I was introduced to the music of Zap Mama at the IMZ conference on music on TV in Lisbon back at the beginning of the 1990s. There were directors and producers from all over Europe discussing the issues and showing their films. One stood out instantly, Mizike Mama, a disarming and moving film about an all-female a capella group.

The young women in the band had different and rich, complex family backgrounds, most notably the lead singer, Marie Daulne. Her father was Belgian, her mother from Zaire (as it was then known) and she had been born during the bloody turmoil of the Belgian Congo liberation wars. Her father was murdered by rebels when she was only a few days old. Her mother fled to the interior and hid with her and her siblings in the forest.

A few months later the family was airlifted to Belgium where Marie and her sister, also in the group, grew up. When she took up music, she put the European and American music she had automatically been exposed to together with traditional songs from Zaire which her mother sang. Exploring her African heritage further, she listened to the wonderful polyphonic singing of the Pygmies native to Zaire and brilliantly incorporated it into her own songs.

I’d been editing the BBC TV’s principal arts strand, Arena, since 1985 with fellow producer/director Nigel Finch. By 1987, about a quarter of the 600 or so proposals we received each year were to do with the newly named phenomenon of world music. So we introduced a sister series — Rhythms of the World.

The series ran until 1993 and we featured all of the great names of world music’s first golden age: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keita, Celia Cruz. I would include Zap Mama in that illustrious company.

The majority of Arena/Rhythms of the World films were home grown. Occasionally we would acquire a film already made; those films were invariably subject to a further rigorous editing process to tune them to our particular house style. With Zap Mama, we didn’t touch a frame. It was a privilege to have the film and to show it on the BBC.

Anthony Wall

8 March 2020