Zap Mama
Marie Daulne, the founder and fronting member of Zap Mama since the early 1990s, has lived a life that rivals Homer’s Odyssey. Filled with peril and triumph, globe-spanning quests, and a series of personal achievements that seem almost heroic in scope, her story is one of epic proportions in the annals of world music. She stands with one foot firmly planted in tradition and the other in the progressive sounds and sensibilities of a new century, and she consistently merges the two with an effortless grace that never fails to mesmerize. Born in the Congo, but raised in Belgium, Daulne made a pilgrimage in her late teens back to the land of her birth. In doing so, she reconnected with the pygmy culture, and discovered that the African music of her early childhood was still very much alive within her. The resulting experience, she recalls, was nothing short of an epiphany – one that changed the course of her life. “That was when I became a musician,” she said. “When I went to the Congo, I hadn’t thought of being a musician. Not at all. But I was there, and I was standing in the middle of the forest, hearing the music that had been a part of my earliest memories, and it was like an illumination, like a light.” In 1990, Daulne assembled four other vocalists and created the first incarnation of Zap Mama, an all-female a cappella quintet, or as The New York Times called it, “a utopian multicultural dream.” Adventures in Afropea I became the biggest selling non-compilation album in the history of the Luaka Bop label and reached #1 on the Billboard World Music Charts. The sophomore album Sabsylma came a year later and earned Zap Mama a Grammy nomination in the Best World Music Album category. 7 (Virgin Records), A Ma Zone (Narada) and Ancestry in Progress (Luaka Bop) which landed the #1 spot on the Billboard World Music charts, followed shortly after. Marie Daulne opens a new chapter of this continuously unfolding story with the August 7, 2007, release of Supermoon, Zap Mama’s debut recording on Heads Up International. An engaging blend of world, jazz, pop, funk, reggae and soul, the album includes guest appearances by stellar figures from around the globe: drummer Tony Allen; bassist Meshell Ndegeocello and Will Lee; guitarists David Gilmore and Michael Franti; pianists Leon Pendarvis and Robbie Kondor, percussionist Bashiri Johnson and many more. “With Supermoon, I reveal the way I chose to live when I started my career,” says Daulne. “It’s very intimate…You’re seeing me very close up. I hope that’s a kind of intimacy that people will understand. I’m opening a door to who I am.”
