélique celebrates the genius of Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and the touchstones that made the original so revered and injects it with her euphoric singing, explosive percussion, horn orchestrations, and select lyrics performed in languages from her home country.

Remain In Light features appearances by Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, 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 created the album artwork.

Angélique Kidjo Songs

  • Agolo Ayé
  • Do Yourself Mother Nature
  • We We Logozo
  • We Are One Return to Pride Rock
  • Wombo Lombo Fifa
  • Mother Nature Mother Nature
  • Batonga Logozo
  • Africa, One of a Kind Mother Nature
  • Once in a Lifetime Remain in Light
  • Malaïka Logozo
  • Love Song to the Earth Love Song to the Earth
  • Voodoo Child Oremi
  • Afrika Black Ivory Soul
  • Blewu Parakou
  • Salala Djin Djin
  • Dignity Mother Nature
  • Adouma Ayé
  • Congoleo Oyaya! Easy As Life Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida
  • Idje Idje Ayé Summertime Spirit Rising Yemandja Ayé
  • Free & Equal Mother Nature

Angélique Kidjo Instagram

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