Zap Mama is a Belgian singer-songwriter, performer, composer, lyricist, activist, video artist and ethno-vocal therapist born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raised in Belgium.

[1] In order to explore and discover the vast world of oral tradition music, she travels throughout Africa, learning, exchanging and sharing information about healing songs, lullabies, mourning, and practising polyphony with griots (bards), Tartit tuareg women, Dogons, Peulhs, Pygmies, Mangbetus, Zulus and others.

Zap Mama's worldwide success began with a quintet of polyphonic female singers, whose unique vocal polyphony style has inspired influences in American hip hop, nu-soul, jazz and elements of pop.

It led to the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, as well as a traumatic setback to the United Nations, following the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash as he sought to mediate.

The loving paternal family of Marie's Belgian father, provided liturgical music and the Walloon popular songs.

[8] Daulne also trained in modern dance, choreography and acrobatics at the Ecole du Cirque, and briefly attended the Antwerp School of Jazz.

[7] "Belgian radio stations programmed European music mainly from France, UK and American which were very popular throughout Europe.

I formed a girl group, and we used to show off with break-dance acrobatics and beatbox influences from Doug E Fresh and Fat Boys.

"[7] After Daulne left her family home, she came to realize the profound richness of the African songs that her mother had sung to her during her childhood.

So I started recording music that reflected this mix of influences from traditional African melodies, British reggae, USA beatbox, French and American funk songs, and Zap Mama was born.

"[11] However, Daulne's true professional involvement in music began after an unfortunate accident that hindered her ability to continue her athletics training.

"[7] In the documentary film Mizike Mama, Daulne and her family talk about a backwards cultural struggle to win her allegiance as a child.

[12] Her mother having lived through a period of Belgian colonial rule, feared that Daulne would speak with an African accent and so did not teach her the language.

But I was there, to understand the family history, and I was in the middle of the forest, hearing the music that had been part of my earliest memories, and it was like an illumination, like a light," Daulne declared.

[9] Back in Belgium, Marie Daulne teaches African polyphony and polyrhythm in private music schools in Brussels.

[17] Zap Mama went on tour, playing New York's Central Park, Paris' Olympia, the Montreux Jazz Festival.

[19] After the success of Adventures in Afropea 1, Zap Mama has parted company Crammed Disc Records, remark Ftrance a tumultuous legal battle for the reason of artistic and marketing choices.

[9] She was invited to perform with the Neville Brothers, Ai Jarreau and Bobby Mcferrin, Zap Mama toured the United States, Japan and Europe.

Has appeared on numerous television programmes, including Sesame Street, Studio 54th, ABC TV, Arsenio Hall Show, BET, Jools Holland, Taratata, BBC News, etc.

Daulne explained that the sharper sound of SabSylMa was due to the increasing influence of American music, as a result of being on the road.

Adventures in Afropea 1 and Sabsylma had both been largely a cappella,[3] but Seven broke with the past by including male musicians and vocalists, an increased number of instruments, and more songs in English.

I feel this way as well when I'm standing on the stage with the group-- as a team we share the same aim of winning over the audience with our music," Daulne says.

[9] That same year, Zap Mama made "Iko-Iko" for Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack, a cover of "Jock-A-Mo" by Sugar Boy & the Cane Cutters.

Ancestry in Progress (2004) reflects Daulne's new life in the United States, as it synthesizes her traditional African and European influences with American musical styles like hip-hop and R&B.

This is the source of modern sounds, the history of the beat, starting from little pieces of wood banging against one another, and arriving on the big sound-systems today.

By the jazz department of the Antwerp Conservatory of Music[23] Zap Mama returns with Odyssée, a resolutely modern album open to the world, written entirely in French and in which she defends the concept of Afropeanity.

In 2020 to 2021 Daulne undergoes training in Sonotherapy and Music Therapy, to bring her humble support to the women survivors of the Panzi hospital in Bukavu (Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo).

In 2022 Daulne travels to Goma and Bukavu where she runs Ethno Vocal Therapy workshops, composes and records music with young women, and provides psychological support for the socio-economic reintegration of survivors treated by DR. Denis MUKWEGE.

Daulne will be back after the screening of Thierry Michel's documentary on Chaine RTBF Belgique, in which she participated in the debate to testify about the strength of the eastern congoles woman in the name and honor of her mother, Nabindibo Aningi, a heroine and survivor of the massacres in the region and puts together the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle of successive wars involving hundreds of armed groups, some Congolese, some foreign, guilty of mass crimes whose primary victims are women.

It will bring together the documentary's director, Thierry Michel, experts in international law, geopolitics and human rights, Marie Daulne of Zap Mama, and Bernard Cadière, surgeon at Hôpital Saint-Pierre and Dr. Mukwege's right-hand man.