Before the decades of international success, before the slew of Grammy Awards and collaborations with Alicia Keys and Peter Gabriel and John Legend, before becoming the first African-born artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Angélique Kidjo was a 6-year-old prodigy, singing onstage with her mother’s theater troupe in Benin.
“My mom was a choreographer,” Kidjo said. “But she also played the clarinet and loved to sing. My dad, too — he played the banjo. I was raised by two passionate artists.”
Kidjo, 66, has come a long way since her early days in West Africa but kept the artist dream alive. She fled a communist dictatorship and relocated to Paris in 1983, beginning the journey to becoming one of the most successful African musicians in history. She is also a longtime activist — championing children’s rights and women’s access to education while battling global poverty and climate change — and has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002. As former U.S. president Bill Clinton famously said of Kidjo, “The only thing bigger than her voice is her heart.”
She released her latest album, Hope!!, in April on the Parlophone/Warner Music Group label. The record is a vibrant and star-studded tribute to her mother, Yvonne, who died in 2021. A joyous fusion of West African rhythms, slick global pop and infectious funk, it brings together Kidjo’s iconic voice with the likes of Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers, and top African stars such as Diamond Platnumz of Tanzania and Ayra Starr of Nigeria. On Friday, August 21, at the Flynn in Burlington, Kidjo will perform songs from that album and from her expansive, glittering career.
“I love Vermont,” said Kidjo, who last performed at the Flynn in 2021. “I really like Burlington — that city gives me hope and strength. It’s just one of those cities.”
Ahead of her arrival to the Queen City, Kidjo called Seven Days from her home in Paris to chat about heat waves, the state of the music industry and the importance of hope.
Good morning, Angélique! How’s things in Paris today?
Hot. Very, very hot. We are going through a heat wave in France, and there’s been drought for a while, too. It’s happening all over Europe. The Danube is so low, only small boats are crossing right now. It’s a little scary, really.
Humans are stubborn and don’t learn; they think nature will be patient with us. She will not. There is no country that will be immune to this — in Benin, it rains so much now during the rainy season that nothing can grow.
When you see all the heat waves and droughts and wildfires, it’s easy to despair.
Yes, but there is no such thing as certainty. That is why hope is so important. Without hope, how can we make plans? How can we create families? Everything starts with hope. Love starts with hope. If you let chaos take over, you kill your hope; you kill your ability to think, your ability to love. The only people who profit off that are the ones who created the chaos.
That concept anchors your new album, which is both a tribute to the very concept of hope itself and to your late mother. Was it important to you that your eulogy to your mother also be an album brimming with positivity?
My mom was the most hopeful person I ever met in my life. Her smile was just a killer — you could not say no when you saw it. And she always lived in the present. The last conversation we had before her brain aneurysm, she said to me: “Never stop singing. And the day before I die, sing before they put me in the grave.”
She wouldn’t have wanted to be in the way of me making music. But there is no logic to love! So it took me a little time to go back in time, through the hard times and the happy times, to just be with my mom. I needed to let her guide me.
I am the enemy of fear.
Angélique Kidjo
Did you feel her guidance while you were recording Hope!!?
With every single little step, yes. Every moment, I felt my mother. When a song was done, I’d feel her tap me on the shoulder and say, “Well done.” I actually had to be like, “Mom, please stop for a minute,” and I’d just chuckle. The whole album was a process of following that guidance and going back in time from the beginning until she’s gone.
Did having a concept for the album help with the recording process? Being in the studio isn’t exactly your favorite place, right?
Oh, no. I do not love being in a studio. Ask my husband about it: He knows I never stop talking about how much I hate being there. I like to sing to people, not a booth! I didn’t do the studio thing until I was in my twenties, and I was just like, “What is this? Why can’t we just do it live and call it a day?”
I love the record we made — I’m presenting my mother to the world. But for me, happiness is onstage. I cannot truly explain how I feel when I’m singing onstage. And it’s cool because, before, I would always call my mom after a show. Now, she’s onstage with me, having fun.
What are some things that make you feel hope?
Well, humans still love to get together and experience things. The world is becoming so unreal, people crave authenticity now. In the chaos, there is hope. What do we do when we are on the verge of collapse? We go back to community. We go into a room together and feel the vibrations, the waves of music, organically.
I try to remember that we are given hope at birth. Our happiness is a responsibility, because darkness comes and goes. I grew up in a dictatorship, and I had to flee my country because I cannot live in fear. I am the enemy of fear. To hope is to not accept the fear and chaos.
Listen, we make everything too complicated in some effort to find importance with ourselves. Nobody is important; everybody is going to die someday. That’s why in Benin, they say, “Everybody is born with a death in one pocket and a life in another.” All we have, and it is a lot, is hope.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Springing Eternal: West African singer Angélique Kidjo practices what she preaches on her latest album, Hope!!
This article appears in August 19 • 2026.
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