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African Artists Angélique Kidjo and Soweto Gospel Choir Take Top Honors at the 2008 Grammys
Beninese singer and songwriter (and World Music Productions Board Member) Angélique Kidjo’s 2007 CD, Djin Djin, won a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album. The title of “Djin Djin”-- which was released on May 1st, 2007--refers to the daily ringing of an African bell. Noted for her diverse musical styles, this CD was no exception, as it included guest features such as Carlos Santana, Alicia Keys, Joss Stone, and Ziggy Marley. Kidjo’s musical influences include Afropop, Caribbean zouk, Congolese rumba, jazz, gospel, and Latin. Kidjo, who has been performing since she was six, sings in Fon, French, Yoruba, and English on the CD. Djin Djin, her 10th CD, garnered her fourth Grammy nomination and her first win.
Kidjo is also a social and political activist. A UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002, she also founded The Batonga Foundation, which funds African girls’ secondary and college education so that they may become role models in working towards positive social, economic and political change in Africa.
Listen to a single from Kidjo’s Grammy-Winning CD, Djin Djin, on YouTube
Check out Kidjo’s Website
Watch the Djin Djin Electronic Press Kit (EPK)
The Soweto Gospel Choir, complete with 26 members, a four-piece band, and a percussion section, also fared well at the Grammies, winning Best Traditional World Music Album for their CD, African Spirit. Formed in 2002, the choir hails from and is currently under the direction of David Mulovhedzi and Beverly Bryer. Singing in six of ’s 11 different languages, their earthy, rhythmic music is often accompanied in concert by energetic dancing and colorful costumes. This win marks their second consecutive Grammy—the first was for 2006’s Blessed.
The Soweto Gospel Choir now performs around the world, often alongside notable musicians such as Bono, Queen, Peter Gabriel, and Jimmy Cliff. Performing both live and on popular talk shows such as Oprah and Late Night With Jay Leno, the choir’s music has reached international recognition. In 2003, the choir founded its own AIDS orphans foundation, Nkosi’s Haven Vukani.
Listen to Soweto Gospel Choir on YouTube
Check out Soweto Gospel Choir’s Website
Read Banning Eyre’s reviews of both these releases below.
REVIEW OF ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO’S DJIN DJIN by Banning Eyre
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.
REVIEW OF SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR’S “AFRICAN SPIRIT” by Banning Eyre
There is no resisting the Soweto Gospel Choir. They’ve learned equally from the best models of American gospel and soul, and from the rich pop and vocal traditions of South Africa to arrive at a supremely confident sound. In other parts of Africa, religious attitudes have sometimes resulted in varieties of “gospel” music that seemed bent on not making anyone want to dance, or even sway. But SGC never falls into that trap. They swing and groove with the best of them and leave one feeling, “This is what African gospel music should sound like!
African Spirit, the group’s third international release, offers their most adventurous and confident work to date, a succession of nineteen, concise, uniquely affecting tracks. There are soulful songs of uplift (“Seteng Sediba”, “Shosholoza”) soothing Zulu hymns (“Ke Na Le Modisa,” “Izwi Lahlab’Inhiziyo Yami”), a number of familiar refrains (“Sitting In Limbo,” “One Love,” “Rivers of Babylon,” “This Little Light of Mine,”). Backing ranges from nothing at all to a single hand drum to the full pump of a rootsy South African band, as on “Africa” with its shades of township drive and kwela pennywhistle pop. Another high point with the band is the traditional song “Sefapano,” a perfect marriage of heartfelt hymn and township shuffle.
SGC has understandably earned admirers far and wide, including some famous ones. Midway through this varied set, they back Bono and U2 in a live version of “One.” Equally comfortable in English and African tongues, SGC breathe new life into American gospel songs like “Hosana” and “Balm in Gilead.” The sheer quality of the singing would be enough to distinguish this group, even if they weren’t such inspired arrangers and appropriators. Many songs juxtapose a strong lead voice against some or all of the rest of the group. All the possibilities are there, the purr of a soft female lead (“I’ll Remember You”), the doo wop appeal of deep male voices (“Hlohonolofatsa”), plaintive, hymnal polyphony (“Modimo”), and out and out, soul diva kick (“Izwi Lahlab’Inhiziyo Yami”).
This group must rank among the best vocal ensembles in Africa, if not the world. No surprise, this release—with its mastery of genre and of the art of making connections with the wider popular culture—earned the Soweto Gospel Choir a Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album.
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