Timothée Chalamet, Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus will be in extremely good company in August when they receive their stars at a ceremony at the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside African singing legend Angelique Kidjo.
A five-time Grammy Award-winner who oozes charisma, Kidjo was just 22 when she fled to Paris to escape the oppressive regime in her native Benin. She is now poised to become the first Black African performer to ever receive a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. It is hard to think of a more worthy honoree.
Kidjo is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and veteran activist who speaks 10 languages, including four from her West African homeland. A borders-blurring singer, songwriter and band leader, she has long embraced music from near and far.
Or, as she told me in our 2017 Union-Tribune interview: “When I was 7, I told my mother I wanted to be James Brown! When I was 8, I decided I was going to pay tribute to Jimi Hendrix.”
Angelique Kidjo is a vocal dynamo in any language (and she speaks 10 of them)
After hearing her superb second album, 1991’s “Logozo,” a suitably impressed Brown phoned Kidjo to offer his congratulations. Over the years, her many collaborators have ranged from Alicia Keys, Herbie Hancock, Burna Boy, Celia Cruz and David Byrne to Branford Marsalis, Philip Glass, Carlos Santana, Peter Gabriel and the San Diego Symphony.
Kidjo’s latest album, the 16-song “Hope!!”, was released April 24 and teams her with Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers, the Soweto Gospel Chorus, rapper Quavo, France’s Florent Pagny and more.
To these ears, “Hope!!” sounds like a misguided attempt to make Kidjo’s music more palatable to a young Western audience by watering down or eliminating many of the qualities that make her so compelling. Having a singer as gifted as Kidjo electronically process her deeply expressive voice by singing through Auto-Tune is akin to asking Meryl Streep or Colman Domingo to act while covered in electrical tape.
But no matter.
Because when Kidjo hits the stage, she is so talented, versatile and charismatic that she can easily transform even a marginal song into something special. Her current tour with her four-man band finds Kidjo performing a career-spanning repertoire that bodes well for her nearly sold-out San Diego concert, her first here in nine years.
7 p.m., Saturday, May 3. Baker-Baum Concert Hall, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla. $105-$118. theconrad.org
The recently deceased Gordon Goodwin, at center, is shown with members of his Big Phat Band, as they celebrate their 2015 Grammy Award win in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category in Los Angeles. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band
There’s a very sad reason why a search for pending concerts on the website for Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band yields the message: “There are no upcoming tour dates.”
A multi-talented saxophonist, pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, Goodwin died from complications of pancreatic cancer on Dec. 8, 2025. He was 70.
It is unclear whether his 27-year-old big band’s performance here Saturday — its only known 2026 gig so far — marks the start of a new era without Goodwin, or a final musical sendoff.
He had been scheduled to lead his brassy ensemble here at a Jan. 10 concert at Jacobs Music Center, but it was postponed in the fall as his health declined.
The rescheduled date this weekend promises to be an emotional affair for the audience and his band, which features former Chick Corea saxophonist Eric Marienthal and Goodwin’s widow, singer Vangie Gunn.
Goodwin was a much-in-demand arranger for Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Leslie Odom Jr. and Christina Aguilera, among others. He was also the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “Phat Tracks with Gordon Goodwin.” His first film score was for “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!,” the 1978 B-movie spoof that featured and was co-produced by San Diego native Steve Peace, who was elected to the California State Assembly in 1982.
6 p.m. Saturday, May 2. Jacobs Music Center, 1245 Seventh Ave., downtown. $59-$74. sandiegosymphony.org
Grammy Award-winner Meshell Ndegeocello, whose music blurs genres, will perform at UC San Diego’s Epstein Family Amphitheater. (Charlie Gross)
Meshell Ndegeocello
Having covered the Grammy Awards in person nearly every year since 1989, I am quite certain Meshell Ndegeocello is the only person to ever thank both her record company and the groundbreaking author and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin during her Grammy acceptance speech.
She did so last year, when her superb album, “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin,” won Best Alternative Jazz Album honors.
Specifically, she thanked Baldwin and his estate for letting her use recordings of him speaking on eight of her album’s 17 cuts. She also thanked Blue Note Records for “changing the narrative of my life.”
I asked Ndegeocello to elaborate on her narrative when she came to the Grammy backstage media room, and she offered a characteristically no-nonsense response.
“I’m glad to win at 56, not in my 20s,” she said. “I’m a musician. I play my music for a living. I don’t make money from streaming or album sales. So now, with two back-to-back Grammy wins, I can ask my booking agent to get bigger fees.”
I don’t know how much Ndegeocello’s fee is for her concert here next week at UC San Diego, but her impressive artistic track record suggests she’s well worth whatever she’s being paid.
7 p.m, Wednesday, May 6. UC San Diego’s Epstein Family Amphitheater, 9480 Innovation Lane, La Jolla. $20-$55. artpower.ucsd.edu