ACL FEST

The music of 'Supermoon' orbits the world

Zap Mama is scheduled to play from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday on the Dell stage.

Attention nationalists: The future of popular music belongs to those who can combine sounds from around the planet in ways that reflect an increasingly multiracial experience.

Zap Mama's music does that. For nearly 20 years, singer Marie Daulne, 43, and her band have blended Francophone European music and African music into rich, smooth blends. Her group's sixth and newest album, "Supermoon," amalgamates her various styles with verve and skill.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Marie Daulne, lead singer of Zap Mama, performs during the JVC Jazz Festival, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2007, in Newport, R.I.

"I feel like I'm in a new period in my life," Daulne says of "Supermoon" in heavily accented English. "More song-oriented material, more stories, more humor. Laughing is such an important part of the joy of life."

Daulne is the daughter of a Walloon father and a Bantu mother in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After her father was killed by Congolese "Simba" rebels when she was an infant, Daulne and her mother escaped into the jungle and eventually made their way to Belgium. Never quite feeling at home in Belgium or Africa, reggae and hip-hop changed her life.

Discovering pygmy music at 20 led her back to Africa to work native styles into her vocal repertoire. In 1990, she formed Zap Mama as an a cappella group with fellow Afro-European women. Her 1993 American debut, "Adventures in Afropea" became the best-selling, single-artists album in the history of Luaka Bop Records. Since then, more and more instruments have come into the fold.

While Daulne spent time in New York early this century, she now lives in Belgium permanently. She's roamed the Earth so you don't have to: "With my style of music, listeners can travel and stay home," she says. "It's a sound track of the imagination. At least, that's the goal."

And it seems an easier goal than ever thanks to the Internet. "People are able to discover the world in amazing ways," Daulne says. "People are finding all sorts of ways to cook, to diet, to love, to find lovers, and that's helping the U.S. discover the rest of the world. In Belgium, we have to learn three languages: German, Dutch and French. There is a Congolese population and an Arab population. It's a very small country but these things alone help us think in many different ways."

Indeed, Daulne might be of the last generation to feel the spiritual homelessness that can come from a racially diverse background.

"I don't pretend to represent Belgian or Congolese music," Daulne says with a hint of finality. "I'm not an nationalist, I'm an internationalist."