Emile Biayenda wants to make you dance. Resistance is futile. The leader of Les Tambours de Brazza has brought a dozen men and as many drums to Taiwan for three shows, beginning tonight at the National Theater in Taipei. Attendees are advised to wear something to sweat in.
Les Tambours de Brazza take their name from Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, from which they all come. More than a drum corps, Les Tambours can be considered musical diplomats from a nation in the midst of strife.
The Republic of Congo in west central Africa hosts over 50 different ethnic groups, each with not only its own local dialect, but also its own highly developed style of rhythm and dance. When he first put the group together in the early 1990s, Biayenda invited hundreds of drummers from around the nation to Brazzaville to play together, choosing the best of them to become Les Tambours de Brazza. The group made its first cassette tape together in 1992 and participated in the Jazz Mic Mac Festival in France in 1994. Since then their popularity has grown.
"It was a great group from the first day it was put together," said Biayenda in an interview from France, where the group now makes its home. "We're all from the same country, but never before had all these diverse traditions come to play with each other. We've always only ever fought each other."
Indeed, when Les Tambours toured to Europe in 1997, they were unable to return to their country as the whole region was in the middle of war and ethnic upheaval. Forced to settle in Benin, in the port city of Cotonou, they used that time to reach out to audiences in West Africa and Europe before settling in France in 2001. It was during this period that French audiences in particular began to recognize Les Tambours as something unique to Europe -- a genuine African drum corps. The group put out their first full album of music, 1997s Ahaando, followed three years later by Zangoula.
In the more than 10 years they've been together, Les Tambours have toured four continents and played such festivals as the Musiques Metisses d'Angouleme in France, the Couleur Cafe Festival in Brussels and in Denmark at the Images of Africa Festival.
Les Tambours base their music on the ngoma, a large, wood-and-goat-skin drum used for centuries to communicate across the continent and which Biayenda says is still used to celebrate the milestones of life. Ngoma translates as "power of the leopard" and to hear one of these drums beaten is something like having the animal leap at your chest. A dozen of them together can rend you apart.
"There is a contagiousness to the ngoma that is inescapable," Biayenda says. "It takes all the strength you have to play it and that energy is felt by the audience."
Biayenda, a self-educated jazz musician, actually leads the group on a standard drum kit. The rhythms he establishes, combined with the weight of the ngoma drums and lyrical melodies provided by the group's vocalist, show how much hip-hop and rhythm and blues owe to the musical traditions of the Bantu kingdoms. Les Tambours combines West African musical traditions with Western harmonies and arrangements.
While their first two albums were based on their stage shows, of which dance is an integral part, their most recent album has a more refined studio sound. Tandala, which means "Brazzaville" in the Congolese dialect, was released earlier this year. Though it still makes liberal use of the massive sound of the ngoma, Tandala departs from heavy rhythm on some tracks for the softer sounds of a simple thumb piano and vocals.
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