Bela Fleck travelled through Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia and Mali in 2005, playing and recording with a broad array of musicians.  The resulting CD and DVD film, both called Throw Down Your Heart, were at last unveiled in 2009.  Afropop’s Banning Eyre was Bela’s field producer in Mali, but it was only in 2009, during the Africa Project tour, in Troy, New York, that the two finally sat down for an interview.  Sean Barlow also participated.  Here’s their conversation, followed by excerpts of Banning’s interviews with Bela’s collaborators on the tour: Anania Ngoliga of Tanzania, Vusi Mahlasela of South Africa, D’Gary of Madagascar, and Toumani Diabate of Mali. 

Banning Eyre: In all these years, this is the first time we've actually done an interview.

Bela Fleck:  That's right.

B.E.:  Well, I'm glad we're doing it when we have all this perspective.  Let me start with a very broad question.  How has this whole African experience affected you as a musician?  What are the headlines for what it has done to you?

B.F.:  Well, I think it's given me a broader appreciation of African music and African people.  It has given me a lot of new toys musically.  Like when I hear are great guitar lick by Djelimady [Tounkara] or someone like that, and I learn even a fragment of it, it gives me technique and an idea that I can develop across the banjo.  I was in Africa for five weeks, but I feel like I'm still in Africa four years later.  Since we went, we have been making the film, editing the music, doing sound mixes for the film, editing all the music sequences in the film.  There has been almost no day that I haven't been involved with this music.  So in a way, I think even more of it sunk in after the trip than while I was there.  Because it was like one day I would be in one place playing with one person, and the next that I went to another place.  I kind of had to clear the mental hard drive each day.  And when we were done and were on the airplane, I couldn't remember a thing I had played in a month.  But now, I have heard [the music] every day, I have seen everything from every angle, and it really does sink in.

B.E.:  I know what you mean about unpacking experience after the fact through recordings.  Have you had much opportunity to dig into playing the music in those years?

B.F.:  Well, I didn't really have a reason to play the actual music until this tour came, and all of a sudden I was going to see Oumou in Scotland, and I was going to see Toumani, and D’Gary, and Vusi and Anania.  All of a sudden I had to make sure I could play this stuff.  It actually came a lot quicker because I had been listening for so long and I had more of a sense of how to fit into their stuff, intuitively, because you know, I had been listening.

B.E.:  It came pretty quickly the first time, from my perspective.

B.F.:  Thanks.

B.E.:  You're dealing with an amazing variety of traditions.  I tend to think of these things as being like languages.  You are incredibly fast at hearing the general grammar and rhythm of these languages.  Scales, structures.  But I wonder how you feel when you try to go deeper with one of these things.  Your goal, I think, is not to write poetry in these new languages, but rather to provide a kind of counterpoint, a dialog.  How do you think about that?

B.F.:  You do a great job of explaining it.  You just did.  Yeah, I'm not going to suddenly become a Tanzanian musician.  I'd have to spend my whole life, and still it's too late.  I'm not going to become a Malian musician.  But I can be inspired by what they play, and they not only can inspire me for that moment when I am responding to them, not in their language, but inspired by their language.  It also inspires me as a player when I am writing my own music or am thinking about what makes a good song.  Does it really have to go through six time signatures like I used to think, or can it be in one?  Does it really have to have all this harmony to be a successful piece of music?  And the answer is no.  There is awesome music that doesn't do all that stuff.  I have been pegged as a complicated guy, and so it's funny that I feel freer to not try to be complicated in this setting, because the setting is already so unusual.  I can just look for melodic things and answer people. 

And the other element that's interesting, and one of the reasons I wanted to go to Africa is this:  I do like to practice a lot and be prepared and worry about things.  But by putting myself in a situation where I couldn't really be completely prepared, I was forced to dig deep into things that I do that I can't tell you where they come from, the things that pop out that I don't prepare.  That's always been one my favorite parts of my playing, but in the desire to present good music to people, sometimes it gets squashed because I'm so busy trying to make sure that the band is well practiced and I know how to play on the song.  All of a sudden, I am taking stuff out of nowhere.  And I find that on the tour already, just in two nights, I'm digging stuff out of nowhere based on what I'm hearing them play.  Some inner part of me is just throwing it out there.  That's exciting, and it's cool to surprise myself that way.

B.E.:  So even now in the performance, you are keeping a balance between the parts you have practiced and worked out, and the parts where you let yourself be free to be spontaneous and improvise.

B.F.:  I'm trying to be as uncalculated as possible with the material in a live situation, because there really are very few melodies that I have to play that are set.  There were more during the trip, when I was playing with a marimba player in Tanzania and I was trying to play every note with him, or when I was playing with the akonting players in the Gambia and I was trying to match every note with them.

B.E.:  Or with Djelimady in Mali.

B.F.:  Djelimady.  Right.  Now, if he was here I would figure out how to do that again.  That song.  Toumani is not actually so demanding.  He's not like, "We are to play this song and you’ve got to play like this."  We just play.  He just starts, and I start.  We have a few little things set, but they are fairly simple.  So it kind of frees me up as an improviser to hit each night spontaneously as I get to know the songs we’re playing.  We are not changing the set list too much because we've only got 16 shows.  We really want to, I don't know, sort of set it.  So every night I can play what comes to mind, within the broader form of what each song is and what they are playing.  If somebody does something different…  Like D’Gary last night was playing totally differently from the night before, so I responded instinctively to what he was doing.  And that's fun when that happens.

B.E.:  Wow.  So many things there.  But since you mentioned Toumani and Djelimady, I find that such a fascinating comparison because they both come from the same tradition, Mande music.  They're very close in terms of their musical language, and yet as personalities, as musical personalities, they are very, very different.  Talk about that contrast.

