Marie Daulne has come a long way since 1990, when she founded the all-woman a cappella quintet Zap Mama. And it's not just that she's been around the world several times. The Zap Mama sound has evolved from an amalgam of African and European vocal styles to incorporate touches of jazz, hip hop, funk, soul and reggae, creating a polyglot of music and rhyth m with Daulne out front.

Marie Daulne a recent weekday morning, Marie was in New York City, far from home, preparing for an American tour in support of her latest album, Supermoon. The tour brings her to Arcata on Fridayof Zap Mama. Photo by Jurgen Rogiers.

When we spoke on , Aug. 31, for a show at the Van Duzer, then, in a few weeks, to Black Oak Ranch near Laytonville, for Earthdance, an event she calls "a psychedelic world," remembering a previous Earthdance performance.

We started out talking about home. It's a complicated thing for her. Home is Brussels, Belgium, where she was raised, but also, in a different way, the Congo, where she was born. The transition was not exactly easy. Her Belgian father insisted that her mother take the family away from the political turmoil that was raging in what was then the Belgian Congo. She made it, but her father didn't. "He did not have a chance to come with us because he was captured," Daulne explained. "He was a prisoner of the rebels for a while, then they killed him. My mom had escaped with us, the little babies and children, and took us to Belgium."

She says memories of her homeland lingered. "When I was around 18, I didn't know why, but I was unconsciously attracted by the sound of the Pygmies," she said. "First, I should tell that before they escaped to Belgium, a lot of Belgian people hid themselves in the forest with the Pygmies and the Pygmies protected them. The rebels were afraid of the forest. So my family stayed a while with the Pygmies before we came to Belgium.

"So when I was 18, my ears were attracted to this sound of the Pygmies. I asked my mother about it, and I wanted to know more about the story of my father, why he was killed and where, so I decided to go back to the Congo, looking for answers about him. What I found was that I must become a musician. The sound of the Pygmies held some deep meaning for me, so when I came back to Belgium I created Zap Mama."

She did not really find exact answers to the questions about her father. "I found that human beings are strange," she said. "That's the answer. I found that there are good and bad people everywhere. I grew up straight away at the age of 18, and I knew that nothing is the fault of one person. Yes, sometimes one person can be the cause of a disaster, sure. But why does one man do something wrong? Why does one man kill another? I don't know that there is an answer to that."

Did she find home? Not really. "You know when I went back to Congo, I thought I would have a welcome like I was part of the family, part of the country, but that was not the case," she said. "They treated me like a Belgian come to visit as a tourist. I saw that that is not especially a place to call home. With my family, my husband, my children, the people I love — that is home."

The opening track on Supermoon "1,000 Ways," speaks of a thousand million people with a thousand ways to talk, "a thousand kinds of people, a thousand kinds of deals, a thousand ways to share, a thousand ways to hate and to love. A thousand people die, a thousand ones survive, a thousand ways to feel, to be a human being." And, she concludes, ultimately one must find his or her own way. Marie has found hers in Zap Mama.