by Daniel Fryland
Staff Writer

Bela Fleck plays Finney.

Considered to be the best banjo player in the world, Béla Fleck is known for expanding and sometimes outright shattering the boundaries of established genres.  On Tuesday, he brought his Africa Project to Finney Chapel, shocking the audience into pseudo-religious awe.

The banjo master took the stage, said, “Hi, how ya doin’?” and sat down to play.  The first thing that struck me about his playing was the tone—sweet, warm and free of that twangy, nasally sound that is easy to expect of the banjo.  This introduction featured abrupt changes in style and time, floating freely from one musical idea to the next.

The rest of the concert featured musicians that Béla met in Africa.  Béla left the stage to be replaced by his first guests—Anania Ngoliga, a blind thumb piano player, and his accompanist, John Kitime on the guitar.   Anania began the performance singing, a capalla, “Tanzania, Tanzania.” His vocals were clear, precise and beautiful.  Stylistically, Anania’s music was almost exclusively major key, upbeat, and peaceful, bringing the feeling of summer sunshine.

After Anania’s second song, Béla returned to the stage to join him.  As Béla introduced it, the next song was “about one of Anania’s many girlfriends.  This one has a voice like a radio and sometimes like a chicken.”  Following this explanation, Anania let forth a stream of clucks and squawks and launched into ascending lines on his thumb piano.  Both Béla and Anania took solos on this song, demonstrating a fascinating contrast in musical background while preserving the overall cohesion and identity of the song.

Béla’s second guest was the band Ngoni Ba, led by ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate.  The ngoni is a kind of Malian banjo, thought to be the ancestor of the American banjo.  The band took the stage in beautifully colorful clothes, and Bassekou began to play.  This introduction began as a traditional melody, transitioning into a rock-like style before taking on a bluesy groove.  Amy Sacko, Bassekou’s wife, led the transition to the first song on vocals.

The rest of Ngoni Ba consisted of other ngoni players on ngoni of various ranges and sizes as well as two percussionists—one playing a large gourd drum and the other alternating between a small gourd drum and a talking drum.  Despite the difference in instrumentation, Ngoni Ba’s sound was powerfully reminiscent of rock and funk and inspired students to take to the aisles to dance.

(From left) Amy Sacko, Bassekou Kouyate, and Béla Fleck. Photo by David Roswell.

Bassekou and Béla traded solos over the grooves laid down by the rest of the band—echoing each other’s ideas back and forth and toying with the timing and musical structure of the song.  Bassekou would play a short line, which Béla would repeat, and Bassekou would again play the line, but faster.  This continued until the fingers of both musicians became a blur and the solos faded into another melody.

After a short break, Béla brought a baritone banjo on-stage for a short solo before switching to a traditional banjo for a solo that was anything but traditional.  Béla picked the strings with his right hand, as usual, but rather than changing the pitch by fingering different frets, he used his left hand to turn the tuning pegs on different strings.  The result was a gliding melody alternating between discrete notes and slides between notes of different intervals until Béla threw harmonics into the sonic fondue he was heating up.

Later, Casey Driessen, the American bluegrass fiddler, joined Anania, John, and Béla on stage to, as Béla put it, “explore the tenuous relationship between Tanzanian music and Bluegrass.”  The result was not as bizarre as might be expected.  In style, Casey and Anania’s solos were quite similar, differing mainly in that Casey’s playing incorporated more elements of American blues, while Anania remained in a more strictly major-key tonality.

Various other combinations of musicians ensued until Béla, Ngoni Ba, Anania and Casey all took the stage for what was introduced as the last song of the night.  Following the general pattern of the evening, the song had a driving beat and served as a perfect platform from which nearly all the musicians on stage launched their own solos.  The performance instantly drew a standing ovation that quickly morphed into an encore.  The musicians returned to the stage for the true final performance of the night, “Throw Down Your Heart.”

“Throw Down Your Heart,” is the title track from Béla’s new album, and recently won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.  The album won a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album.  Following the driving beat of the previous song, “Throw Down Your Heart” felt soothing, yet managed to convey a sense of loss—simultaneously mourning and washing away the stains of the slave trade.