B.F.:  Well, they are both very powerful men.  They are both very powerful.  When they walk in the room, the air changes.  You're like, “Oh, oh, I better be…”  I don't know what?  I don't know what I'm afraid of.  They are not going to hit me.  Djelimady is this big guy, and he's intense, and when he talks, he barks things out.  But he was very sweet with me.  I didn't have a single problem with him.  It was great.  I think when we start playing, the problems kind of ease away, if there are going to be any.  It's kind of up to me.  If I show that I have some ability, and that I am really listening to them, and that I'm really trying, and it's not going to suck, they immediately feel way better about the whole thing.  So that was the pressure on me when I first met each person is to play in such a way that they would feel like it was going to be a good thing to be playing with me.  But back to Toumani.  I don't think he's all that much about rehearsing.  He's not, "Let's do it again, let's do it again."  He's pretty chill.

B.E.:  He can be more the other way with his band.  I’ve seen them rehearse down to a fine level of detail.  But he seems to have different modes.

B.F.:  Right.  And we all do as musicians.  There are certain situations where you’re like, “We're going to work on this thing till it's done.”  I have been avoiding that with the African thing, because for one thing I don't want to beat people up and have them be unhappy they came.  I would rather find music that we don't have to work that hard on that's just as good.  There is a psychology to collaboration.  Telling people we’re going to do something over and over and over again is never popular, even if it's not sounding good.  So I would rather have the job of doing all the extra work in these situations.

B.E.:  To fit into what they do naturally.

B.F.:  Yes.  And let them be themselves.  Because they haven't said that there are musicians who play lots and lots of different kinds of music on their instrument.  They do what they do.  But I'm supposed to be a guy who does lots of different things, so I should do the work to come to them.  And if I do it well, it works.  And they're comfortable and they do their thing, and they probably are surprised by what they are doing, because they haven't heard me play before, and it pulls different things out of them.  So I think people are very happy so far.

Sean Barlow:  That relates to something I noticed last night.  You are always the one to respond.  They do their thing and then you respond, and it's the conversation that's enjoyable for the audience.  But have you ever considered flipping it around so that you’re playing the lead line, the first line, and someone else is responding to you?   As a kind of contrast. 

B.F.:  Yeah.  I should do that.  I have to pick who do that with, who would be comfortable.  I'm still getting to know everybody.  I do do that with Toumani.  I definitely do that with Toumani.  I think my language is kind of strange to everybody.  Anania is quite capable of responding when I do something, and that's pretty exciting.  But I think D’Gary plays a certain language, and he has to be comfortable.  So it seems better for me to respond to him.  So far.  Although, I am seeing him on “Kinetsa” when we’re trading back and forth, if I do a different feel, then he does a different feel too.  So there is a lot of listening going on right now.

B.E.:  D’Gary was the first guy you played with.  I would imagine he is perhaps the most difficult to collaborate with.  His style seems very challenging.  His language is so unusual.  You do a very good job of entering into his world.  What has that experience been like?

B.F.:  Well, he is technically extremely capable, but he is also a very emotional player and he has to feel right.  He has to be hearing right, and if he's not feeling it, then he’s not a happy camper and it's hard.  But if he's feeling it, it's like unbelievable.  So I don't want to throw him off of his game by trying to do it while he's trying to play and get them off.  So I'm being very careful with him in how I interact.  I really don't want to throw him off rhythmically because he's a little fragile.  But boy, when he's in his zone, it's something to hear.  Last night he was really in the zone, like cascades and waves of sound.  It's like painting in a whole different way with the guitar.  Nobody has ever played the guitar like that.  So it's fun. 

But, Sean, I'll think about that.  Because we've got 14 more shows, and it'll be fun to start throwing things back at them.  But keep in mind that every time they throw something at me, and then I play back, now they're responding to me.  So it's just a question of who starts.  That's really the only question, who plays first.

B.E.:  I hear that.  Sticking with D’Gary, would you agree that of the various rhythmic languages you're dealing with, he has is the most foreign, the furthest from anything familiar?  Or maybe you don't feel that way.

B.F.:  No.  I do feel that way.  It was really confusing trying to figure out how to play because the percussion seems to be a whole different rhythm than his guitar playing.  But that reminded me of being in Tanzania and trying to play with Matitu, the marimba player.  Because the percussionist was playing a different beat than what I perceived the marimba to be playing.  So in order play the song properly, I had to trick myself into it.  First I played with the percussionist, and I just listened to where he was playing, and I found a part that worked well with his that worked against the marimba part.  And then I left a hole during which I can allow my brain to turn over to the other timing where the marimba was playing.  And then I started playing where the marimba was playing.  Of course they're playing the same timing, but my understanding of it was so weak that I had to use these tricks. 

B.E.:  Well, that’s a very good trick.  In order to start, you've got to find a way in.

B.F.:  Yes.  But I can't pretend to understand.  I mean, there was so much music that it would have been crazy to think that I could have learned it all and really got it.  And there was a point where I had to realize it was going to have to be okay if I didn't.  Because I couldn't.  But the spontaneous things would happen and the meeting of the different cultures would happen on a fairly high level, and it would be okay.

B.E.:  I like what you said about simplicity.  There's a lot are a lot of times on the CD when you show tremendous restraint.  The prime example might be when you play with Oumou Sangare on “Djorolen,” which is beautifully understated.  This whole idea that things don't have to be complicated in order to be powerful.  That might be a large lesson that you could draw from this whole African experience.  I wonder if there are others.  Big generalizations you can make about all these different African traditions.  Something that emerges from the whole thing that is kind of on that higher level.  Anything else that strikes you like that?

B.F.:  I don't know.  I've been looking for that ever since I came back, because people ask me all the time, “How have you been changed?  What's happened to you?"  And part of me doesn't really want to manufacture something for the press that may or may not be true.  So I usually start out saying, "Well, I didn't really change."  This isn't a Hollywood movie.  And then I gradually start talking about it, and I realize that there are a lot of things I could say did change.  Some of the things I have already said, like my perception of Africa.  Having been there versus the image that I had in my head, and of the people there.  There is that sense of how people were in different communities, and how we all need the same things.  We all need food.  We all need love.  The way music functions in people's lives.  Still, I think there's a lot more that is similar about all of us than what is different.  And that is probably what I came away with.  When I get out my instrument, and we don't speak the same language, yet we understand each other perfectly.  The interpreter sometimes just gets in the way, and slows down the conversation rather than helping things.  Stuff like that.

