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Zap Mama's third album moves a long way from the group's 1993 self-titled debut and 1994Sabsylmafollow-up, a cappella records in which five mostly European women tweaked Central African pygmy songs into sounds the rest of us could understand. This set--featuring a new lineup except for founder-leader Marie Daulne--insinuates into Mama's trademark choral yin the yang of male voices and drum & bass-anchored instrumentations (blues, jazz, reggae, Zairean soukous, rap, R&B;, Zulu-basedmbaqanga, jungle, P-funk, and minor-key wails from North Africa's nomadic Turaqs). Highlights include Fatima Wallett's trippy desert ululations in "Jogging a Tombouctou," as well as Daulne's own newly minted muzzein's call to the faithful (alternating with her French rap) in "Baba Hooker," a praise song both to the blues savant and to the African roots she and John Lee share. There are the requisite pygmy-influenced tracks, "Illioi," featuring 4-year-old Kesia Daulne's baby French dissolving into melodic gurglings, and "Eie Buma," based on those tropical forest sounds that Kesia's mom learned at her own mother's knee; the sounds were adapted as Zap Mama's starting point, and the group has taken them into deeper and deeper musical explorations.--Elena Oumano