Liner Notes: Bela Fleck, 'Throw Down Your Heart'

FOR THE THIRD volume of his “Throw Down Your Heart” series, Bela Fleck wanted to bring the banjo back to its homeland: Africa. The Flecktones virtuoso took a trip to Africa a few years back to play with as many African musicians as he could.

Accompanied by a film and sound crew, Fleck gathered more than enough material for an album and a feature-length documentary (directed by his brother, Sascha Paladino). In the process, Fleck had to figure out how to fit his instrument back into the culture that birthed it.

“That’s the part that I can’t really explain: why it works or why it did,” Fleck said. “But everything I actually played, I can’t describe or explain why I made the particular choices that I made, or why it fit so well, but I feel like it sounds like it belongs in this music, and that’s what I was going for more than anything. But it was an unconscious thing: how can I make it sound like it fits? I was just trying to play in an honest way, be myself, and also respect their music.”

“Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3 – Africa Sessions” is out now, with a DVD release of the award-winning film coming soon. We asked Fleck to take Express track-by-track through his trip to Africa.

“Tulinesangala”
When I was on my way to Africa, I was really hoping to find some really sparse, beautiful singing, and I had heard some recordings of things like that, but I hadn’t found it. At this point, and I’d been in Uganda a while, then I heard that the women [who were cooking] sang, and so, we came up with the idea of me learning some of the tunes and then we would record together. And it ended up being one of my favorite things that happened. It was kind of what I was looking for.

“Kinetsa”
There was a lot of going with the flow with this project, in other worlds, you didn’t know how everything would work out, so I did everything I could. Six months before the trip to Africa I had an opportunity for D’Gary to come to Nashville and spend four days at my house in my home studio. And I was excited for that, both because I loved his music, and I knew I’d be able to get some tracks that I’d have control of, rather than these field recordings, and also as a test experience to get the ball rolling.

“Ah Ndiya”
Well it was a great thing [playing with Oumou Sangare] because I love this song. It’s one of the songs I played for people when I’d say, “Hey, check this out, you’ve never heard anything like this.” It was almost like getting to play on a great track that you’ve loved your whole your life, like suddenly you get to play on a Bob Dylan record. Really the version that we did is her standard versions, just with me in there, so it’s kind of neat, and there was a few times that I did that on the record. I felt I could get away with that because most of the people that I met that listen to my music have never heard these people so I could pick my favorite from Oumou and not worry if it’s already been done.

“Kabibi”
“Kabibi” is a song [Anani Ngoglia] played for me when we first met and I thought it was so cool, the solo version was fine and it I didn’t need me, but I was digging it because so much of the music, I was just jamming along, but on his song there was so many complex lines and he would play them the same way every time, so I could learn them. And it was one of the rare cases where I could really work out a complicated banjo part and then play it, as opposed to jamming.

“Angelina”
I loved [Luo Cultural Association's vocal style]. The things like that, which seem so almost other-worldly, are some of my favorite experiences. … I like stuff like that because it’s so out and wild and it feels like you’re in another world. Some of this stuff is so slick, it could be by pop singer or something, but this other stuff is raw and rootsy and I’m like yea, give me that, I want to be in that too.

“D’Gary Jam”
What it is, it was a track that we cut when D’Gary is here, and we did this one take of this one song and it went on for 25 minutes and it was rocking all the way through, this simple grooving song … And I was like what am I going to do with this 25 minutes of jam and I thought, “I’ll bringing this to Africa and I’ll get everyone to sing on it.” … When I came home I had 30 tracks of people singing and paying along. … Someday I’d like to put out the whole 25 minutes. I’d like to do it on vinyl And maybe get it remixed and have one side be the whole jam and the other side be the dance version.

“Throw Down Your Heart”
I wrote it in Amsterdam on a layover on the way to Africa and I took my banjo out, as I often do at airports. I had been listening to a lot of African music and for some reason I heard an Irish echo behind it and a lot of the tunes seemed to be one-part jigs. I guess I just thought I was turning it into a melodic theme, rather than a tune for a particular place. And I kept looking for people in Africa to play the song, and I would teach it to everyone and generally it wouldn’t work too well. Then I ran into these guys on one of the last days in the tour, finally I found Haruna Samake, his trio, and I taught it to the ngoni player and it sounded great, there it was. And we only did one take which is very unlike me, but we played it for 40 minutes and then I shorted it down.

“Thula Mama”
I knew about [Vusi Mahlasela's] music, there had been a time when we had almost got together to do something years ago that didn’t work out and I happened to be on a radio show called E-town in Colorado and I was playing with Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet and Vusi was on the show. I got a message that he’d be willing to play a song with us and I was like, “Great.” I’d been back from Africa a few years now and I was eager to play with African musicians. So, backstage an hour before we went out to play he showed me this tune and we played it a couple of times, the show goes on, and an hour into I had to go up and play this song with him. By some fluky fluke crazy thing we got it and it was perfect.