About restraint and simplicity, here's the thing.  I’ve always found that the banjo—although I love to play solo banjo and I'm starting to do solo concerts, which I think can really work and be a cool thing—a barrage of banjo notes is really effective when it comes out of nowhere.  But if it is constant for a whole record, I find it almost offensive and I can’t imagine why anybody would want to listen to it.  So when I play with people, I'm always looking for places to lay out, and then I'm looking for simple parts.  Even uncomplicated songs, I'm looking for a simple part that ties it all together and gives it a backbone that anybody can be comfortable with.  And then when it's time to burn and play hot, I do my best.  But I just like the interactive thing.  It's interesting, there's less of me at the end of my fingerboard playing fast than probably any project I've done in a long time, because I'm always playing with these virtuosos who are shredding with their instruments, whether they’re bluegrass players or jazz players.  And I'm really enjoying that this music is not about that.  Everybody has to play good and play special.

In fact, I almost feel like with Toumani, it's a mark against me if I start getting too aggressive.  It doesn't have to be competitive.

B.E.:  Toumani is a master of being a guy who could play anything, but who much of the time doesn't.  The restraint on the Mande Variations CD is really striking.

B.F.:  It's beautiful.  I love it.

S.B.:  I think Toumani has mellowed out a bit, and created more space, which makes for very different total effect.  Which I love, and I think a lot of people love who really know his work. Because he's trying something new.

B.F.:  Yeah.  Well, I think I'm going in that direction too, and I'm learning things like that from these guys every day about what makes good music.  But here's another thing that I remember that the classical friends I have would say.  You know, when you're a young violinist hotshot, you play all the fancy pants pieces until you're in your 30s.  When you're in your 40s, you start to play the deeper material, when you're a little more mature.  But first, you have to build a name so that people think you are somebody.  And speed is certainly a way to do it.  Technical ability is certainly a way to do it.  But it's also supposed to be about expression.  And even with my music, which some people find to be math, and some people find to be very pleasing and expressive, I want it to be more expressive.  I'm thinking about expression.  I'm thinking about everybody expressing and finding some common thing that we can do together that would be great.  On a lot of different levels, not just let's play something real complicated.  Or let's be funky now.  Or whatever.  It is hard to quantify what exactly that is when you're an instrumental musician.

B.E.:  When you talk about the power of a burst of banjo notes that comes out of nowhere, it made me think of what you play on Vusi’s piece “Thula Mama.”  I noticed that both on the record and when you played the song last night.  And I was impressed when I was just speaking to Vusi, and he told me that that version on the record was the very first time you played the song.

B.F.:  It really was.  In fact, he wouldn't be on the tour, and we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the fact that he asked me to come out and play a song with him on a radio show in Colorado, called E-Town.  I think it was because the Dave Matthews gang and I have known each other for awhile, and they all work with him too, and someone had told me a long time ago that we should play together.  And they must have said the same thing to him.  So he invited me to play a song with him.  And I learned it right before we went on.  We worked for a half an hour on another song, and then right before we went on, he said, "I think we should do this other song."  So he showed it to me right before we went on. And we go upstairs, and we play it down in front of an audience, and it's great!  And how often does that happen?  Even as great as the musicians that I play with, you know where you get a pretty much perfect performance on the spot the first time you play with somebody.  And then they didn't use it on the show.  So I was like, "You guys didn't..."  because the host played with Vusi too, and he wanted to use that.  That's part of the show.  The host plays with people.  So there it was sitting.  And I was thinking, "You know, I wish I had more countries on this album, because Africa is like a big bucket of water, and you take a thimble full and say, ‘This is Africa."”  That is so ridiculous.  It's not a comprehensive project.  It's just a dash of a few countries.  So I was, "Great.  Let's get South Africa represented."

Then when I saw what a great performer he is and what a great guy he is, and that he'd performed enough in the States to sort of understand how things work, and that he was at ease here.  That was a big deal, because I was bringing over four acts and I didn't want the whole thing to be where people are out of their element.  It's working out well, though.  The combination of people is very cool.

B.E.:  Looking at why that song “Thula Mama” works so well, it ties into something I like to think about.  Not only is it music language, it’s history.  It contains the past, often mysterious things that you can't really know, but they are somehow contained in the music.  For example the whole connection between blues in Mali music.  You can't really understand what it is, but there is something there that makes it so easy for Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder to sit down and play just like that.  As opposed to the incredible distance that you might feel dealing with someone like D’Gary who is playing a music whose whole history and culture has very little to do with ours.  But with Vusi, because of the incredible fascination with American music that is in the whole history of modern South African music, certainly for the last 150 years.  There has been a very close focus on jazz, swing, soul, funk.  And the banjo.  Vusi was telling me that he has banjo playing relatives on both sides of his family.

B.F.:  Yeah, there been some great old banjos unearthed recently that have been in South Africa.  Old Gibson Mastertones from the 30s and 40s.

B.E.:  Vusi’s “Thula Mama” has that old-time South African jazz feeling in it.  And when you play a fingerpicking pattern that feels right out of Americana, it just fits.  And part of the reason I think that's true is because of history and the history of music.  These things are not so distant as they might seem.

B.F.:  No.  Vusi seems like a great singer-songwriter to me.  And I've always loved sitting down with a great singer songwriter with a great song and finding a banjo part to go with it.  I can see the guitar fingers, and I understand what chords they’re playing, and I understand where the harmony would be.  And it's just a matter of learning them.  That happens to be a great song, so when I really like this song, I kind of get it faster.  It comes into my head quicker.  It didn't take long.  Just looking at his fingers made sense.  Whereas looking at the Ngoni doesn't make any sense.  Looking at the Ngoni and trying to figure out how that relates to your instrument, or the kamelengoni, or the kora, it's just crazy.  Or the marimba even.  The marimba is it least like a keyboard.  When he goes up you can see he goes up, and when he goes down, you can see he goes down.  The guitar and the banjo are old friends, so it's not so hard.

