Marie Daulne (born 20 October 1964), also known as Zap Mama, is a Belgian singer-songwriter, performer, composer, lyricist, activist, video artist, and ethnic-vocal therapist born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Daulne is the founder and lead singer of the music group Zap Mama, whose second album, Adventures in Afropea 1, was the best-selling world music album in 1993.
Daulne specializes in polyphonic, harmonic music with a mixture of African instruments, R&B, and hip-hop, and emphasizes voice in her music. She has said her mission is to be a bridge between the European and the African and bring the two cultures together with her music. Daulne calls her music "Afro-European".
As a solo artist, her remix of James Crawford's 1953 song "Iko-iko" was featured in the film Mission: Impossible 2.
Early life Daulne was born in the city of Isiro in east Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Her father, Cyrille Daulne, was a white Walloon (French-speaking Belgian); her mother, Bernadette Aningi, was a black Congolese Bantu woman from Kisangani. She was their fourth child. When she was a few days old, her father was captured and killed by Simba rebels, who were opposed to mixed-race relationships, during the Congo Crisis. Marie's mother, with her brother and two sisters, survived by hiding in the forest. Her three older siblings were sent to be protected by Pygmies. Several months later, they were airlifted by Belgian paratroopers and flown to Belgium.
During her youth, Daulne trained in athletics and volleyball with aspirations of competing professionally, but a leg injury led her to abandon sports and focus on music. Daulne studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts de Bruxelles and La Cambre, and also received training in dance, choreography, acrobatics, and jazz performance. Her early musical influences included Congolese vocal traditions as well as jazz, blues, reggae, and hip-hop.
Musical interests Daulne was exposed to both Congolese and Belgian musical traditions while growing up. Her mother maintained Congolese vocal traditions within the family, while her father's relatives introduced her to Walloon and liturgical music.Zap Mama. "Zap My Message = Zap Mama Welcome Page + Zap Marie = Zap Mama Bio." During adolescence, she also developed an interest in American jazz, blues, reggae, hip-hop, and vocal harmony traditions.
Although Daulne recalled her mother singing songs from Congo Kinshasa around the house, she did not teach them to her children, fearing they would "grow up too African" and instead stressing mastery of French. However, while Daulne was encouraged to adopt Belgian language and culture, her mother kept Congolese music alive in the household. For example, she taught Daulne to "sing to call the spirits of the peace ... before you eat or do something". Daulne's mother also made Daulne and her sister learn polyphonic singing.
Daulne said she rejected African traditional music growing up, as it wasn't discussed or practiced in school, seeing it as boring and somewhat shameful. However, while Daulne was away at school, she missed those African traditional songs. As such, she and her sister started to sing African melodies, leading to the formation of Zap Mama.
After hearing a recording of traditional Pygmy music, Daulne returned to Congo-Kinshasa in 1982 or 1984 to learn about her heritage and train in pygmy onomatopoeic vocal techniques. Although Daulne draws inspiration from Africa, she does not call Africa home, feeling she was treated as a Belgian tourist during her trip back to the Congo.
Musical career Zap Mama has released nine full-length albums: Zap Mama (1991; re-released in 1993 as Adventures in Afropea 1, minus the single track Etupe), Sabsylma (1994), Seven (1997), A Ma Zone (1999), Ancestry in Progress (2004), Supermoon (2007), ReCreation (2009), Eclectic Breath (2018) and Odyssée (2022).
Group formation, Adventures in Afropea 1 and Sabsylma After returning from Zaire to Belgium, Daulne spent several years singing in jazz cafes in Brussels.
In 1990, Daulne founded the group Zap Mama. The original idea behind the group was a vocal ensemble in which no singer would dominate the others, having no lead voice.
Daulne first met Sylvie Nawasadio when they sang together on the train to school; they met again at university in Brussels, when Daulne asked Nawasadio to be part of a "cultural singing group". She subsequently met Sabine Kabongo in Brussels as well.
Daulne auditioned many female singers looking for the right combination of voices for an a cappella ensemble, specifically looking for girls that, like Daulne, were both African and European; according to Daulne, "I wanted to put these two sounds together to prove that to have blood from white and black was perfect harmony on the inside." Through her audition, Daulne discovered Marie Alfonso, and later Sally Nyolo.
Marie Daulne eventually recruited her sister Anita Daulne, Sylvie Nawasadio, Sabine Kabongo, Cecilia Kankonda, Céline T'hooft, and Fanchon Nuyens. Daulne said she called the group "Zap Mama" instead of naming it after herself because "it was like the spirit of the ancestors talking to me and using me to translate what's going on". She has said that the "Zap" stands for “zapping culture from the north and south”, and the "Mama" means that the group uses “traditional sounds from mother earth.”
