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Zap Mama

Comments (0) By Sam Prestianni Wednesday, Nov 3 1999

With the release of her latest album A Ma Zone, Zap Mama high priestess Maria Daulne extends her bid to supplant Erykah Badu as contemporary R&B's reigning pro-Africa queen of the charts. Picking up where 1997's Sevenleft off, the CD's overly slick production buries the group's rapturous power-woman vocals while pushing to the fore groovy beats, radio-friendly arrangements, and Daulne as the sexy lead singer. The Roots and Arrested Development's Speech appear as special guests on a couple of tracks in a move designed to stress Zap Mama's progressive hip-hop pedigree, which is strange given Daulne's Belgian and Zairian heritage and her ethereal vocal style derived, in large part, from the haunting polyphony of the Central African pygmy tribes.

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Though it's clearly a misguided attempt to cross-market one of the most original world-music acts of the '90s, the new disc isn't bad. But it lacks the spiritual heft of the band's less pop-obsessed earlier works Adventures in Afropea 1 (a gorgeous a cappella affair) and Sabsylma(a cappella and voice/ percussion explorations). The real disappointment of A Ma Zone (and Seven) is that neither is a fair representation of Zap Mama's electrifying live show. At the group's last Bay Area performance it thrilled a packed Fillmore with otherworldly four-part harmonies -- front and center -- and what seemed less a put-on exoticism, via the Badu school of R&B, and more an authentic Afro-European sensuality.

Zap Mama performs on Sunday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, Bancroft & Telegraph, UC Berkeley campus. Tickets are $18-30; call (510) 642-9988.