B.E.:  Let’s talk about Anania for a second.  I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to tell the story of how you discovered him.

B.F.:  Yeah, well you gave me a few CDs of your radio show.  And I was going through, and I wasn't really looking for the pop stuff.  I was looking for this earthy acoustic stuff.  So I would hear something and say, "Well, that's cool, but that's not it. That's not it.  "  Flip through, flip through.  And then all of a sudden, “Wait!”  And it was only like a minute-and-a-half of something you guys had gotten.  And so it was, "That's what I'm looking for right there."  And it was funny, 10 seconds and I knew.  I had to find this guy.  This is it.  So he was our main guy we were going to Tanzania to find.  Based on a minute-and-a-half of recorded material.  There was nothing else to be found on this guy.  And so when we got there, and we discovered that he was kind of like the find of the recording, of the film, I felt really vindicated in my opinion.  Because if we had gone all the way to Tanzania and that was the best he had, it would have been okay, but that was just the beginning with him.  He just pours it on and he's just a great character and a super talented guy.

B.E.:  That's sweet.  The way that happened was that we only had one or two days in Dar es Salaam.  And we had dinner with John Kitime and he took us out to some clubs.  I asked him to take me around and introduce me to some musicians, and we spent the day doing that.  He took me to four or five stops.  He took me to all these funky, interesting places.  But Anania.  I have always loved that Wagogo sound.  I think what happens in that little part that comes on the program is that you hear him playing on the ilimba, and then you hear it again on guitar.  And of course, that's the thing that drives me nuts when people find these ways of playing unusual traditional stuff on guitar.  So he was a revelation to me, and I was really happy that it has reverberated to the extent of him and John actually being here now.  Because that would obviously have never happened otherwise.

B.F.:  No.  He was completely based on that recording that you guys made.  I don't know how I would have found out about him.  Without him, I wouldn't have had enough to go to Tanzania for really.  Although I found good stuff when I got there.  I love the Tanzanian stuff that we got, but I wouldn't have known.  So that was really great.  And Kitime is great.  And they're really great together.  There are a great duo.  And I don't think they really play much together.  I don't think they really understand the power of folk music.  Because they're thinking, "How can we make Anania into a star where he is?"  And that's dance tracks and radio and drum machines and electric guitars and putting that marimba sort of into the electrical guitar zone on the record that they played me that they're working on.  It sounds nice, but you sit them down with an acoustic guitar and the marimba and you get them singing and playing these songs, and it's magic.  And here, I think he could be kind of a superstar if he went for the rough marimba thing.

B.E.:  Maybe this experience will help them to understand that.  I think you're right about that.  It's actually not that uncommon.  So often we meet people and we interview them in their house just playing their instruments and it’s magical, and then you hear the recording, and it's nowhere near as good.

B.F.:  Yeah.  Almost every African recording I've gotten of somebody that I loved was disappointing.  So that's a shame.  It's a curious thing.

B.E.:  Well it has to do with one of the peculiarities of the whole world music phenomenon.  You as an outsider appreciating a cultural music bring different expectations to the table, and when it's a whole, powerful thing like America appreciating it, you can end up really distorting something.  But sometimes that distortion isn't a bad thing.  In this case, I think it's very good for musicians and Tanzania to realize that the simple traditional, acoustic, spontaneous music that they make is actually more powerful to the American ear and what might work in their local market.

B.F.:  Right.  And I think John might not get that as much because he's an electric guitar player who plays in a club band.  So that's more where he is coming from as a musician.  Anyway, he is Anania’s good friend.  And he really has the potential to break out on the world music circuit, and the two of them together can do it.  I will talk to them about it together as we go along.  I think seeing what happens with this project, they've been surprised.  The other night they said, "We don't get to play this music for a big audience."  It was only 400 people last night.  400 people.  They play weddings and play that music.  Some Everly Brothers stuff too.

S.B.:  Bluegrass is not really the music I'm most familiar with.  I used to listen to it when I was a teenager.  But last night there were times when I felt like there were moments when you could have square danced.  And my question is, are other moments when you choose to do a more familiar Americana kind of thing?

B.F.:  Yes.  At times I embrace my inner redneck.  I think one of the songs was with Ruth, the thumb piano player in Uganda.  They did that song about Jesus.  Then I could just play as a bluegrass banjo player on that song.  It was three chords, and I could just roll away.  I just felt at home from the first moment.  It was even in 4/4 time, I believe, which was very unusual in my travels.

S.B.:  You're only on your third concert, but I’m guessing that most of your fans are coming out to hear Bela Fleck.  They don't know these guys.  So I'm wondering what are they saying to you?

B.F.:  Oh they are flipping out.  They are thanking me.  They are thanking me, heartfelt.  There are more people standing on the lines to get autographs and buy CDs than I've seen in awhile.  But both nights so far, people are just very thankful.  It’s like you’re giving them something that they couldn't have gotten any other way.  So that's really exciting to see.  And the guys are feeling the buzz too.  I feel bad for them all having to go and set up there signing CDs.  I'm doing it because it's my record.  I want them out there if they want to be there, but I think they're enjoying it.  I like going to talk to an audience after a show, because the concert…  You talk about communication with the audience, but in a lot of ways it's a one-way trip.  There's the boss then there's the followers.  And if you're communicating, they're responding well to what you are giving them, and you are responding to their response.  But when you go and stand and talk to the audience after the show, it's a two-way thing.  It's brief, and you can't go as deep as they want to go sometimes, but it is a two-way thing, and they can say things.  And then you find out what's really going on.

S.B.:  You should feel good about that.  You are really opening the door for a lot of people.

