Angélique Kidjo

For five-time Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo, “If you sing, you are a storyteller de facto. You are the one that tells the story of your society, of your time, of the people you meet, for people out there to say to themselves … ‘I am not alone in this.’”

Born in Benin, Kidjo started singing before she learned to talk, and was composing music by the age of 11. When Mathieu Kérékou’s communist dictatorship took over the country, Kidjo remembers, “What disappeared first was the variety of different music that was played on the radio.” Where once she could listen to everything from Paul Anka to Michael Jackson, “suddenly, you wake up in the morning, the first thing you hear is ‘ready for the revolution.’” She fled the country so that she could pursue music without fear of political persecution, moving first to France, where she released her first three albums. She immigrated to the United States in 1997.

Today, Kidjo is a globally celebrated singer and songwriter, named “Africa’s greatest living diva” by NPR and one of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2021. To date, she has released 16 albums in multiple music genres and languages. Alongside her successful musical career, Kidjo also travels the world advocating for children as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In addition to her work with the UN, she founded the Batonga Foundation, which supports both secondary and higher education for girls in Africa. As Kidjo told Global Citizen in 2021, the mission of the foundation is to “show girls that they can be agents of change in their communities and lives, but also that they are leaders in their own right, at all levels. We give them access to knowledge, new skills, and opportunities to put that leadership into practice.” In recognition of this “unique and unstoppable artist and songwriter,” in 2023 Kidjo received the Polar Music Prize, one of the most prestigious music prizes in the world.

Instagram: @angeliquekidjo

Twitter: @angeliquekidjo