By Kate Lochte
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-883926.mp3
Murray, KY – Bela Fleck's Africa Tour comes to Murray State University's Lovett Auditorium for a concert performance next Friday. Kate Lochte has more with the versatile banjo virtuoso.
K. Your artistic DNA crosses genres. Do audiences cross over with you? Do you ever perform different genres in one concert?
B. Sure, at a certain point I realized I had a surprisingly large audience from the Flectones success and I thought, "What do I want to do with this?" And I thought I wanted to turn them on to stuff. I had a responsibility because of the larger audience to show them things that were really special, that weren't really me, but I could lead them to it. A lot of great musicians that I've looked up to have done that. You hear somebody and you fall in love with their music and then they collaborate with someone new. And then you go, "Oh, that's really cool" and it opens your world. It takes an open minded listener because some people want to hear you do what you always do. But I think I've built an audience that comes to my music that is actually very open. And they actually want to be surprised and they want to hear what I'm going to throw at them that's different. So yeh, there's lots of genre crossing, like this is Africans combining with a jazzy bluegrass musician, right? So that's genre crossing. This other project I'm doing starting again in the summer with Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain has got Indian music, combined with classical music combined with the bluegrass and jazz stuff. So that's a real genre crossing group. That's kind of the stuff I tend to do.
K. Have you sensed that anything in your collaboration is going to change what they're going to do next?
B. Yeah, I actually do see that. For instance, I'm coming on tour with Bassekou Kouyate and Anania Ngoliga. Anania's from Tanzania and he plays the thumb piano. Bassekou plays the ngoni, the Malian banjo. He has a big band with seven people and four ngonis in it and percussion and a great female vocalist who carries on the Griot tradition. But the great thing about Bassekou and Anania is they are great improvisers and great listeners. I can see while playing with both of them that they are picking up things that I do and incorporating them into their music just like I'm doing with theirs. That's great and Anania is one of these world class improvisers - just soaks up everything I do and spits it back to me in this new way.
K. How about John Kitime?
B. John Kitime works with Anania since Anania is blind he needs somebody to come with him and help him around. Now John plays guitar and he and Anania can do the old traditional Tanzanian stuff. They sing this almost brotherly duet kind of stuff.
K. I'd like to ask you if now that you've been with these guys for such a long time if you can articulate similarities and differences between the music of Mali and that from Tanzania?
B. Oh yeah, they're really different cause the music of East Africa really doesn't relate to American music as directly. The slaves that were taken in East Africa went East to Arab countries. They didn't come here, so their music really didn't color ours as much as the west African stuff did. But I think one of the things about Anania and Bassekou is that they listen to music from around the world and they are really open to a lot of stuff so their music is more accessible than a lot of music from their country. Like you can find stuff over there that's really confusing to listen to, that you couldn't process at first. For instance, the way they feel the beat in Tanzania - the downbeat is in a different place than I ever expect. It's off by one beat from where my foot taps. So you're doing a song and you're feeling it, the rhythm is like this, and you look at Anania's foot and it's tapping in a whole different place. So that was very confusing when I was over there playing with these guys. I didn't know whether to play along with the foot or the sound I was hearing them make - Seemed to be completely different. I really think the improvising thing in Mali is huge. Everyone's expected to improvise very very well where in east Africa I think Anania is an anomaly to be an almost jazz like improviser on the thumb piano. I just think he's a freak of nature.
Bela Fleck's Africa Tour concert at Murray State starts at 8 p.m. next Friday. Tickets for the Lovett Auditorium show will be available at the door. Get them in advance now at ticketmaster.com, Murray's Regional Special Events Center box office, or by calling 800-745-3000.