Chocolate Tuba

Angélique Kidjo, Once in a Lifetime

Angélique Kidjo is simulatenously from Benin, from nowhere, and from everywhere. She had the beginnings of a career in her home country, but left for Paris because of the politics of the day. Her music is rooted in Benin, but incorporates influences from all over the place. Which may have something to do with her decision to cover the album Remain in Light by Talking Heads, bringing their "African" album back to Africa. There is an amusing video for "Once in a Lifetime", but I'm instead going with this amateur video of a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York where David Byrne joined her and her band onstage for an unplanned, unrehearsed, and kind of vocally sloppy version of the song, because it really highlights the combination of David Byrne's punk-inspired diversion into cod-African music with Angélique Kidjo's cosmopolitan take on pan-African music, meeting at a place somewhere in the Atlantic, equidistant from New York, Paris, and Cotonou.