Ever since banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck discovered many years
ago that his instrument has origins in Africa, he has longed to make an
album of traditional African folk music.

So in 2005—when the 11-time Grammy winner took some time off
from his band, the Flecktones, for the first time in 15 years—he
embarked on a project that would eventually become the recently
released CD Throw Down Your Heart, Tales From the Acoustic Planet,
Vol. 3: Africa Sessions.

The album includes 18 songs recorded during on-location
collaborations with musicians from Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Mali,
South Africa and Madagascar. The artists joining Fleck on Throw Down
Your Heart include such internationally acclaimed African
performers as Oumou Sangare, D’Gary and Vusi Mahlasela, as well as
others not as well-known in the United States.

To spread word about the album, Fleck has embarked on a 15-city
concert tour titled The Africa Project, which will include, on
different dates, onstage collaborations with guitarist-singer
Mahlasela, thumb piano player Anania Ngoglia, guitarist D’Gary and
vocalist Sangare.

Fleck comes to Tucson for a gig on Wednesday, June 17, at the Rialto
Theatre, with Toumani Diabaté, who is widely considered the
greatest master of the kora, the 21-stringed West African harp.

Fleck and Diabaté each will play solo segments and then play
together, Fleck said recently in an e-mail interview.

“We have done five duo concerts now, and it is a very satisfying
experience. The music we will play together is largely new and highly
improvised.”

Separately, Diabaté will perform music from his 2008 album,
The Mandé Variations, while Fleck will play tracks from
Throw Down Your Heart, he said.

Fleck said he has long been enamored of traditional African music
and had wanted to do this project for many years. He spent a year
researching and preparing, and then five months in the cradle of
civilization, traveling and recording almost every day.

“The material took shape as I did my research, and often I learned
material on the spot,” Fleck said.

“I have had an interest ever since I first realized the banjo came
from Africa. Albums like Graceland by Paul Simon turned me on,
as well as field recordings that my musician friends played me. I got
to go to South Africa in the early ’90s and loved the music I found
there. I also got to go to Egypt and Morocco in the ’80s, and that also
was great.”

In addition to honoring the musicians with whom he collaborated,
Fleck intended for Throw Down Your Heart to explore the African
origins of the banjo, the prototype of which was brought to American
shores by African slaves. He played and examined many different folk
instruments while on the African continent.

“I loved fooling around with the akonting, the
(khalam) and the ngoni, which were the three banjo-type
instruments I heard in West Africa. I also loved hearing those players
playing my banjo,” he said.

Throw Down Your Heart is a companion to the award-winning
film of the same name, which traces some of the travels and the
recording of the album. Directed by Sascha Paladino, the movie was
screened last October at the Tucson Film and Music Festival and will be
shown again at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, June 24, at the Loft Cinema.

Throw Down Your Heart is the third volume in a series of
albums Fleck has called Tales From the Acoustic Planet.

The first volume was released in 1995 and focused on an acoustic
take on Fleck’s trademark fusion of bluegrass and jazz. The second
volume, in 1999, saw Fleck paying homage to more traditional
bluegrass.

Fleck said he’s not sure when he will release Vol. 4, but he has
ambitious ideas.

“I definitely want to go to other parts of the world and do this
sort of thing again—in India, South America, China, who
knows?”

In the meantime, Fleck’s next release will be a collaboration with
classical bassist Edgar Meyer and Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain.
The project, titled The Melody of Rhythm, features one triple
concerto and six trio pieces, he said.

This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2009.