Mélanzé
The Association
Better together
We are a non-profit working at the intersection of art, culture and sustainable development. We run an independent publishing house, a mobile recording studio and a flexible team of professionals — scientists, development workers, artists — ready to get involved in events and projects wherever they're needed.
Mélanzé reflects its founders: restless generalists, gloriously chaotic, with no career plan — just the joy of making things and sharing them.
The name Mélanzé comes from Réunionnais Creole. We adopted it because, like this island we are not from, we believe in mixing more than in the walls that separate us. We refuse boxes, partitions, categories and reductive labels.
A regenerative culture lab
Why a publishing house, a music label and community projects under the same roof? Because culture and ecology are the same fight. You don't regenerate a territory without regenerating imaginations. You don't change narratives without being rooted in the real.
Publishing a book on agroecology, recording an album with the griots of Somone, building an eco-center with village youth — for us, it's the same approach. Each activity feeds the others. This blending is what makes Mélanzé a lab, not an institution.
What Mélanzé is not: neither a traditional NGO with quarterly reports, nor a Parisian publishing house with cocktail parties, nor a commercial label chasing hits. We are a free space, rooted in one hectare of red earth, that believes in the power of slowness and blending.
A love story and a story of blending
It all began twenty years ago, in a Bangkok airport. Joan Bastide and Jacqueline Ahmed met — and never parted. Since then, they have traveled the world together: Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe. Everywhere, the same passion drives them: setting up small recording studios, supporting artists, publishing books, organizing cultural events.
With four children born from this nomadic life, the desire to put down roots grew. To put principles into action. To professionalize these activities carried out alongside their careers. To create, somewhere under the baobabs, a haven for mixing it all together.
This is how Mélanzé was born: a couple's dream grown into a shared endeavor — a treehouse open to the world.
Dr. Joan Bastide
Co-founder
Geographer, PhD in Geography and Environment (University of Geneva). Over 15 years of international experience in science and development. Writer, musician, founder of the Som'One Music label. Lives between France and Senegal.
Jacqueline Ahmed
Co-founder
Geographer, yoga instructor, retreat facilitator and restaurateur. Life and project partner for twenty years, she is at the heart of every Mélanzé initiative.