Zap Mama received initial support from the French Belgian Community Government's cultural department. The group came to the attention of Teddy Hillaert when he saw them perform at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels; he later became their manager. The group began recording their first record, Zap Mama, at Studio Daylight in Brussels. The album was completed in October 1991 and released by Crammed Discs, the Belgian record label of Marc Hollander and Vincent Kenis.
Adventures in Afropea 1 In 1992, Zap Mama came to the United States for the first time to perform at New Music Seminar in New York City. There, they met David Byrne and agreed to let him reissue Zap Mama's first recordings as Adventures in Afropea 1 through Luaka Bop Records. By the end of the year, the first album stayed at the top of the Billboard charts for 11 weeks in the world music chart.
Luaka Bop Records repackaged the first Crammed Discs release for American listeners in 1993 as Adventures in Afropea 1. By the end of the year, Billboard announced it was the top seller for "world music." Zap Mama went on tour, playing in Central Park, Olympia, and the jazz festival of Montreux, among other locations. After the success of Adventures in Afropea 1, Daulne said the record company "wanted to mould us into a poppy girl band, but I said, 'No, you'll kill me', and I stopped. Everyone was asking why I wanted to stop when we'd finally arrived at the top. But I felt that it was completely wrong. I wasn't ready. I wasn't strong enough. The manager said that if I stopped then, I'd be killing my career, but it was my decision."
Sabsylma Their next album, Sabsylma, was released in 1994. It contained music with Indian, Moroccan and Australian influences and earned Zap Mama a Grammy nomination for Best World Music Album. Daulne explained that the sharper sound of Sabsylma was due to the influence of American music and exposure to the hectic sounds from being on the road. Daulne also broadened her music to embrace other cultures on Sabsylma.
Daulne used an organic process to improvise her music in the studio. According to Daulne, "[d]uring the rehearsals, we light some candles, start a tape-recorder, close our eyes, and start making up a story. On that, we start adding sounds. We let ourselves go. We are carried away by the music."
Zap Mama was invited to perform with the Neville Brothers, Ai Jarreau and Bobby Mcferrin. Zap Mama has toured the United States, Japan and Europe. The group also contributed to the soundtrack of Mathieu Kassovitch's film La Haine.
While Sabsylma was being created, Director Violaine de Villers made a documentary, Mizike Mama (1993), that presents a group portrait of Zap Mama. The film focuses on Daulne and discusses the implications of membership in a racially mixed group that fuses African rhythms and vocal tones with European polyphony. The documentary won the International Visual Music award for Best Popular Music TV Documentary.
In 1995, Marie Daulne signed, co-created and performed an advert for Coca-Cola which was broadcast worldwide during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta (single: Brrlak /Take me KoKo).
Solo artistry, Seven and A Ma Zone After the success of the first two albums, Daulne put her music on hold for a few years to birth and mother her daughter Kezia Quental, who later adopted the stage name K.ZIA. In 1996, Daulne decided to dissolve the group and make a formal break from a cappella, retaining the Zap Mama name but looking for new collaborators in the United States. Daulne was the only member of Zap Mama to return for the recording of Seven. Unlike the group's past albums, she included male musicians and vocalists, and increased the number of instruments and the number of songs in English. "I made music on Seven the same way as on the other albums. I only used acoustic instruments... I'm looking for instruments that have vocal sounds, forgotten instruments like the guimbri... The first and second albums were about the voice, what came before. This album is about introducing those sounds into modern, Western life," said Daulne. Daulne had help on the album from Wathanga Rema, from Cameroon. Daulne's sister Anita also contributed to both songwriting and vocals.
Daulne's third album, Seven, was released in 1997. Its title refers to the seven senses of a human being: the traditional five, in addition to emotion and "the power to heal with music, calm with color, to soothe the sick soul with harmony", according to Daulne.
Daulne's next album was A Ma Zone (1999). The title is a wordplay meaning both "Amazone," the female warrior, and "A Ma Zone" (in my zone). That same year, Zap Mama made "Iko-Iko" for Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack, a cover of "Jock-A-Mo" by Sugar Boy & the Cane Cutters.
Ancestry in Progress and Supermoon
Daulne moved to New York in 2000. "I've never been welcome in any country as my own country," says Daulne. "In Europe, they talk to me as if I'm from Congo. In Congo, they act like I'm from Europe. The first time I felt at home was in New York. I said, ‘Here is my country. Everybody is from somewhere else. I feel so comfortable here.'" Ancestry in Progress (2000) reflects Daulne's new life in the United States. "The American beat is a revolution all over the world," Daulne says. "Everybody listens to it and everybody follows it. But the beat of the United States was inspired by the beat coming from Africa. Not just its structure, but the sound of it. This is the source of modern sounds, the history of the beat, starting from little pieces of wood banging against one another, and arriving on the big sound-systems today. It's genius. So I wanted to create an album about the evolution of old ancestral vocal sounds, how they traveled from Africa, mixing with European and Asian sounds, and were brought to America."
In 2001 Daulne gave birth to her second child, Zekye Daulne Rogiers.