Happy birthday Angélique Kidjo

Happy birthday An icon of world music for more than three decades, Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo, known as Angélique Kidjo, is a five-time Grammy Award-winning Beninese singer-songwriter, actress, and activist who is noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Kidjo was born into a family of performing artists.

Kidjo was born in Ouidah, French Dahomey, in what is now Benin on the 14th of July 1960.

Her father is from the Fon people of Ouidah and her mother is from the Yoruba people in Nigeria.

She grew up listening to Yoruba and Beninese traditional music. By the time she was six, Kidjo was performing with her mother's theatre troupe, giving her an early appreciation for traditional music and dance.

She started singing in her school band, Les Sphinx and found success 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.

Kidjo married French musician and producer Jean Hébrail in 1987. Their daughter Naima was born in 1993 in France.

May God bless her new age