A sound like a heartbeat

ANGELIQUE KIDJO’S music has always been about the drums. Despite her eclectic fascination with music from other parts of the world -- jazz, funk, blues, Latin, electronica -- the dynamic singer-songwriter from West Africa’s Benin delivers performances, both live and recorded, that inevitably smolder with an undercurrent of traditional African rhythms. But on her new CD, “Djin Djin” (Razor & Tie/Starbucks Entertainment), she conceptualized the album, from the beginning, as a fertile musical tree, spreading in all directions, growing from rich rhythmic soil provided by a pair of Beninese percussionists, Crespin Kpitiki and Benoit Avihoue.

Discussing the recording a few weeks ago, after she’d opened for Josh Groban at Staples Center, Kidjo recalled, with a laugh, “When I called them in Benin, they said, ‘What do you want?’ And I said, ‘Bring all your drums.’ They said there were some that they couldn’t bring, but I said I wanted them all, including the calabash and the one you play in water.” (The African water drum is actually half a calabash gourd, floating base-up in water, played with the hands.) “And they did. And they became the centerpiece of the album.”

She was right. Although the most visible (and marketable) aspect of “Djin Djin” is the presence of some high-profile guest artists -- Branford Marsalis, Alicia Keys, Joss Stone, Peter Gabriel, Amadou and Mariam, Carlos Santana, Ziggy Marley and Groban -- it is the steaming energy of the percussion that brings it fully to life.

The opening track, “Ae Ae,” as well as the passionate “Papa,” the jaunty “Mama Golo Papa,” and the reggae tinges of “Arouna” (as well as the Afro Reggae duet with Ziggy Marley on “Sedjedo”), are virtually irresistible pulsations of sound and emotion. Kidjo’s voice, reminiscent at times of the incantatory timbres of Salif Keita, soars dramatically above the accompaniment, alternately demanding, testifying, probing and purring. The only thing missing is the visual image of the sheer physicality she brings to her live performances, although the charismatic quality of her interaction with the drums produces the almost palpable, body-moving sense of her dexterous, on-stage dance movements.

Kidjo brings all that and more to her duet performances as well. Each establishes a different musical connection.

“I wanted to bring the guests into my world,” she said. “Music is a universal language. Everyone knows that. But sometimes we categorize so much that we forget about that universality.”

There’s no forgetting, however, in the flowing lyricism of “Djin Djin,” which beautifully combines the voices of Kidjo and Keys, romanced by Marsalis’ roving soprano saxophone. “I knew,” said Kidjo, “that I could give Branford anything and he would be completely open to it.”

The Stone duet was a more spontaneous event. Although they’d met at a benefit concert for Katrina victims and had agreed to do something together, the musical encounter didn’t take place until they happened to be at the Electric Lady studios at the same time.

“When I first played [the Rolling Stones’] “Gimme Shelter” for her, Joss said, ‘Wow, this is wicked!’ The Stones had recorded it before she was born!”

But if the tune seemed archaic from Stone’s youthful perspective, that fact didn’t inhibit the interpretation, which roars with African-driven rock ‘n’ roll intensity.

Other songs, some in unlikely combinations, emerge in equally compelling fashion. Sade’s “Pearls,” the poignant tale of a refugee of Somalia, is delivered by the unlikely combination of Kidjo, Santana and Groban. Its performance was one of the highlights of the Groban/Kidjo concert at Staples, and the recorded version, with Santana’s wailing guitar adding mournful counterpoint, is even better.

“Carlos knows exactly what I’m talking about,” said Kidjo. “He always says music comes from Africa. And with Josh, I wanted somebody who was not completely classical, but classical enough to be able to balance my voice, and Josh was perfect.”

Most surprising of all, in what is surely one of the most musical diverse CDs of the year, is Kidjo’s unlikely, but gripping, take on Ravel’s “Bolero.” She chose it, she said, because, “for me, the ‘Bolero’ of Ravel is the first time ever that classical music used a black African model.”

“Djin Djin” is the 10th album from the four-time Grammy nominee. Like the others, it is founded on her fervent belief in music’s power of communication. “I tell myself all the time,” she said, “that if I don’t prove to myself and to the world that we only speak the same language through music, then there’s no longer any reason for me to be a musician.”