For Janea Dupeyron, art, nature, music, and daily life aren’t separate categories. They’re all the same conversation, conducted in different languages she happens to speak fluently.
Dupeyron is a multi-faceted artist with her fingers in multiple projects at any given time. At just 22 years old, her life is filled with jobs, hobbies and a continuous need to express herself.
She’s the lead singer of the band Fuzzy Goldmine. She speaks multiple languages. She creates sculptures, jewelry and portraits. She whisks up matcha with the pop-up coffee bar Folake, and breeds Asian water monitors at Jade Reptiles.
She currently splits her time between Fredericksburg and D.C., working and living in both places.
She calls Fredericksburg a place of “respite” from the busy pace of Washington.
“It’s where I have my garden,” she said.
Years spent working at a plant nursery, a florist and an apothecary nurtured her love for botany. She sells plants at area markets and will be at the upcoming Thrift World event April 18.
You can often find her in her garden or her personal greenhouse full of ornamentals and medicinal plants that she thoughtfully tends to, playing her flute.
“I used to play the flute for my plants every single night, on a schedule,” Dupeyron said. “If they’re not treated well … if they’re not happy, I’m not happy. So I have to spend a little bit of time with them every week.”
It also helped her deal with social anxiety — especially as she recently began performing publicly.
What does she play for her plants? “A lot of funk music, a lot of jazz,” she said.
Dupeyron, who is multilingual due to her family being French and French Cameroonian, has found her musical home somewhere on the spectrum between Afrobeat greats such as Ebo Taylor and modern funk collective Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk).
Growing up, her grandfather played music from Cameroonian artists Richard Bona and Gerald Toto daily. She watched drum circles at Malcolm X Park and encountered D.C. go-go music.
But a chance encounter with a member of George Clinton’s P-Funk band solidified her as the diehard funk music fan she is today.
“George Clinton’s P-Funk is actually my non-blood-related family,” she said. “They’ve been very close friends of mine for years.”
Janea Dupeyron is lead singer and flautist for Fuzzy Goldmine. (Submitted photo)
She luckily struck up a conversation with a P-Funk band member at a show, which came in handy when she realized the next performance she was headed to was in a casino and she was only 19 years old.
“I had booked tickets to a show in Detroit and realized, ‘Oh, I can’t get in.’ So, I texted the guitarist that I met at the previous show. And I was like, ‘Hey, I realized that, I’m so sorry, I can’t come to the show. We paid for tickets, but we’re 19, so we can’t come in,’” she said.
The band brought her into their inner circle and not only got her into that show, but also invited her to travel with them, all expenses provided.
“I think I went to roughly 15 shows with them,” Dupeyron said. Now she counts George Clinton’s daughter Scottie as a close friend and influence on her music, style and designs.
“They [P-Funk] have been nothing but respectful, protective and really influential in a way I never could have imagined.”
That funk lineage flows directly into Fuzzy Goldmine, the band Dupeyron launched just eight months ago — almost by accident.
“It started as a jam to go to this particular event and then maybe we’d never again play together? But then after that, people were like, ‘Where can we find you? Where can we follow you? You guys are good,’” she said.
The combination of woodwinds, funk and a dash of go-go combined with boundary-pushing theatrical performances created a performance style that keeps crowds on their toes and coming back for more.
Fuzzy Goldmine has recorded four of its 10 original songs and plans on bringing P-Funk’s drummer in to play a track. Dupeyron is also exploring the guitar through the Girls Rock program in D.C.
The band’s current lineup includes Dupeyron, Josh Lewis, Caiman Walker, Brandon Garnett, Isaiah McCall, and Paxton. Catch them at Madame’s Oddities on Saturday and then April 24 at Reclaim Arcade with Prabir Trio.
