While most musicians can effortlessly float between their native and their countries’ official languages, very few can combine four languages, using their unique lexicon and tonations to create a melodic and evergreen smash hit. Of these few is Nel Oliver - born Noël Ahounou - a Beninese musician and producer.

In the late seventies, Nel Oliver first became known for Hi-Fi Woman, an afro-disco song produced by Frank Abel of The Lafayette Afro Rock Band. Moving from Benin to Paris, running his own studio, he started recording with session players like Patrice & Jean-Pierre Cinelu and Olivier Hutman, which would become his finest achievement.

Recorded at his Paris studio in the late 1980s, Baby Girl approaches love from an occasionally seen point of view: a father’s love for his baby girl. Baby Girl tells of the emotional attachment between a father and his daughter as he gives her away on her wedding day. Nel switches between English, French, Yoruba, and Gun, while combining reggae, boogie disco, funk and soul smoothness at its best. The chorus, sung in English, opens with “Though I hate to see you go, I know you have your life to live and I can see love in your eyes”, telling of the difficulty of a parent seeing their child grow and become their own person.

Baby Girl would earn Nel a Kora nomination in 1998. It was also featured in Tunde Kelani’s 2006 movie, ‘Abeni.’

Noël Ahounou popularly known as Nel Oliver was born December 17, 1948, in Porto-Novo, Benin Republic.

Discovering the Multilingual Magic of Nel Oliver's Evergreen Hit, Baby Girl

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