Zap Mama & Sally Nyolo

New albums from two Euro-Africans

Paris 

21/11/2007 - 

Zap Mama (aka Marie Daulne) and Sally Nyolo - who spent several years performing with Daulne’s all-girl group before going on to pursue a solo career - were born in Africa but grew up in Europe. Coincidentally, both artists are back in the music spotlight right now with brand new albums, Zap Mama with Supermoon and Sally Nyolo with Mémoire du monde.

Marie Daulne, aka Zap Mama (the sole surviving member of the all-girl quintet she formed seventeen years ago now) has spent a lot of time studying the moon. And she likes to compare its astral cycle to human biorhythms, finding the idea of waxing and waning particularly relevant to her own career. “Sometimes you need to spend a bit of time in the shadows,” she says, “and sort of hide yourself for a while before feeling ready to re-emerge. I’ve come to realise that my own career has followed that pattern in any case.”

As part of her waxing and waning progress, Daulne went through something of an eclipse on the European scene, heading off to the U.S. for three years which resulted in the Zap Mama album Ancestry in Progress in 2004. Her time in the States, she says, brought her to one significant conclusion. “After hanging out with a lot of celebrities over there, I knew I wasn’t a superstar!” she says. Daulne prefers to see herself as a "supermoon", instead. And what’s a supermoon exactly? “Someone who’s not a slave to a star system where you have to live up to demands and betray the real you to sell your records or be in fashion. A supermoon is someone who’s concerned with being authentic.”

Hence the astral-sounding title of Zap Mama’s sixth album. For the first time in her career, says Daulne, she came up with the album title before getting round to composing its contents. And her original idea served as a guiding philosophy throughout the two years it took to make Supermoon (most of which was recorded between studios in New York and San Francisco). Whereas the last Zap Mama album experimented with a largely soul and rap vibe, this time round Daulne has placed herself at an equidistant point on her musical compass, performing a delicate balancing act between her African roots, her love of black American music and her European ties.

While Affection finds Daulne exploring more or less the same musical territory as Bandy Bandy (a duet with the American world music star Erykah Badu), Kwenda is a traditional Congolese song that her mother taught her, maintaining a link with the continent where she was born. Belgium, the country where Daulne grew up, is also present on the new Zap Mama album thanks to a guest appearance on Toma Taboo from gravel-voiced Belgian singer Arno. “People might be a bit surprised by our collaboration,” Daulne concedes, “Arno and I don’t tend to be associated together, but we’re actually great friends in real life.” Supermoon also boasts another prestigious guest star in the form of Meshell Ndegeocello, who came into the studio to play bass on Toma Taboo (inspired by the guitar on James Brown’s Pay Back, the late great godfather of soul being one of Daulne’s all-time idols).

Dreaming in French

Meanwhile, Daulne’s erstwhile colleague Sally Nyolo is also back in the music news. The Cameroonian singer performed with Zap Mama from the end of ‘92 to Christmas ‘96, sharing the group’s phenomenal a capella success. Nyolo now enjoys her own successful solo career, but a decade on, she has not cut her ties with Zap Mama. “Whenever I’m in Brussels and I have a spare moment, I’ll drop in for a cup of tea with one of them,”  she says, “We’re actually all still linked by contract, too, if Marie ever wants to make another a capella record!” Sylvie Nawasadio, another ex-Mama, has been involved on every one of Nyolo’s albums to date. “Sylvie really wanted to do it,”  smiles Nyolo, “and I have to say it’s been great to have her on board!”

Mémoire du monde, the new album by Nyolo (the winner of RFI’s World Music Award in 1997) also involves another of her loyal collaborators, Sylvin Marc, who has been with her since her solo debut. “Sylvin’s a musician who’s taught me so much in terms of musical approach,” says Nyolo, “He’s helped me assume a simple, playful side to things.” Marc, a Madagascan guitarist and bass-player who has carved out a reputation for himself as an expert sideman on the jazz-world scene over the past thirty years, appears to have found a distant cousin of his native salegy in Cameroonian bikutsi. As Nyolo points out, “Sylvin has always drawn on his background to enrich my music. Both salegy and bikutsi actually use the same 6/8 rhythm, although it functions a little differently in each.”

For the making of her fifth solo album, Sally Nyolo returned to her native Cameroon once she had completed the initial songwriting phase. The trip was one Nyolo had long dreamt of making and which suddenly became possible after the singer opened her own recording studio in the hills of Yaoundé in 2005 with the aim of encouraging exchanges between musicians from Cameroon and the rest of the world.

After supervising the recording of Studio Cameroon (a compilation of local artists made in her Yaoundé studio and released last year), Nyolo returned home to “capture certain essences right there on the spot because they never sound the same taken out of context.” Using a bikutsi base of balafons, guitars and percussion on Mémoire du Monde, Nyolo has given greater precedence to songs in French on her new album. “It’s true, I could have translated them into Eton and sung them with the same orchestrations”, she says, “But I wanted to sing them in the language I’ve come to love. I’ll let you into a little secret here - I’ve been dreaming in French for a long time now!”

Zap Mama Supermoon (Heads Up/Universal jazz) 2007
Sally Nyolo Mémoire du monde (Cantos/Pias) 2007

Bertrand  Lavaine

Translation : Julie  Street