It’s always a moment to celebrate when an African album wins a Grammy Award, as Angelique Kidjo’s Djin Djin has just done for Best Contemporary World Music. Kidjo has been a standard bearer for African pop music since she tore up the scene with her brash, funky international debut, Logozo in 1991. Djin Djin features collaborative cameos from an astounding range of name talent: Peter Gabriel, Carlos Santana, Ziggy Marley, Alicia Keys, Joss Stone, Josh Groban, Amadou and Mariam, Mamadou Diabate, Branford Marsalis, and the brass section from New York’s top afrobeat band, Antibalas. It was partly the weight of all that piled-on star power that let me look past this release. (Djin Djin did not even make my top 10 of 2007.) Coming in the wake of Kidjo’s trilogy of albums exploring the roots of her hybrid sound, this release felt mired in crossover ambitions, including a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” and an adaptation of Ravel’s “Bolero.” But apparently those ambitions paid off. So I went back for a fresh listen.
First, behind the covers and visiting star power, there is in fact a fine Kidjo album here, most of it tucked away in the second half. Grammy voters may differ, but this would have been a better album without Gabriel, Stone, Keys, Groban, and Santana. To these ears, they mostly distract and weight things down. What works best is Kidjo’s own incomparable voice, as well as splendid, grooving guitar and vocal arranging that showcase it beautifully, as on the promising opener, “Ae Ae,” a classic Kidjo hook with a groove that blurs the lines between R&B and Afropop with a chatter of guitars, percussion, balafon, and kora.
After that comes soft-jazz pop with Alicia Keys (“Djin Djin”), a lavish, forced funking up of the Stone’s mystic gem “Gimme Shelter” (this can’t hold a candle to Kidjo’s adaptation of “Voodoo Child”), and a lugubrious duet with Peter Gabriel (“Salala”). By this point, momentum is badly stalled. “Senamou (C’est l’amour)” Kidjo’s lively romp with Malian rock stars Amadou and Mariam, lifts the mood briefly, but “Pearls,” a well intentioned meditation on poverty, bogs down again in overproduced sentimentality. Strings well, Santana wails, and Kidjo and Groban harmonize fabulously, but the freshness and spontaneity of Kidjo’s personality gets buried in an orgy of studio grandiosity.
“Sedgedo,” Kidjo’s satisfying duo with Ziggy Marley, marks the turning point, and from here Kidjo and her band get busy on a terrific string of originals. “Papa,” a child’s complaint about divorce, builds irresistibly, enriched by the Antibalas horns and interwoven kora and balafon. “Arouna” purveys African spirituality in layered voices with Kidjo crying and growling as only she can. “Awan N’La” and “Emma” incorporate more great vocal layering that echoes the best South African choral work. The melodious “Emma” also includes a tasty silvering of pedal steel guitar from Larry Campbell. And on “Mama Golo Papa”—as joyous a song as Kidjo has produced to date—guitar sounds blend gloriously, drawing on diverse styles and genres to arrive at a blissful union. After that, Kidjo’s take on “Bolero,” “Lonlon,” really hits the spot, beginning with voices and gradually adding texture—kora, balafon, guitars, percussion—to reach soul intensity Ravel could never have imagined
Bottom line: Kidjo deserves her Grammy, not only for her long years of adventurous, provocative work, but for this deeply mature album. It’s just too bad she had to be saddled with trendsetters and rock dinosaurs to get the world’s attention.
"Mama Golo Papa"
