In 2024, Zap Mama will release their first best-of album: a recap of a very richly filled career. Belgian-Congolese Marie Daulne is an artist of many talents: she’s a singer, composer, activist, and teacher of vocal polyphony. Since the early ‘90s, she’s been at the helm of Zap Mama – a polyphonic female a capella quintet with which she conquered world stages and even garnered a Grammy nomination. Daulne also launched the term ‘Afropean’ to name the existence of a bicultural generation of Afro-Europeans. She introduces the world to her experience of ethnically influenced music and fashion.

For the last 25 years, Zap Mama toured the United States, Japan and Europe. The band performed and worked with top artists such as The Neville Brothers, Al Jarreau, Talib Kweli, Common, Bilal, Questlove, Tony Allen and Bobby McFerrin. Over the years, the frontwoman moved away from a capella and she and her band evolved increasingly more toward an original and unique mix of European, American and African rhythms and traditions.

While living in New York, in 2004 she released her fifth album Ancestry in Progress, which was produced by The Roots and marked a new highlight: the wonderful single Bandy Bandy with Erykah Badu that topped the Billboard World Music charts for weeks on end. Belgian music history on a historic stage!