YIÊH

Gabon-born singer Pamela Badjogo honed her chops as a backing vocalist for Grammy-winning powerhouse diva Angélique Kidjo, then went on to feature in line-ups including Alba Griot Ensemble and – with the likes of Kidjo, Oumou Sangaré and Kandia Kouyaté – the consciousness-raising collective that is Les Amazones d’Afrique. Like most of the artists that have moved through the latter, the France-based Badjogo is a force in her own right, and has flexed her penchant for mixing Afro pop, Bantu-style highlife and Afrobeat with effervescent synths and female-empowerment lyrics across solo albums Mes Couleurs (2016) and Kaba (2021). And while Badjogo’s agency is such that Kwame Yeboah, music director of Ghanaian icons Pat Thomas & Ebo Taylor, has once again lent his services to this appealing, if sometimes overproduced, album, her solo career – unlike that of former Amazones member Rokia Koné – has never quite garnered the international attention it deserves. There is much to love on YIÊH, not least the way Badjogo’s lilting, soulful voice rides waves of ringing highlife guitar on the bittersweet title-track, or the championing of Black womanhood in ‘Letondo’, the effervescent, eminently danceable, cleverly multilingual lead single. What Badjogo calls her ‘joyful feminism’ is palpable.