B.F.:  Right.  I think so.  My world got changed a number of times.  I'm always thankful to the people who did that for me.  I know this is good stuff.  And it's not about me.  It is about me collaborating with these people.  But I feel like what I am presenting to them are some new options of things to check out that will expand their horizons.  Just like it has for me.

B.E.: Give me a quick rundown on the banjos you use in the show, makes and models and anything you might say about which are good for particular things.

B.F.: I always bring my old Gibson style 75 flathead from 1937. It is my basic sound. I also have a Deering banjo as a second, so I can have different tunings. The third one is strictly for fun, a new cello banjo made by Gold Tone. It is nearly an octave lower that my main banjo.

B.E.: A question about technique.  Has playing with African musicians led you to any new playing techniques?

B.F.: I love the different things that playing with these guys brings out in me and the banjo. When I play with anyone from any idiom, I get inspired by the language and try to respond in kind. This doesn't necessarily mean reinventing myself, but more just being open and allowing things to flow naturally.  In the learning of all the music on my trip, I was constantly trying to figure out how to play certain patterns on the banjo. Probably the most unique ones came from playing with Djelimady and Anania.

B.E.: Here’s the guitar question.  Throughout this project you have worked with quite an array of guitarists, from Djelimady to D’Gary (both brilliant but radically different) to Vusi, and perhaps others.  I’ll ask this in a wide open way.  Have there been any particular discoveries, challenges, surprises?  Anything along the way that might have extended your conception of what the guitar can do, or perhaps what you can do as a player working with a guitarist?

B.F.: Well, I have always related to guitarists because I am so close to them.  I also really enjoy playing with singer songwriters and looking for ways to lock into and harmonize their guitar accompaniments.  So playing with Vusi is like that for me.  With D'Gary, it's like playing with a different instrument altogether, and very challenging with the different time relationships with Mario's percussion.  With Djelimady I constantly wanted to stop and figure out what he had just played, which isn't so good for interaction. So I just went for it.

B.E.: Finally, we talked about these African ethnic styles as being a bit like languages, and how your particular goal is to have dialogue with musicians, not to become fluent in a foreign musical tongue.  That said, I’d like you to address the power of an unusual mode or scale.  I think primarily of the Wagogo scale.  All you need to do is limit yourself to that set of 5 notes [G, A, B, D, F], and you are automatically in the zone.  So simple, but so powerful.  Tell me your experience of that, and maybe other examples where a relatively straightforward, practical musical feature—like a scale—opens up a whole new world of possibilities.  Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences with some of Toumani’s pieces.

B.F.: It is a different challenge to make good music with limited note choices.  With Oumou I stuck to the pentatonic scale that she was in, and I played with phrasing and rythmic devices. If I slipped up and went outside of the scale, I didn't beat myself up about it.  Sometimes I would then continue to use the new note from that point on in the song.  I did notice that when Toumnai played with Oumou, he did not restrict himself to the 5 notes.  He played the full minor scale.  Now that I am playing with him, I am finding the joys and challenges of being restricted to one scale.  I have two thoughts on that.  One: the whole modal jazz movement gives me a lot of options while staying in one scale, as does Indian music.  Two: it is not actually required of me that I stay in the scale and sometimes I get to be different from my collaborator by using the other notes.  But in general, I try to make it happen within those loose guidelines.  I am actually interested in exploring dissonance by playing in a completely different scale then Toumani.  I will ask permission first!

B.E.:  And I have little doubt that he will give you an enthusiastic Yes.  Thanks so much for this, Bela.

Anania Ngoliga

When Afropop first met Anania in 2001, he was in a band called Tango Stars.  He has since left that band and Dar es Salaam, and moved to Zanzibar where he plays with a band called Karafu, a Swahili word for “gloves.”  He favors Zanzibar because the tourist industry there creates a better market for traditionally based music.  During those years, Anania has also made several trips to Norway where he was involved with an opera about Bob Marley.  In 2005, Bela Fleck met Anania in Bagamoyo and recorded songs for Throw Down Your Heart.  Bela subsequently asked Anania to join him on his spring, 2009, Africa Project tour.  Here are excerpts from our conversation during that tour.  Note that Anania’s thumb piano is called “ilimba,” plural “marimba.” 

Anania:  I have recorded an album, in which I've used a lot of marimba and ngomas (drums) in all the songs, trying to mix with a saxophone.  This is the first Tanzanian recording with such a mix.  But I am aiming mostly at the international market.  I want to publicize my music outside Tanzania.

B.E.:  What has it been like playing with Bela?

A.N.:  My experience of playing with Bela has taught me quite a few new things.  When I first met Bela, I was very surprised that he could actually play what he was playing on the banjo.  And then of course my experience of this project is realizing that with my ilimba, I can actually play more kinds of music than I thought.  I can actually make quite good music with other instruments. 

B.E.:  You play both guitar and ilimba.  Is there any tradition of these two instruments playing together?

A.N.:  Yes, though not much.  In the band, I have two songs that join marimba with electric guitar.  The band has got two guitars and keyboards.  So when I have this new arrangement, I keep to one guitar and keyboard, and take up the ilimba.  It is not usual for an ilimba and the guitar to be on the stage together.  Mostly, what other bands would do is try to play the ilimba sound on the guitar.  But they wouldn't have both instruments on the stage. 

B.E.:  Talk about the songs you play with Bela on the Throw Down Your Heat CD.

A.N.:  “Kabibi” is the name of the girl.  And in the song, I try to tell her that I love her, but she's got a sweet voice, a voice like a radio, or a voice like a chicken.  [Anania’s accompanist interjects, “Anania’s perception might be different.  Anania can't see.  But he has heard that the radio chooses the most beautiful voices to be the announcers.”]  The second song is called “Fura.”  It's just a song about happiness.  Let's forget our problems and sing and dance and be happy. 

B.E.:  Did you have some connection with the family of Hukwe Zawose?

