The new wave of West African pop music will finally break over the International Festival Nuits d’Afrique, which strikes a blow by inviting the mega star Yemi Alade. At only 33 years old, the Nigerian musician and activist, revealed at home in 2009 in a popular televised singing competition, will return to Montreal, on the festival’s main outdoor stage, on July 24, to serve us her dance hits with R&B and dancehall flavors. , as the essential Johnnythe song-event that created a dent in the Western music industry through which several other talented pop stars from Africa slipped.
Many today benefit from the efforts of this pioneer through whom African pop has once again become cool to North America. Everyone, from his Nigerian colleagues Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy (who will be in Osheaga on July 30) to the French star of Malian origin Aya Nakamura, owe him a debt of gratitude, “but others before me have also shown me the way”, shades Yemi Alade with modesty. “I will simply answer you that I feel blessed today and that I am very aware of my own contribution to the influence of the afrobeats current”, a term by which we generally designate these modern pop grooves from the African continent.
Yemi Alade is used to playing in stadiums, so it will be a privilege to attend his legendary performances in the relative intimacy of the Quartier des Spectacles floor. Since the global success of Johnnyin 2014, his career continued to expand with each new album (the tasty Queendon.com is the most recent, released last year) and with each new collaboration, the most prestigious being undoubtedly its appearance on the soundtrack of the remake of The Lion Kingproduced by Beyoncé in 2019.
Thus, she lives today in the planes, she notices at the end of the Zoom lens, from her base in London. “I won’t lie to you, these four days in London, where I also have my little studio, are almost a vacation”. She was returning from three days in Paris for a recording session, preceded by a three-day stopover in Belgium and a brief stay in Sierra Leone. “I’m going back to Paris tomorrow to give a concert there, and then I’ll arrive in Canada. »
To the origin of the world
With her soft and assured voice, her catchy choruses, her flair for dance and modern productions as well as her radiant attitude, Yemi Alade opened the doors to a new generation of artists who in turn appropriated the codes of R&B, rap, Jamaican dancehall, Ghanaian highlife and danceable electronic pop from the northern hemisphere to find success in the West and prove to the world that Africa is modern, welcoming and exciting.
The Jamaican dancehall influence is particularly prominent in the sound of Alade and, for that matter, many other artists from his country, the continent’s most populous — with more than 216 million, and where the economic and cultural capital, Lagos, alone accounts for more than 15 million. “I love dancehall, I lose my manners when I hear it on the radio! advances the musician. My heart beats faster when I hear this beat, I’m in love with it vibesjamaican — the kick of the bass, the swing of the percussion of this music, this rhythm has something fundamental that brings me back to the origin of the world, and I think that’s why the influence of this sound has crossed borders. I promise you that you will hear a lot about my next project”, says Alade who, last May, launched the song My Mana duet with Jamaican singer Kranium.
Yemi Alade also claims another influence, that of her friend Angélique Kidjo. “Angélique is like a mother to me,” says Yemi Alade. Our relationship has grown over time. When we recorded our duet [Shekere, de l’album Woman of Steelqu’Alade lançait en 2019], it was a dream come true. I call him ” My Queen , she is a mentor to me — she is a woman of action. In fact, there is a parallel to be drawn between the respective careers of the young Nigerian and the Beninese legend who, in the 1980s, dug a new furrow for African music in the northern hemisphere by preparing the rhythms from the continent with the pop flavors of the hour.
Like Kidjo, Yemi Alade puts his notoriety at the service of society. Appointed ambassador for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), she has been involved in the pan-African vaccination effort to counter COVID-19 and campaigns for sustainable development and better conditions for all women, especially women. from his corner of the world.
“Because before becoming a musician, I saw the difficulties around me, I was aware of the fate of people less privileged than me, says Yemi Alade. Now that I have a platform, I try to use it to wake up the world to important issues — I’m not doing it as an artist, not as a star, but as a woman, as a person human. I’m always looking for a way to use my music to make the world a better place. »
Yemi Alade will perform on the TD–Radio-Canada stage on July 24 at 9:30 p.m.