Anita DAULNE

Teacher of polyphony, singer, composer and performer.

Anita (ex Zap Mama) traces her cultural origins to the Congo and to Belgium. For many years she has worked on the musical development of traditional songs, the contribution she has made to our western world and as a complement to modern European and American music.

For some time she have been exploring this world of sounds to extract specific lessons, in particular the essentials of different vocal practices around the world. This has come about through considerable work, now recognized throughout the world.
At the same time she wished to share her excellence in musical research within the European and even the American sphere, where all too often ethnic music is considered inaccessible. Zap Mama CDs have well contributed to this intercultural approach.

Zap Mama is an ''Afro-pean'' musical culture, a precise perfectly proportioned cross-fertilisation, which, while keeping its own ethnic flavour, blends with the modern. By raising awareness of traditional songs, this makes people become more aware of themselves and their relationship to this music and to reach out across the world. But we have gone further than this: with-up-to-the-present conferences and instruction periods relating to this work.

These show that songs throughout the world are accessible to anyone who loves, wishes to understand and share another culture, to discover other ways of thought, to laugh and live happily among others. Our work is a means.

It consists of teaching and celebrating this universe of music and promoting song techniques seldom or never known in western academies of music and by adapting such workplaces to place them within reach of everyone.

To do this Anita have traveled throughout North, South, East and West Africa; she have learned, exchanged and shared information with griots or bards, Tuareg women, Dongons, Peulhs, Pygmies, Mangbetu, Zulus and others. We have done this simply to make the western world aware of some of its riches.

There are others: as yodelling, song and counterpoint, overlapping and call-and-response.

This work has had such success that even academies, conservatories and universities have invited us to teach and explain. These include the UCE University at Birmingham, the University of San Diego in California, the Conservatory of Copenhagen, the School of Rhythm at Arhus in Denmark, the University of Leuven; also in Sweden and in classical choral societies in France and Belgium.

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