A.N.:  There was a time when I was with Hukwe Zawose.  But I didn't learn from there.  I was born in the village.  My father used to play marimba.  I had my sisters and my mother too.  They were all singing and playing.  In fact, some of my sisters played marimba.  They taught me, and then I became better than they were.  So I come from the village where the tradition is.  I didn't learn it.  I grew up in it.  As for guitar, it hasn't been very long since I started playing Gogo music on guitar.  I also learned improvisation later.  But actually, it has always been there in the Gogo music, occasionally, if something comes up.  But now, if I know the scale of any tune, I can improvise on the ilimba.  When you have a marimba ensemble, usually there is one player who sticks to a steady part.  But if we all get excited, anyone can improvise, questioning and answering. enjoying ourselves.  Everybody can improvise.

B.E.:  Does this music have a spiritual side, like Shona mbira music in Zimbabwe?

A.N.:  Yes.  There is a connection between the music and the spirits, even though I'm not particularly into that.  But I know that some of the songs I play, people get into a trance when they hear it.  You can take it as music, as I do, or you can go for the higher plan, where the music is spiritual. 

Vusi Mahlasela 

Vusi Mahlasela comes from Mamelodi township.  His first band was called the Pleasure Invaders, but he made his way into South African music history with the powerful songs he wrote during the struggle to end apartheid, especially after the 1976 Soweto student uprising, in which he participated.  Since the end of apartheid, Vusi has emerged as one of the country’s most versatile and powerful troubadours.  The version of “Thula Mama” on the Throw Down Your Heart CD was recorded before a live audience just moments after Bela first met South African singer/songwriter Vusi Mahlasela.  Vusi picks up the story.

Vusi Mahlasela:  This project evolved from an experience at E-Town, a radio show in Colorado, where I performed, and Bela was there.  We did “Thula Mama” and then with the band “When You Come Back.”  With Bela, you just play and then he follows you without anything.  He just settles in nicely.  And you are playing together.  Wow!  And then I thought, banjo with my sound?  But, yeah, it really blended very well.  I like it.  That was the first time I met him.  I had heard about him.  But this is the first time we met.  And I was very much happy that when he was doing this live project, he invited me in.  And also, we did another recording in South Africa.  The jam! 

The only time that I was really into the sound of the banjo was when there was a carnival in Cape Town in South Africa, there was quite a lot of banjos.  The sound.  It goes with the marching.  Very percussive.  I thought perhaps with that sound you would be limited, maybe just tuning into one sound, but to my surprise.  Wow!  It gives so much.  And the musical energy that comes there is really exciting. 

B.E.:  Banjos go way back in South Africa, don’t they?

V.M.:  Well, I don't know.  But I think the banjo has been there for a long time.  I was just recently doing a documentary which is tracing my family tree for my mother's side in my father's side.  And the big question is where is the connection between the music that I play, this gift that I have.  Where does it come from?  Which side?  And I found that from my father's side, there was an uncle called Daniel who played the banjo, and he had his own style.  He called it “steamed sugar.”  A banjo?  I was surprised.  My father played guitar.  There were eleven of them, but the only person who still alive is my uncle, the eldest.  They had a group in Swaziland.  I didn't know my father.  I only found him in 2000.  When I found my father, he had been buried like six months before.  It's a long story.  That's why I’m doing this documentary.

And then on my mother's side, I also found someone who is playing the banjo.  Well, I think that banjo came to South Africa through the missionaries, you know, trying to get the church music, gospel and all that.  I think the man for my mother's side got the banjo through the missionaries. 

I think Latin music came late to South Africa.  There were quite a lot more influences from American music.  South Africa was not so much exposed to other African countries.  That’s partly because when there was the problem in South Africa, apartheid, they supported the cultural boycott.  That's why they didn't send their music.  But America did not respect the cultural boycott.  They kept shipping things to South Africa.  So we were growing up listening to Archie Shepp, Smokey Robinson, Elvis Presley.  Quite a lot of Motown artists as well.  That’s why the influence is so much. 

B.E.:  I know you are working to promote the idea of kids learning traditional instruments.  I guess during apartheid the idea was to keep traditions separate.  I don’t imagine there was much encouragement of traditional music culture.

V.M.:  That's right.  Music with a lot of traditional instruments, they wouldn't play a lot of it on the radio.  If someone was forced on us to play that, a track that contains indigenous or traditional instruments, they will scratch it with a needle.  Yeah, so that it was not played.  They call it "play unlisted."  Because it was not tuned to the Western instruments.  It was just stripping us from who we are.  Because these instruments were not seen as real instruments.  That is why I founded this foundation, the Vusi Mahlasela Music Foundation in the schools, to teach kids these instruments in school.  We borrowed a slogan from one of my favorite African writers, Ngungi Wathiogo, when he said "Africa, teach your children African songs so that they should glorify the spirit of collective good.” 

It is hard, even right now, for the students really to pick up these instruments.  They all want to play keyboards and guitars.  You have to work very hard to really get them interested.  The way you do that is you have to give them the history of those instruments.  You have to teach deeply.  Like the mouth bow.  The shepherd would play this whilst he was taking care of cattle and sheep and all that.  They would play it differently if the animals have to go down to the water to drink.  So they go down to the river.  Then if there were wild animals attacking, they will run toward the sound.  The sound will protect them.  The shepherd would understand things like that.  Or the talking drum.  African mobile cell phone.  So you generate that interest with the stories and the history.  And then they start picking up these instruments. 

Everyone who joins the foundation has to pick up one traditional instrument.  They can do whatever keyboards or what they like, but they have to choose one African instrument, an indigenous instrument that they have to learn.  And they must follow it. 

B.E.:  There must be some places where traditional music culture is still strong in South Africa.  Weddings?  Ceremonies?

