Marie Daulne, the leader of all-female Afro-European Zap Mama, says the name of her group’s fourth release — “A Ma Zone” — is both an assertion of personal space and an embrace of the famed female warriors. That combination of intimacy and toughness, mirrored in Daulne’s versatile voice, with its coos, whispers, cries and roars, has always been central to Zap Mama. What’s new here is the embrace of technology — its drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion and even male voices, all of which were off limits in the Zap Mama a cappella formula used since the group formed in 1990.

This group, based around Daulne and four other female singers, now melds ancient roots with high-tech modernity. For example, the new album’s best track, “Rafiki,” sets Pygmy chants firmly into a club-ready hip-hop mix. And why not? Daulne has been spellbound by American pop ever since she moved to Brussels as a young girl; she’d learned Pygmy
singing before that in Zaire. In the new Zap Mama, nothing is too far out, and the openness pays off. “Rafiki” is as catchy a number as the group has ever recorded.

Other tracks on “A Ma Zone” offer dreamy soul balladry (“Ya Solo”) and slinky, sensual funk (“My Own Zero”). A few rev up with hyperkinetic drum ‘n’ bass grooves (“Songe,” “Call Waiting”). Daulne even samples the saxophone of Cameroon’s Manu Dibango on “Allo Allo.” The singer likes spare, muscular backing for her layered vocal arrangements, and she’s assembled a superb band, including Congolese guitar veteran Dizzy Mandjeku, and a powerful, young, female bass player from Ivory Coast, Manou N’Guessan-Gallo.

Onstage at New York’s Irving Plaza earlier this month, the players lurked along the edges of the stage, leaving the center free for the five divas. They danced, donned costumes, wielded props, acted out little dramas and sang in a breathless succession of styles and inflections. The show bordered on shtick at times, but Daulne’s mimicry of soukous crooners, reggae raspers and even James Brown’s freedom cry was always dead on. And what other performer teaches her audience to sing Central African polyphony?

Some fans may long for Zap Mama’s quainter, quieter days, but all the prior work has really been a prelude to the material on “A Ma Zone.” Daulne has found her place in pop. The group’s lineup has changed considerably, but now it has stabilized, along with Daulne’s concept. Zap Mama is poised to enter the new millennium as an international hip-hop group, not a world music novelty.

For over three decades, Brazilians have adored Caetano Veloso, now 57, as a poet, intellectual, moral force, singer to die for and musical stylist who never repeats himself. At the start of his June 27 show at the Beacon Theater in New York, the lanky, gracefully graying superstar ambled onto the stage in a dark brown suit and swung a nylon-string guitar over his knee. For the past few years, Veloso has been performing romantic Spanish songs, a genre called fina estampa, with mostly string backing. But at the Beacon, it was clear he had something else in mind. At the beginning of the show, four drummers from Bahia, a province in northeast Brazil, preceded Veloso on stage, playing a march rhythm on snare drums slung around their necks. They were just the start of Veloso’s two-hour performance, featuring 11 musicians who reveled in the creation of tension and juxtaposition, in exploring diverse genres, sometimes in the span of one song.

“This festival used to be lily white,” says Jim Austin, the almost evangelical organizer of the Houston International
Festival. “Now look at it,” he says, gesturing toward a rainbow-colored Texas crowd swaying in the sun to funky Afropop by Benin’s Angelique Kidjo.

Austin wants to market world music — especially African music — to the general public in Houston. At the center of his 12-year effort is the festival, one of the
largest world music fests in the States. This is not a marquee-driven festival, Austin says, where people show up to see
one or two performers they already know. The event
itself is the draw.