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You hear all these horrible statistics about Africa - AIDS and other illnesses, wars, but film and music can show the true beauty of what Africa really is and has to offer. -Béla Fleck |
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He began working with bassist Edgar Meyer and tabla player Zakir Hussain, and went on to collaborate with them on an orchestral work. He also began to play with fellow banjoist Abigail Washburn in The Sparrow Quartet (two banjos, cello and fiddle), where the ensemble spread unconventionally-arranged classical wings. But, the biggest undertaking and realization was that it was time to go to Africa.
 Béla Fleck in Africa |
Fleck shares that the Africa trip was personally rewarding. Tracing the route and evolution of the banjo, as an instrument, was interesting because the ideas and influences Fleck encountered will long inform his banjo playing. Within The Flecktones there was always a level of control Béla maintained, but it was starting to wear on him and tax his creativity. In Africa, he experienced a lack of control combined with a steep learning curve of trying to learn and anticipate the subsequent days' musical meetings, which was as thrilling as it was exhausting. Fleck says the experiences he had playing with African musicians were "truly inspiring on a musical level." And this went back to the overall intent of the trip - to play with and learn from African musicians. Perhaps the seed was planted long before when Fleck, a longtime admirer of Malian 'songbird' Oumou Sangare, began to look for any reason to record with her. "I was crazy about her music, and so trying to put something together was somewhat selfish," he laughs.
Planning a trip like this was a logistical nightmare. Fleck discussed the special packing considerations, travel needs, broad medical precautions and the itinerary planning necessary to travel across the Atlantic to Gambia and Mali in Western Africa, and then thousands of miles to Uganda and Tanzania in Central Africa. The Fleck/Paladino team set up meetings in advance with local musical directors, who proved indispensable. They conducted auditions with musicians that the local field producers had set up, and "almost everyone made the cut." While traveling and recording in Africa did present unique challenges, the language barrier was not one of them. "We rarely had to use a translator," he says proudly. The team had made careful preparation in selecting field producers who could act as translators, but their services were seldom needed. Music was the lingua franca, and while recording the most foreign premise to the African performers was the idea of a second 'take.'
 Anania Ngolia & Béla Fleck in Africa |
When I ask Fleck what it was like to record in unconventional places – often in small town centers and village communal spaces, hotel rooms and the mouth of the mighty Nile River – he draws out the words "an adventure." In the planning phases of the trip, he had committed himself and his team to making the highest quality recordings they could. He took only two banjos on the trip, but they ran eight-track and six-track recording setups simultaneously and often only one would be up to complete the task. That meant running these decks on battery packs, battery packs that one couldn't charge just any old time because of the lack of electricity. Fleck is uncompromising in his appraisal of his crew, an "incredibly good, dedicated group."
While the team left room each day for recording, they also left room on each daytrip from their home base for chance encounters, unplanned jams and more recording.
"We had a definite set of goals, but we left space for happy accidents," Fleck says. "Each day was something new. [I] kind of had to wipe my brain clean." It wasn't until he returned home and found himself in post-production and really "living with the music" that he had a chance to digest what had happened. "The process of editing and recording yielded as much material as going over there."
The resulting distillation is a hauntingly beautiful collection of songs and African instruments. Some tracks are instrumental, some have vocals – all are clear and crisp recordings made in some of the most remote places on Earth. Some tracks are simple, just a single instrument and a voice, like the blind thumb pianist Anania Ngolia from Tanzania on the duet "Kabibi." Other tracks are more densely layered with choirs and singing groups, such as the opening track, a welcome song called "Tulinesangala," where Fleck performs with thirteen female cooks from Nakesenyi, Uganda, or "Jesus Is the Only Answer" performed with the Ateso Jazz Band. Malian singer Oumou Sangare has a beautiful, haunting voice, which is complimented by Fleck's crisp, sparse banjo on "Ah Ndiya" and "Djorolen," the latter a plea to remember the most helpless or disenfranchised in society.
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