Zap Mama Goes Deep
--By Hillary Rhodes

Zap Mama has a bit of an advantage.

Marie Daulne, lead singer and head visionary behind the group, has more actual globe-trotting influence than Jenny from the Block could ever dream of.

She was born in Zaire and her family fled during a revolution there and were taken in by a tribe of Pygmies. They found their way to Brussels, where Daulne gorged herself on imported American soul music and hip-hop. At 18, Daulne returned to Zaire (now Congo) and immersed herself in the polyphonic singing of the African Pygmies. Zap Mama's first record came out in 1993.

The new Zap Mama album, "Supermoon," is as soulful, energizing and innovative and the group's earlier work.

The bouncing, rollicking track "Gati," based on a chant lead singer Marie Daulne learned from a man in Gabon, is an homage to the Pygmies who protected Daulne's family during the Congolese rebellion.

You want to join in the joyful shouts over the chorus. You want to dance around barefoot, in the sand.

The title track starts out quietly, privately, like a glamorous woman putting on her diamond earrings in front of the bathroom mirror - the finishing touches for a night on the town.

But it's much less superficial than that, in the end. It's a proclamation about loving yourself, with or without diamond earrings. "I am not a superstar ... I am a supermoon." In a world that measures looks and figures by how closely they match celebrity obsessions, being a supermoon sounds much more ethereal and everlasting than the transitory elements of being a mere star.