My story

from Normandy to Stromboli via Mauritania

As a child, I grew up in Normandy, close to nature and horses. It was there that my first acts of care took shape – dressing, listening, watching, connecting without words. Even at a very young age, I sang to call them, an instinctive, invented melody that opened a secret path to them. I didn't know it yet, but this calling song, which I believed was born from play, really exists in certain oral traditions of the North. This is how, without knowing it, I began to explore the powers of sound and voice as a subtle language between worlds.

“ My link to singing was forged in this instinctive relationship with the living, via the horse ”

For over ten years, I have worked behind the scenes in the performing arts, transdisciplinary creation, and festivals, supporting artists, projects, and stories at the intersection of cultures. Through communication, mediation, programming, partnerships, cultural activities, and welcoming audiences and artists, I have learned to listen to impulses, movements, and needs. I have sown seeds in venues such as La Villette, Le Générateur, La Fondation GoodPlanet, and L'Onde & Cybèle, where I had the joy of coordinating the Women's Choir workshop, led by Souad Asla, around the traditional songs and dances of the Algerian Sahara—a circle of transmission, collective power, and feminine healing.

At the same time, source places have deepened this call: from the burning lands of the Mauritanian Sahara to the fiery flows of the Stromboli volcano, my journey has been sculpted to the rhythm of the elements. These places of intensity and austerity have shaped in me a deep connection to the sacred, to the memory of bodies, to the ancestral breath that runs through songs and gestures. There, I experienced turning points—intimate, raw, sometimes harsh, always powerful stories—that have marked a direction.

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The Drum on my Road
 
In 2018, in the flat of a singer-musician friend, a drum stood there, hanging on the wall, a moon of animal skin watching over a diaphanous woman's torso. Because yes, right next to the circular object was a full page torn out of a magazine featuring this nude with a powerful title written in large letters: THE PLEASURE. I found this composition fascinating and intriguing, without yet realising that everything here already made sense: the power of women, allied since time immemorial to their drums. 

A little later, I was drawn to a book. Inside, a self-portrait: that of a female shaman, bare skin, sage raised, merged with a majestic white she-wolf. This image became my screen background, a talisman. And then I met her in Paris. The photographer. The book's author. By synchronicity, she was invited to the same dinner party. 

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A season passes and in autumn I find myself at her home, in the foothills of the Vercors, at night outside around a silent fire. She takes out a large buffalo drum. And under her hands, the sound rises, deep and vibrant. It was the first time that evening that a woman had drummed for me. When she stopped, I asked her if I could try. I sat down, breathed, banged and sang. My head immediately seeks proximity, contact with the vibrating skin, I instinctively look for the angle, the axis that will generate the reverb, the harmonics to the sound of my voice.

Back in Paris, the call was clear: my own drum was to be born.
I called a friend, a great drummer and percussionist: "I've got the signal, the drum is now". He took me to Percussion du Monde. That's when I saw it. My first drum. Toro. It was offered to me. To my great surprise, Toro isn't circular, not like I'd imagined: it's octagonal. This was obvious to my friend with the moon drum: "Yes, Lea, that's not surprising, because you're all about circles and fluidity, but things still have to be square.

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So I immersed myself in the practice, fusing instruments and dance, sculpting each movement into a unique vibration.

Today, I dedicate myself to DasenkaSound, a practice of sound healing and musical offerings born from these inner, spiritual and artistic journeys.