“Wairenziante”
Playing with [the Muwewesu Xylophone Group], the thing is so loud I could barely hear myself and you can see there’s a little headphone in my ear, a Walkman, and that’s because I couldn’t hear myself over the thing, and so, the engineer sent me a mix with just myself in it in just one ear in it. It’s like playing next to a rock band with a little acoustic guitar — you just can’t hear anything. It happened to be a song that I had a tape of, my friend had made it when he did a record, and so, I knew how it went and could play along.

“Buribalal”
Monochord is supposed to be a 1-string instrument; this is a two-string banjo basically, [Yoro Cisse], just listen to what he’s doing with that thing. … So, we made sure there was some interplay between the two of us.

“Zawose”
They have these sort of trance-y grooves in Tanzania — it’s like stoner’s paradise. It’s like these one chord jams that go on and go on, and it seems it would fit great into a Grateful Dead scene or something. It’s different than any other African music I’ve heard and I really wanted to capture that.

“Ajula/Mbamba”
That’s the most banjo of banjos, a big banjo called the akonting. You see it in the film: it’s a big gourd banjo tuned down low and they play it with a craw hammer style, which they do in old-time banjo styles here, obviously it came from there. They’re like banjo tunes. I think it’s a little medley of like four different tunes and it’s a family carrying on the tradition of the Gambian banjo.

“Pakugyenda Balebauo”
At the end of credits [of the film] it shows this guy playing the song. It’s a big harp that he sits down on the floor to play with his thumbs and his fingers, and around one of his toes he has minute symbols and he moves his toe when you hear him playing. The thing is so funky, every note bums and rattles, it’s like natural distortion. It’s the funkiest thing I’ve ever heard. I think they’re proud of that and they consider themselves to be a forefather of the blues and want you to know it.

“Jesus Is the Only Answer”
There’s about 12 to 15 people, some are just singing, some are just playing percussion. There’s a bunch of people on the floor, on the ground playing big thumb pianos, there’s a pile of them, lots of people. The banjo sounds like it belongs in there too, it’s almost like bluegrass in a way and I almost knew what to do right away, like oh I could just play like Earl Scruggs on this.

“Matitu”
When you listen to it you’ll hear the rhythm that the percussionist is doing and you’ll hear the rhythm that the marimba guy is doing and they almost seem like they’re not connected, like they’re going on despite each other, rather than being connected. I could play either one but I couldn’t play them both, in other words, I could understand each rhythm separately but I couldn’t understand how they go together. So I started out playing the rhythm of the drummer and I just hung on for dear life where he was playing, while the marimba player was playing his melody, then I waited for a couple of bars then I played with the marimba and I ignored the drums. Then, when I did my solo, I just did it in free time over top of them, basically ignored both of them, as if I was playing … out of time on purpose to try the mood that way. … It was one of those things where I had to trick myself into playing the song, but when you hear it, it sounds fine.

“Mariam”
[Djelimady Tounkara has] been doing it his whole life; he knows what he’s doing and he found a technique to play [guitar] at lightning speed. Not only that, he’s playing an acoustic that to me sounds like a Martin-D28 or something. That calabash that they play percussion on, it’s a big neat sound, just one guy playing percussion with no bass.

“Djorolen”
The song was beautiful it was a song I fell in love with on [Oumou Sangare's] record, and I never thought of doing it. My girlfriend suggested it, and I tried to think of a way of doing it that was different from how she did it, so it would be a new reading of it. It took a little convincing and a little work because it was so different for her. The harmony of it [is different] and it’s a little faster than she normally does it, although it’s quite slow for me, as a banjo player I usually play more quickly. I just heard a whole different set of chord changes for it and I wanted to try it with her and I also wanted to do it as a duet.

“Dunia Haina Wema/Thumb Fun”
The night before Anania [Ngoliga] had sung on the “D’Gary Jam,” he went berserk. We were just screaming when he got done because he went on for 20 minutes and got crazier and crazier and never ran out of cool stuff to do. He was just like a great jazz musician. I’d never heard him play that way after being with him for a week, he’d played cool stuff, but he’d never gone crazy, so, it seemed like suddenly he’d be given permission to just go. So, when he started playing like that that day I had already started planning for the next music the next country the next day. All of a sudden I was into the most dangerous musical situation I had been in on the whole trip where if someone was going to take me down, because I wasn’t prepared to play like that, I thought it was going to be this real gentle thing. He just started blowing on the thumb thing and I had to do everything to keep up with him.

» State Theatre, 220 N. Washington St., Falls Church; Thu., April 9, 7 p.m., $50; 703-237-0300. (East Falls Church)

Written by Express contributor Rudi Greenberg