All-female group has the beat

• By STEVEN K. LANDRY
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Jul 20, 2009

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LAFAYETTE - Slap! Bap! Tap! Nearly a dozen women form a half-circle around Jany Champagne, each looking at her leader, each squeezing a “djembe” African drum between her thighs under a public gazebo in April.

It’s Festival International time, and the all-female Les Djembes group is enthralling festival-goers accustomed to seeing men slap-bap-tapping the usually male-oriented instrument.

One young guy walks up. “These are all girls?” the politically correct-averse patron asks to no one in particular.

No one answers him, because the answer’s obvious.

On the stage, Champagne slaps her skin-taut drum. Her group slaps, too.

She slows her pace, and they do, too. It’s done with eye contact, hand motions and pace-setting musical cues, and the group seems as one.

On this spring day, Champagne’s smile is as wide as the 12-inch drum-head she’s hitting on her own djembe.

Champagne, 47, dances cheerfully while leading the complex drumming and hand-slapping techniques on the bongo-like instrument.

Yet, as one finds out later, one should never — ever — call a djembe a “bongo.” Also, in French, the “d” is added because there is no hard “j” sound in that language. So it’s pronounced “JEM-bay.”

A couple months later or so, the group repeats the process, this time at a member’s Lafayette home for a practice session. She has also started teaching new students — men and women — on a weekly basis.

Les Djembes member Linda Lolan caught the drumming bug a couple of years ago.

“Actually, Jany and I fell into it at the same time, but she just has this natural ability,” said Lolan, who plays one of the taller bass djembes.

“I played little snare drums when I was young, but I never felt that musically inclined. But you don’t have to be with the djembe, because it plays itself.”