Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Hey, here’s something we’ve said a few times over the years on this program: Angelique Kidjo has a new CD out.

Oyo comes out next week. It’s a collection of songs by artists that Kidjo herself grew up on in her native Benin like James Brown, Santana and Aretha Franklin. And on this cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on Up,” Kidjo duets with R&B singer John Legend.

Angelique Kidjo didn’t spend her youth in Benin listening only to American pop classics. There’s a Miriam Makeba song here, as well as a number from a Bollywood movie that Kidjo and her father had seen a dozen times when she was a girl.

The real standout track though is an American song that never had words.

“Samba Pa Ti” was one of Carlos Santana’s great romantic showpieces for his guitar. And where his guitar once wailed, Kidjo sings words she wrote in Yoruba. When she’s not singing, Roy Hargrove takes over on trumpet.

We’ll leave you today with a good taste of Angelique Kidjo’s cover of Samba Pa Ti, from her latest CD “Oyo.”