Funky Djembé

It's been some months now that I have been playing with a funk rock band ("Funky Morning"). I met a couple of them at a jazz festival, made a quick jam and thought it was fun. So we got to try this combination. The band is made out of 9 musicians and the instruments vary from a trumpet to an accordion... and now to a djembe as well. Overall, the music is quite good, the guys are serious and good musicians, and there is a good atmosphere as well.
I realized that it's difficult to play the djembe with other melodic instruments, but I'm not exactly sure why. I guess it is because I know exactly how this music should sound like and some djembe sounds just don't fit (my djembe is a full scale solo-djembe with squealing slaps and sparking tones). In the beginning I found it extremely difficult to find an African pattern that would fit a specific song. After trying to play various traditional African patterns I just started to play what came first into my mind and that's where things started to work out fine. I then started to play with strict distinction between a little closed and open slaps... It just sounded right to me. But particularly I started to follow one rule: not to make sounds that are somewhere in between or somewhat unidentified.
After a couple of months I established some new rules: to play only what is necessary and play it right, to play it loud and with confidence, and not to take risks of making one single bad sound, ever, plus, to play what is suitable and not what is traditional or fancy. Only by observing this rules I got to a position where I was able to start playing what I was used to: broken rhythms, polyrhythms, microtiming, ... Recently I started to play traditional African patterns again and it just fits somehow now.