The phenomenon of musicians from blues backgrounds making connections with Africa has been gathering steam in recent years. Since 1995, when Ry Cooder won a Grammy for his session with Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, Talking Timbuktu (World Circuit/Ryko), we've seen Taj Mahal's West African exploration, Kulanjan (Hannibal, 1999), and Bonnie Raitt delving into the African bag, notably on the song, "Back Around," a collaboration with Malian singer/songwriter Habib Koite from her new album, Silver Lining (Capitol). Enter Corey Harris, best known as a blues revivalist, with a genre-busting release, Downhome Sophisticate (Rounder), featuring work inspired by his travels in Mali and Cameroon, among other places. Harris and his 5X5 Band are on the road in Spring, 2002, with stops at the Mercury Lounge in New York on June 11, and House of Blues in Boston on June 14.

The common African thread in all these projects is Mali, a country whose shuffling, string-oriented, pentatonic roots music naturally invites speculation about blues origins. Harris picked up on Malian music years ago, so when Malian singer/guitarist Boubacar Traoré invited him to visit, he jumped at the chance. He's been back twice since. "There are so many musicians there, it's sick," he told me. "When you talk to a Malian who says, 'Oh, I just play a little guitar,' that means: watch out! I met so many guys who pick up a guitar and just blaze, and then they put it down and say, 'Oh, that's not my main instrument.'"

Downhome Sophisticate includes a number of Malian-inspired songs, although Harris processes the material through his own complex web of influences so that what emerges never sounds imitative. "Fire" delivers the raw energy and rowdy mysticism of Ali Farka Touré's desert home, while "Capitaine," a gently swirling acoustic guitar duet played with Harris's longtime accomplice Jamal Millner, evokes the life of a fish swimming up the legendary Niger River. "Santoro," perhaps the most striking track on the album, also started with a riff heard in Mali, but the completed songs plays as moody, hip-hop tinged pop, in which Harris conjures a Hendrix-like falsetto voice and meditates on interracial police brutality.

Harris is a man of many voices, not only as a singer but as a guitarist and songwriter. Old fans will be glad to know that he continues to pay homage to the blues here, mostly in a ballsy electric mode. He cranks out a searing "Don't Let the Devil Ride," and a down and dirty "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning" among the volley of concise funk and blues tracks that open this journey of an album. But there's no doubt that blues is a point of departure for Harris, not an end in itself.

"I was listening to reggae before I was listening to blues," he told me, "and I listened to Wes Montgomery before I listened to Muddy Waters... A lot of blues now is stuck in this nostalgia thing where they're just going to play 'Sweet Home Chicago' forever and ever and ever. It's not about that. When you think about the music of Robert Johnson or Tommy Johnson, or ever Charlie Patton--the music they were making was very modern when they were doing it. They were trying to add their own two cents."

Harris's two cents has to do with conceiving of black music as a big, global family of ideas and sounds, with its basis in the primacy of rhythm. Years before he recorded his much celebrated debut album, Between Midnight and Day (Alligator 1995), Harris was polishing up his blues chops while studying Pidgin English in Cameroon. That country's pop styles, makossa, and especially the spiky, polyrhythmic bikutsi sound, really got him thinking. "I always knew that the basis of black music is rhythm," he said, "but it was a great demonstration to see all the different ways rhythm comes out." Discussing his approach to songwriting now, Harris added, "I can't feel anything without there being a beat. I think if you really know rhythm and time, then everything else can come a lot easier. I've noticed that the best musicians are those who played drums or something rhythmic first. Henry Butler is phenomenal. He played drums in church before he ever touched a keyboard. Stevie Wonder, same thing."

Downhome Sophisticate is Harris's sixth album, and it contains more original compositions than any of its predecessors. You can tell that he's enjoying his creative freedom as he merges the swing of central African pop and New Orleans funk on "Sister Rosa," and then eases into a smooth Santana zone with jazz overtones on "Black Maria." The title track might be seen as a country boy's take on hip-hop, slicing up slide guitar riffs and tuba bass lines in a taut, funky house mix. In the end, there's no way to pigeonhole the music Harris is creating these days, except to say that it's brilliant.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre