Marie Daulne sings. Not only on albums and performing live, but also when she talks. She sings to illustrate the tales of her experience in the United States, working with the Philadelphia soul community and such luminaries as The Roots, Erykah Badu, Common, Bilal and Taleb Kweli for her latest Zap Mama album Ancestry in Progress. She sings to tell the story of her African influlences and to relate her mission to balance motherhood with her increasingly transatlantic musical career, securing a good life and education for her children.

Marie is sitting in a two-person wicker couch on the lawn of the Blue Note Festival backstage area. She speaks passionately, with a slight mixed African and French accent, using song and sounds to illustrate her stories. She waves her arms frantically around in a manner reminiscent of spiritual soul diva Erykah Badu, for obvious reasons : the Soulquarian connection and the time spent in New York and Philadelphia during the past four years.

The singer has felt first-hand the differences between the United States and Europe. She brought her children along when she moved to New York and Philadelphia and lessons were learnt, especially by her daughter.”I got the English and she got the attitude,” Marie says, laughing. “It’s good that she can have a really good memory. She arrived there as a naïve 5-year-old and she grew up, became a conscious person in the United States. She understood a lot of things, how school is over there, how school is in Belgium. There is a huge difference in the attitude, especially the way they teach. We learn more here in Belgium about what’s happening in the world. Over there, they’re only concerned with their own country and how to make money, how to eat well and as much as you can. So I say too my kid that it’s good that she knows that, but that she also knows about Europe, about Africa, about Asia. Over there, people were impressed by how much I knew…and I learnt all that in Belgium. I think Belgium is a place where you can learn a lot and you can prepare a lot. It’s peaceful. At night you can walk around and be inspired to do what you want to do. But sometimes, when you need fire and you need to fight, it’s too quiet. You need to kick yourself and people are like ‘non…cool… no, but at five it’s too late I have to go home’. Over there, things normally start at five. With the Roots in Philly, they start the day at five… and here people end the day. Which is funny because with the time difference, our day is also their night. New York is another world. At 3 in the morning the energy is there, you travel all over the world in one city.“

“When you’re in New York, things happen. If I was by myself, I’d stay over there all the time. There’s always something to do, always something happening. But I have to realise that that is not the only life I choose. I’m a mother and have a family so I came back. And when I go over there, I take no kids, no lover, just me and myself with the creativity and music. And then I’m completely there. You have to live the night. The day is for sleeping.”

The Soulquarian connection stretches way beyond the Ancestry in Progress album. The Roots MC Black appeard on the 1999 Zap Mama album À ma zone, Marie sang on The Roots’ Things Fall Apart LP, Common’s Electric Circus, King Britt’s Oba Funke production and Erykah Badu’s Worldwide Underground, also joining Badu for her world tour. Working with the Philly soul community has been a perfect fit for Marie, who found like-minded people with whom she shared both a musical affinity and a common appreciation of values and soul. The collaborations were intuitive. ‘Common gave me a tempo with a drum and a bassline and told me it was about a circus, with something going round. I let myself free and I created some circle sounds with my voice. Badu asked me to got with her on stage to surround her as a spirit, to protect and to bring her to the essential of love, of things, of music- and this is what I did around her. I was there every day, when she was recording Worldwide Underground, all the time, even when I didn’t sing, she liked just having me around… she said that she saw me sing acappella in the US seven years ago and she had a flash and thought : ‘This is the Queen’.”
“They all have different stories. Scratch was around, knocked on the door and asked if he could listen in on how I make music.. he knew me from the acapella albums. We have a relation through vocals and beats and for him to see a female doing beatbox, it was crazy.. and especially and African-European woman. So he asked if we could create something and we started from scratch : he did a be-bep-buoff sound and said ‘your turn’ and I gave him a waahat,” Marie sings. “He brings me there and I say raaoo, and I bring him there and he goes waoo… we inspire each other. Now Scratch is creating his own things, independent of the Roots and he’s asked me to be part of it. We have no direction, we just feel. And we wait. When I was working with Bilal we stayed up all night long, waiting for the moment. The music’s going, the loop is going and we’re waiting… and someone starts and from there on it’s ‘you’ve found it, let’s go’. The engineer has to stay awake to get everything on tape, because we go straight away…

"Erykah Badu said she saw me sing acapella in the US seven years ago and she had a flash and thought : 'This is the Queen'."

"I can feel the difference -a place where the sun is always there sounds different from a place where the rain is always there"

On Ancestry in Progress, Marie throws in a couple of pure acapella songs, including a vocals-only track with Scratch from the Roots, beatboxing over layers of Marie’s and backing singers’ vocals. But the acapella element is still confined to the background compared to previous albums. ”I know that one day I’m gonna do an acapella album again. I don’t know when.. after all these experiments. Going to Mali in Africa, going to the US, Philly.. I’m discovering more and more and at the end, maybe I’ll go back to where I started,“ Marie reflects. But the place she started was also a mixture of many sounds, cultures, history and influences. “When I was in the US, I knew that I had to go back to the essence of my source. But my source is already a mix. I remember 10 years ago, I said in an interview that probably, in 100 years, when people talk about Belgian music, they’ll pull out a Zap Mama album and say that this is traditional music from100 years ago. Because of Belgium’s history with Congo –this is part of the story. When you look at the traditional music, even the Belgian music is not pure, it’s mixed because of the history. Spain came here and changed the arts. One moment can make all the difference. I can feel the difference –a place where the sun is always there sounds different from a place where the rain is always there. And the way that people in Belgium have houses and the way houses are in the US is different. So I’m not scared, because nothing is pure anymore. But it’s pure because it’s real, the way humans are real because of the way they express themselves, emotions –that’s the purity.”

Genre-clashing came to a hilt with the apperance of a Zap Mama song on the Mission Impossible II soundtrack –sandwiched between hard-screeching metal guitars and speedthrash of Metallica and Limp Bizkit. “Aah, I was proud,” says Marie with delight in her voice and a smile in her eyes. “ I like Limp Bizkit. And I hope that the music of Zap Mama can be compared to this kind of music, because I think that the energy… they are crazy and to me, pure in what they do. They’re going in one way and I like that.. and I go completely in my own way. I think that in the US and with the people I’ve worked with, they like me because I’m pure in what I do. And it’s a big mix of a lot of things, but I’m pure. Pure in my emotions, pure in my sensitivity, I don’t try to… I do.”

"I like Limp Bizkit. I hope that the music of Zap Mama can be compared to this kind of music... they are crazy and to me, pure in what they do."

Zap Mama @ Blue Note Festival, Ghent Belgium, Friday July 23rd 2004 :

Marie Daulne about the live band :

I have DJ Grashoppa, who is well-known in Belgium. I like to have a rhythmically thinking DJ. Percussion is by Freddy Massamba, completely Congolese. We all fight each other in a good way. Then I have Yann Willems, loungy-style and cool… I like to have opposites. And on voices, I have Chantal Willie, she plasy double bass too. I have Monique Harkoum, Grasshoppa’s wife.. she’s American. Nia Saw from Belgium, she plays with Ultrasonic 7 and other bands too. And I have a new bassplayer, Ida Nilssen, who’s an amazing bassplayer. They all have the same mentality, they’re so peaceful and that’s very important to me. That as human beings, we connect. If we’re not like a family, it’s not good.

Can you describe the live experience in few words?

" Trip. All over the world…"

All pictures by Nicolai Hartvig. ©Copyright OnTheFlip 2004.