Bela Fleck: The Africa Project

Bela Fleck: The Africa Project

Feat. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, Anania Ngolgia & John Kitime

The Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Mi

As Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate said simply, “Bela play American banjo…I play African banjo.” As Bela Fleck started the first of two sets of his Africa Project tour, with some solo material, he took the stage alone, with his weapon of choice, the banjo. The entire, two-set, roughly two hour show was fueled with flavorings from Bela’s trips through Africa playing with, among others, players of the Ngoni, an African ancestor of the banjo.

The Africa Project which Bela started during time off from The Flecktones in 2004, has since given birth to Grammy award winning album Throw Down Your Heart and an award winning documentary (of the same name) chronicling the trip in which Bela visited a slew of different African and Malian locations. However, joining Bela on stage were just a small sampling of the artists, as two groups for joined Bela for the 33-city run of college towns in support of the release of more tracks from the project. Anania Ngoglia and John Kitime took the stage as Bela left them for two solo songs. Ngoglia, a mult-instrumentalist from Tanzania would play the Wagogo thumb piano, or ilimba for the evening. Kitime, also from Tanzania, played acoustic guitar, and also is one of the film’s producers.
Bela would then join Ngoglia and Kitime for two songs, one of which was speckled with chicken noises from Ngoglia to resemble his girlfriend, who Bela comically said “…Apparently she sometimes she sounds like a chicken. Sometimes she does not.” Bela and Ngoglia would duel back and forth as Ngoglia left Bela grinning ear to ear as they played back and forth at each other.

Taking the stage next to replace the trio would be an ensemble of Malian musicians, Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba (The Big Ngoni.) Bassekou was joined by seven other musicians, including three other ngoni players, Fousseyni Kouyate on ngoni ba, Barou Kouyate on ngoni and Moussa Bah on bass ngoni. Also Ngoni Ba were Malian vocalists Amy Sacko and Ma Soumano, as well as percussionists Alou Coulibaly and Moussa Sissoko. Bela looked back at the percussive drum that looked, in his words, like a very big bald man’s head poking up in the air. The drum looked like a globe and was played like a djembe, or any hand drum, as knuckles and palms created different beats and raps on the hard shell. The eight piece group would take the stage alone led by Bassekou who would provide a most charismatic front man. Bassekou’s fingers flew across the tiny fretboard of the ngoni as he either horsed down on a wah pedal to give the ngoni a quick jolt, or was at the stage front propping his foot on an amp leading the band. Bela would join as the two would recount stories of Bela’s travels to Africa and battle a few multi-lingual hecklers before playing one more song before a short intermission.
The second set would feature a slew of combinations of the musicians on stage in an hour of stellar, tag-team wrestling style musical creation. Bela would lead the different groups through the myriad of styles, blending the banjo in seamlessly with the two different regions of African music, which for lack of a better expression, created one extremely unique and entertaining experience. The second set and encore also featured fiddle player Casey Driessen, from Bela’s Sparrow Quartet. With the addition of Dreissen, the trios, quartets, octets, howevermanytets rotated on and off stage creating diverse combinations of players feeding off one an other. All twelve musicians finally were on stage for the final song of the set and the encore of the Grammy award winning title track of the project “Throw Down Your Heart.”

The surprisingly long show, just over two hours, was fueled by lots of improvisation and on the fly setlist creation, all with the ever changing musical chairs setup that led to some incendiary musical moments. This tour is a great glimpse into Bela’s ambitious project and the subsequent melding of world music into his playing style, all well worth the price of admission. Show dates are on Bela Fleck’s website www.belafleck.com and screening dates on www.throwdownyourheart.com. 

click to enlarge or view the SLIDESHOW HERE...

















by Pietro C. Truba
originally for Relix.com