A Ma Zone

Running the gamut from soul to hip hop to drum & bass, Marie Daulne's Zap Mama is expanding the perameters once again with their fourth album A Ma Zone. With the help of people like Philly's hip hop dissidents The Roots ("Rafiki", "Songe"), This Kid Named Miles ("Kemake") who was featured on T-Love's incredible Return of the B-Girl EP last year, Speech ("M'toto") and the oft-sampled Camaroonian Soul-Makossa sax man Manu Dibango ("Allo, Allo"). Zap Mama pulls off an amazing balancing act, riding the fine line between the deep roots of Afropea,the newest continent, and the technology of the future.

A Ma Zone is Marie Daulne's full immersion into the music that kept her breakdancing through high school. Reuniting long lost sounds - West African guimbiri meets West Coast hip-hop scratching - and introducing them to the big city and village fire respectively. And because hip-hop and African music were both part of her childhood, Marie's fusion of zouk guitar montunos with raw breakbeats immediately makes sense. She always preferred listen ing to Stevie Wonder and Run DMC: "Our mother would make us learn the polyphonic singing, but at the time we thought it was boring because it was traditional." Instead, Marie honed her beautifully distinct vocal skills through imitation of the sultry voice of Roberta Flack and the lip-smacking beats of the Fat Boys' "Human Beat Box."

A Ma Zone marks a lyrical shift for Marie, from politics to the social shortcomings of modern society with the emphasis being placed on the dehumanizing effects of modern communication. Marie explains: "Everybody's in such a hurry these days that everything has to be done by telephone or over the information superhighway." A Ma Zone offers listeners an alternative to life at 56k.

We've told you too much already. All you need to know is that this record is a cool R n B, hip-hop gourmet salad. An afro-euro caviar, champagne and funk mixture. "I want to show of the rest of the world the power, the human capacity, through the voices and the sounds that people forgot, the sounds people made during the day, every day . All the sounds made by humans, instinctually , the sounds can relax people, can give energy, harmonies can make you cry. The universal sounds made by humans - American, European, Asian , African, Indian, Australian and Indonesian... laughing, swallowing, coughing." Let us not forget the beautiful sound of a press release being crumpled up either.