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Female drum troupe triumphs

by Kate Roller

Music | 3/6/07
Posted online at 10:47 PM EST on 3/5/07

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The audience was whooping, whistling, cheering and screaming at the top of their lungs, blowing kisses to the backup dancers and dancing to the rhythm of a chest-thudding bass beat. Was this a crowd of 20-somethings at a rock show? Far from it. This was the mostly fema= le, mostly over-30 and wildly enthusiastic audience in Spi= ngold Theater that came to hear the Amazones: Women Master Drummers of Guinea = Saturday night.

About 20 minutes into the show, one woman began dancing through the aisles = to the front of the stage. The audience wasn't surprised by her lack of decoru= m, but rather that she was the only one to dance. By the end of the show, she wasn't, with almost half the audience clapping, shouting and dancing in the aisles.

The eight multitalented women onstage were so exuberant, their passion dema= nd such a response. Playing a wide range of traditional African percussion instruments, the Amazones sang, danced and, most of all, drummed through two hours of thrilling fast-tempo music.

Their performance was no less than astounding, the Amazones striking their drums so rapidly that their blurred hands became nearly invisible and with = such force that, more than once, pieces of their instruments flew into the air. Indeed, the three djembé players, who we= re the focus of much of the show, all had bandaged fingers-striking the drums bare-handed with enough power to fill the theater is apparently pretty dangerous work.

However exhausting the show was, the Amazones all appeared in high spirits, hardly even breaking a sweat until over 30 minutes into the program, smiling and laughing throughout. They projected an air of hard-won camaraderie, cheering each other's solos and egging each other to more and more exhilara= ting heights of skill.

The escalating energy filled the crowd; nearly every time the audience star= ted clapping for a soloist, it ended up clapping in time with the music, and the audience was not shy about rewarding a particularly animated improvisation = with fervent cheers and applause.

The Amazones' very existence is inspiring. In a pre-concert talk at the Rose Art Museum, Professor Lansine Kaba (AAAS) said: "They are doing something in the context of Guinea = that women are not supposed to do. Women sing, women dance, but they do not drum."

Mamoudou Conde, the director of the Amazones, a= greed following the concert: "They said 'Women will never play the djembé.' But we break the taboo."

When the group was first founded, Conde explain= ed, it struggled to find an instructor in Guinea willing to teach women. "Every other master drummer refused to train them," Conde said, except Aly Sylla, who gave a brief, but impressive, display of h= is skills at the very end of the concert.

For those who missed out: The Amazones have one more performance in the Boston area before leaving the country. They will perform Thursday at 8 p.m. at Milton High School and hold workshops at Suf= folk University this wee= k. It's an unforgettable experience.

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Female drum troupe triumphs

by Kate Roller

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