Salon.com > Banning Eyre

Sharps & Flats

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:10:00 +0000

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.

To bossa and back

Tue, 29 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

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.

We are the world

Tue, 20 Apr 1999 17:00:00 +0000

"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.

Austin uses targeted radio and television partnerships to attract key ethnic constituencies. Once they arrive, Austin and his team make sure
that all the guests get to hear the kind of music they came to hear and eat the kind of food they like to eat. Along the way, they get the unexpected experience of Oumou Sangare's sultry Malian roots blues or Samba Ngo's Congolese funk music