V.M.:  It's alive.  There are places where there are special ceremonies, where people are following their tradition, and they know what it means.  The music that is strongest is choral music.  And those who are playing instruments that they have invented.  With different types depending on how what they believe that their religion, they create in their own different way, which is the right thing.  Because when the missionaries came, they sort of like told us, "No, this is what you have to imitate."  And this is how the wrong things started to happen.  That is why I think we are having quite a lot of problems. 

We have to understand:  why am I into this music?  For me, I am happy that I am beginning to understand why am into this thing of music, because also, when I was in school, I wanted to become a priest, or a doctor.  And somebody told me, "Look, but you are doing that already, preaching with your music.  And you are also healing with your music."  And the songs that I've written, it is only now that I understand.  Like the song, "When You Come Back."  When I wrote it, at the time, the meaning, it was one thing.  I thought, “I am writing this because of people who went into exile,” and things like that.  But actually it reflected back to me when I was doing this documentary.  I found that there is a link in the song where the line goes, "And I will be the one who will climb up the mountain reaching for the top of our Africa days."

The family tree that I am building for my mother and my father, on my mother's side, there was a great, great, great grandfather who did climb up a mountain.  And he was the only one.  No one would climb that mountain.  Even today, nobody goes.  He was great, and he was loved by the farmers because he could also bring rain.  When it was a drought, the farmers would go to him and they would talk to him, and he would do that.  But again, he was the only one who could go on the mountain.  Nobody else.  And in the song I'm saying I will be the one who come up the mountain reaching for the top.  That's the link.  So the song was actually about me, finding my way back home.  Picking my roots and everything.  Even songs of I'm writing right now, they are all about the history of my people, the family from both sides as well.  I'm finding new revelations.

B.E.:  What is it like being onstage with Bela?

V.M.:  I have worked with other artists who are really like---Ooooh!  Nervous.  They will stay there, wanting the music to be so right and everything.  And when I play those kind of shows it's really difficult.  I don't get that kind of feeling when I play with Bela.  I play.  And if I make a mistake, whatever, he is there with it to cover it up and everything, and it will end up sounding like the real thing that was supposed to be there.  He’s got respect, the way he comes around, he always asks, "Is it fine? Am I intruding?"  And that I find very much humbling.  He's really respecting at the same time as he's enjoying it.  It really struck me that somewhere this is a man with such a big heart.

D’Gary 

D’Gary is one of Africa’s most unusual guitarists.  He spent his youth playing rock ‘n roll and dance music on electric guitar, all the while honing in secret a formidable approach to acoustic guitar picking, deeply informed by the many traditions of his culturally rich homeland, the island of Madagascar.  He was the first African musician Bela recorded with, and along with his percussionist Mario, D’Gary provided some of the most exciting moments in the live Africa Project concerts of 2009.  When we spoke, D’Gary began by offering his simple philosophy of life.

D’Gary:  Music is life.  Without music, there is no life.

B.E.:  Amen.  Tell me what this project with Bela Fleck means to you?

D’Gary:  Really this was a big opportunity for me.  Because an artist like Bela is a true musician.  I'm very happy with it.  It was in 2004 he got in contact with my tour manager while I was on tour here in the United States.  We made a recording at his place in Nashville.  Afterwards he said, "We will see."  And here we are.  Bela is a great musician.  To be a good musician you have to work all the time.  I think he works a lot.  When we worked together in 2004, he had already listened to all my records.  He had listened a lot.  Maybe he had even worked with them.  He had chosen songs from the CDs that he wanted to try. 

And then we did the jam We started the jam out on the porch.  Then we moved into the studio.  We were like family.  Some of his group, the Flecktones were there.  We are like a family.  To make great music, you have to rehearse a lot.  Maybe he's been working alone, rehearsing with other musicians, working on rhythm.  When you play with him, he gets there very quickly.  He's inside. 

B.E.:  You have created a very unusual take on traditional Malagasy music.

D’Gary:  With traditional Malagasy music, there is not just one road.  It's like there's a flower in the mud.  Among us in the south of Madagascar, there were various ethnic groups, like the Bara, but also there is music from the west, the southwest, the east.  These influenced us.  Now, modern music, it's a big problem there.  A media problem.  We won't talk about that.  In between the two, there are things.  There are melodies.  We as Africans, we are neighbors.  There are others who live nearby.  We share things on the traditional level.

My music starts with the sound of the marovany [a box zither].  It has a bit more bass than the valiha [tube harp].  If you look at the instrument, it has many strings on the left and right, but it's the melodies I love.  And also the rhythms.  Afterwards, I heard the music at the funeral of my father.  That was something else.  Bara music, percussion with flute.  Dancing.  Singing a cappella with the rhythm.  And the accordion.  Also the jejy voatavo, a long stick of wood with a calabash and strings.  All of this was apart from the maravony, because the Bara don't play the maravany. 

Bara play valiha, but the voice does all the improvising.  Valiha and violin are the basis, but it was difficult because to work at the same time on the rhythm, the tempo, the dancing, seeing how the feet go with the rhythm.  The percussion is very unusual.  I had to work on that too after the melody.  For me this wasn't so difficult, because I could feel it.  This is something that comes from our ancestors. 

There is something in blues vocal that resembles our tradition in the south.  It's not the same structure, not the same melody.  But the singer cries.  It's like the women who cry during a funeral.  It's the same melody.  But when people say what I do is blues, I reject that completely.  Malagasy don’t like when you tell them they don't have roots, fotony.  Roots is a big thing for Malagasy people.  Even though we have different ethnic groups. If you tell someone he doesn't have roots, he will be very angry.  These are the things that come from our ancestors.  Roots.  Things from the past.  Like the roots of a tree.  I call my style Gofo, Government of tribes.  We have social problems among us.  But it makes all that together. 

B.E.:  How is your music received in Madagascar now?

D’Gary:  Most of the guitarists among us love what I do now.  They try to do what I do.  It's not very exact, but they try.  Most of them.  They started working with open tunings.  [D’Gary uses 23!]  There are big differences between them.  Take the song on Bela’s record, “Kinetsa.”  This is a special rhythm of the Veso.  Kinetsa is the name of a Veso dance.  Normally this would be done with percussion, drums, and two girls dancing.  I made the arrangement of the music myself.  For the tuning, you just change high E down to D. 

