Angélique Kidjo
Fatoumata Diawara

It is not a style but an intention: sharing things and gathering people. Since she fled the dictatorship in Benin in 1983, she has sung about freedom and the blending of cultures. With her powerful voice and her captivating tone, Angélique Kidjo is a key figure of the world music. In 2026, she comes back for the sixth time at Jazz à Vienne, in an intimate ensemble with her quartet. This artist who won five Grammy Awards transcends musical boundaries, mixing jazz, afro funk, R&B, salsa and traditional African music. She is used to the greatest stages in the world, like the Carnegie Hall in New York City, and she never stops surprising us. Paying tribute to Celia Cruz, her album Celia, released in 2019, reinvents the salsa classics blending them with African and Cuban rhythms. They were brilliantly mixed by Russell Elevado, the sound engineer of D’Angelo’s album entitled Voodoo. With her unlimited talent, she also collaborated with Philip Glass and the prestigious Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on a symphonic album in homage to David Bowie. Involved in humanitarian causes in order to save the planet and educate children in Africa, the rebellious diva promises once again to captivate Jazz à Vienne.

Line-up :

• Angélique Kidjo (vocals)
• Thierry Vaton (piano)
• Rody Cereyon (bass)
• David Donatien (percussion)
• Grégory Louis (drums)

It is an energy. A power. A smile. A voice from Africa that matters. Which tells the suffering of a stolen childhood and the joy of this childhood which she retrieved with each dancing step and each song performed in her mother tongue called “bambara”. Fatoumata Diawara is an enchantress, an agitator of emotions, who is able to make her audience cry, laugh and above all dance. Before anything else, she is a free woman who chose to speak about excision and forced marriage. Her songs talk about the ordeals she had in her life in order to save other children and to remind everyone of the fact that no one can impose a destiny on somebody. Fatoumata Diawara fled Mali when she was 19 to write her story. She understood that art – dancing, singing and also acting – was her path. At the age of 43 years old, she now sings about her double life, as an artist and a mother. And she continues to examine peculiarities of society. On the stage of the Théâtre Antique, Fatoumata Diawara will play just before another voice from Africa: Angélique Kidjo. The night will certainly be effervescent!