Pitchfork

Though it has always been her pet project, Marie Daulne started Zap Mama as an a capella group of five women. Fifteen years later, it's become essentially a solo show for this Belgian-Congolese auteur. For Daulne's first album on Heads Up International, she sets out to topple false idols-- the forces of celebrity and late capitalism that are keeping many from, you know, being themselves. She even invented a word for the few rebels--and for her album's title. To the club of crunchy descriptors that includes "free spirit" and "unique snowflake," Daulne lobbies to add "supermoon."

Even those without a Fox News paycheck may cringe at all this hippie-dippie preciousness, but Supermoon, unlike certain talk-show personalities, never sinks to hectoring. There's not a note of negativity for miles. Instead, the listener is borne aloft on good old-fashioned polyrhythms and Saturday night exuberance. Whether Daulne's coaxing a funky vibe out of a children's game ("Kwenda") or leading a simmering bout of call and response ("Hey Brotha"), she seems to draw from a bottomless well of party-starting energy.

Which is not to say this a completely zero-gravity affair. Daulne just tucks her serious themes under a glaze of cheer, almost too well on "Affection", an effervescent, sensual piece that happens to be a eulogy for a recently departed friend. Based on an African song, "Toma Taboo" celebrates rituals for their power to yoke us to our pasts. It's a heavy subject turned joyously weightless by Arno's vocals, Me'shell Ndegeocello's bass, and a strutting, stuttering riff lifted from James Brown's "The Payback". Daulne's acrobatic, acidic voice, multitracked into a soothing harmony, holds the crowd together.

Wrapping together Daulne's rich juxtapositions-- high-wattage method and high-minded motivation, the personal and the universal-- "Gati" pays homage to the pygmies who rescued her. "They saved my family and many others during the Congolese rebellion," she explains in the press materials, "and they deserve recognition for that." A chant characteristically heavy on call and response, buzzing with howls and whistles, the song melds a feather-light reggae bounce into a deeper, funkier groove all in the space of four minutes.

None of the songs breaks the five-minute mark, in fact. Yet each manages to cram a rainbow of color onto its small canvas-- while never coming off as busy. The bluesy, piano-driven "Where Are You?", to take another example, boasts both the smolder of a torch song and the upbeat pulse of a salsa number. Listening to Daulne cross so elegantly, so seamlessly over the length of an entire album, from genre to genre and emotion to emotion, leaves nothing to doubt: Zap Mama has never been better.