Angélique Kidjo is in overdrive. The New York–based African chanteuse has just won a Grammy for best contemporary world album for Djin Djin, and the requests for interviews are growing exponentially. So she doesn’t waste time tiptoeing around the question of how she bagged one of the music industry’s top prizes with her ninth release.

“For once, I didn’t have to fight against the ego of a producer who wants to make me do something other than my music,” says the feisty Kidjo, on the line from Los Angeles and speaking in French. “Tony Visconti understood from the start: ‘You know the music best, I’ll only talk when it’s indispensable for the song.’ And he kept to that.”

Djin Djin marks a return to Kidjo’s musical roots in Benin, the West African country where she was born and raised. “The traditional music of my homeland allowed me to go out and encounter the heritage of Africans displaced and dispersed by slavery,” she says. “I worked for seven years on a trilogy—Oyaya!, Black Ivory Soul, and Oremi—inspired by the diaspora. Once I’d done that, I felt, ‘Fine, I started from Benin, it’s still within me, and I’m going to bring it back to the centre of the debate.’ ”

Benin is also home to the members of the Gangbé Brass Band, whom Kidjo encountered at festivals around the world. She loved their roisterous, festive music and attitude, and invited a couple of the group’s percussionists to be on Djin Djin.

“On their own recordings, they play certain instruments unique to our culture, and which can’t be transported overseas. They’re made from a mix of clay and animal skins. I love the earthy sound, and wanted it for my album,” Kidjo says. “Amazingly, the guys managed to re-create it over here with a drum that’s made out of rusty iron, of all things! It gives a very Béninois character to the rhythms.”

Kidjo, who cowrites almost all of her songs with her husband Jean Hébrail, also received a boost on Djin Djin from various stellar guests. The midtempo, jazz-coloured title track features vocals from Alicia Keys and the saxophone of Branford Marsalis. Other tracks find Kidjo collaborating with Joss Stone, Amadou and Mariam, Carlos Santana, Josh Groban, Ziggy Marley, and Peter Gabriel, who duets with her on the richly textured and gently passionate “Salala”.

“I sent Peter the song and he really liked it, but wondered how he should perform it,” Kidjo recalls. “I said, ‘Put yourself in the space you were in when your son was born.’ At such a time you feel such joy, such absolute love, and you’re ready to die for your child. I wanted to do an ode to the beauty of birth, and the importance of children—and therefore of women—in society. At the award ceremony, when I put the Grammy on my head, it was a gesture towards African women, who often carry heavy loads that way. My reward was also for all of them.”

Angélique Kidjo plays the River Rock Casino on Sunday (February 24).