ANITA DAULNE

Teacher of polyphony, singer, composer and performer.

Both Anita and Marie Daulne (Zap Mama) trace their cultural origins both to the Congo and to Belgium. For many years we have worked on the musical development of traditional songs, the contribution they have made to our western world and as a complement to modern European and American music.
For some time we 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 recognised throughout the world, with Zap Mama being nominated for the US Grammy Awards.
At the same time we wished to share our 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 Iive 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 we have travelled throughout North, South, East and West Africa; we have learnt, 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 yodel, song and counterpoint, tuilage (1) and call-and-response.
This work has had such success that even academies, conservatoires 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.
(1) Tuilage: variant of canon

MONODIC AND POLYPHONIC “AFRO-PEAN” SINGING INSIDE A “URBAN ETHNIC” SOUNDSCAPE.

Languages: French, English

The matter of the workshop originates from the research work Anita Daulne has been doing for many years on African musical traditions (especially polyphonic songs of Pygmies, Bantus. Masaï, Zulus, etc.) and it develops in an area of sound specificities which Zap Mama define “urban ethnic”. Being half-way between Western and African world Anita Daulne offers a different approach to singing. She leads us through the depths of our natural vocal range to uncover its colours, its tastes and its nuances on a wide palette of sonorities and expressions. The interchange between soloists and chorus allows each participant to become, from time to time, indispensable and complementary to give a colouring to the whole: in the call and response game singing becomes dialogue. “I use sounds playing with those complementarities that bring them to the building of musical phrases in those forms that in Africa are an actual language. As you know, in Africa singing is shared on great occasions, to experience intense moments, and everyone finds their own place as well in the pygmy as in the village songs. Every singer is a little like a petal of a flower. Polyphony works when the flower blossoms. To achieve it you need big listening skills”. In order to reach this indispensable osmosis Anita enlivens her stage by means of warm-up games for voice and body. She uses both weeping and laughing, interjection and onomatopoeia. The group must feel tight-knit because each participant will hook with another like the rings of a chain