B.E.:  How do you come up with all these tunings?

D’Gary:  That depends.  Sometimes I look long and hard.  Sometimes I find it very quickly.  Because I'm used to playing alone.  I don't play simple things.  I’m always looking for good arpeggios.  Mixing bass, chords, solo.  I can do that because I play alone.  But you have to find beautiful harmony.  No matter what.  That depends on you.  Sometimes people make a mistake.  I'm playing in standard tuning, and they think it's an open tuning.  It's not in the strings.  It's in the fingers!

Toumani Diabate

Toumani Diabate is widely considered the greatest living player of the 21-string Mande harp, the kora.  He is also a very worldly musician, one who has engaged in nearly as many collaborations outside his own music as has Bela Fleck.  When Bela visited Mali, Toumani was in Europe, launching In The Heart of the Moon, his Grammy-winning collaboration with the late Ali Farka Toure.  Toumani does play on two songs on Bela’s Throw Down Your Heart CD, but these were done as overdubs later, and the two did not actually play together in person until early in 2009.  Once they did meet, the chemistry was instantaneous. 

B.E.:  Toumani, you have collaborated with so many different kinds of artists.  What is special about playing with Bela?

Toumani Diabate:  I say “Thank God.”  It was so exciting to see how intelligent Bela is.  In Africa, I never got a chance to listen to Bela’s music, and all the different collaborations he did.  In England, at a Glasgow concert, in January, that was my first time for me to really meet Bela.  It was a festival with Bassekou, Oumou Sangare and Benogo Diakité the kamelengoni player, all together.  I enjoyed it.  Actually, the first time we met was in Winnipeg, some years ago.  I did not know him at all.  I had just heard the name.  I was there with the Symmetric Orchestra.  He had a workshop to do, and he asked me to do it with him.  It was fantastic.  Many people came.  It was like a concert.  We just played for 45 minutes and said Goodbye.

So I was with Ali when Bela came to Mali.  I just heard the music he recorded there last November.  I’ve always been listening to different musicians in my life.  But this was something special.  With the banjo.  I’ve listened to different banjo players, but to see someone who plays in this way.  He is very involved in African music, but he is still the same man.  Very gentle, very positive.  Open.  An open mind.  And talking about music, he can just take an idea fast.  You play something for him, he just takes it, as if he knew this music before.  The computer there in his head is just rolling, so you just play and he just catches it.  From there, he can bring his own inspiration.

B.E.:  He’s a great improviser.  And you are too.  Improvisation is important in Mande music.  Bela told me that when he plays with you, you don’t do much arranging.  You just play.

T.D.:  Just go.  When I received the invitation to come and play with Bela in Oakland, when I arrived I thought he would be there for two or three days of rehearsing.  No.  I arrived first.  He arrived the next day at midnight.  We just went on the stage, without rehearsing.

B.E.:  Were you worried?

T.D.:  Yeah, I was worried.  We had just rehearsed one song in England.  We just took kora and kamelengoni to a hotel room to rehearse.  So we had one song.  But in Oakland we really had to play together.  And something happened.  I really can’t explain but the connection was there, as if we had been playing ten or twenty years.  The spirit was there.  I wondered, “How can the banjo work with the kora?”  That was my thing.  But thank God, we made it.  We did.  It’s not only the names: Bela, Toumani.  People get known by their work, but in truth, Bela is that good, the best banjo player.  He has earned that reputation.  I could say even more than that, because he is always in music.  He has his banjo with him always.   Even when the others are playing onstage, he is there, with his banjo.  Last night when the guy from Tanzania was playing, Bela was there, trying to find this song on the banjo.  It was another challenge for him.  I said, “This man, he never stops.”

One thing I really like about Bela, and this is the way it has to be, he is open.  Bela is open.  Bela likes to listen to others.  He never says, “Okay, I am the superstar Bela Fleck, master banjo player.  Blah, blah, blah.”  No.  He is open to everything.  If you have a suggestion, he is, “Okay, okay.”  If Bela plays, he thinks you are the best, not him.  “Yeah, we can try that.  We can try that.  I hope it will be fine.”  That’s the only words he says. 

B.E.:  Bela is a guy who can play anything he wants, but he also understands the power of playing simply, beautifully.  And I think that’s something the two of you share.  Would you agree?

T.D.:  In Oakland, after the second concert, he said, play this:  “ba,da,da,da,da,da.”  [Imitates complicated riff.]  I said, “It’s not necessary.  Slow down.” He said, “Okay, Toumani.  Okay.”  And then he played the best solo concert I’ve heard him play.  Afterwards, he said, “You are right.  It’s not necessary.”  When he plays with the Flecktones, it’s a jam.  Everyone plays very fast.  That’s why.  But I said, “No, take your time.” But when he plays with me, it’s like that.  I call that wisdom.  And really, Bela and I share that.  With jazz and blues sometimes, even with the young Mande players, it’s the energy that shows.  It’s something else.  But you don’t always have to show your virtuosity.  Virtuosity is only a part of power.  When you give that to the public, they feel it.  But people don’t just want fast.  They also want to be calmed, to listen to soft, simple music.  And Bela is in that spirit.  I adore that. 

With acoustic music, that’s an evolution in African music.  It’s a discovery, in West Africa, in Tanzania….  With this experience with Bela, it’s a great mix.  He does not play music of Mali, Madagascar, Zimbabwe.  He plays his own music.  With his experience.  And we also play our music.  Listen to what he plays on Oumou Sangare’s “Andia.”  [SINGS]  His fans at home will listen to that and say, “Bela is still himself.”  He plays his own music.  We play our own music, and we put it together.  So I thank God for the talent and the comportment of this man.  He sets a great example.  He’s ready for anything.  But he always does it with respect. 

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