This came out of leftfield: I was invited – with very little notice - to a gig at the Opera House. The venue alone was reason enough to attend so I hastily agreed without checking out who it was – lucky I didn’t as stigma and preconceptions would have stopped me going to a very memorable evening.
For some reason I got it into my head I was going to some sort of Jazz/Blues Guitarist. It wasn’t until I got to the venue that I Googled the artist – Bela Fleck – to find that he is one of the world’s greatest proponent’s in...The Banjo!OK. Thats OK I told myself. The Banjo-duel in “Deliverance” came to mind – this needn’t be so bad. As it happens, much of the first set was pretty cool. He expertly ran through a series of tunes from Jazz, Blues, Bluegrass, Ragtime and Classical as well as a touch of African music. I settled into what promised to be an interesting recital – but was confused by all the percussion instruments lying about the stage...The Banjo is, he told us, originally African. Isn’t everything I thought? Africa not only invented music, you could argue it invented people!Bela started mentioning that he had been on a trip to Africa in 2005 and it obviously affected him deeply. He mentioned that he would be doing some stuff with someone called Oumou Sangare – to which the crowd (your average collection of World Music types) erupted with delight. Can you see where this is going?He left. She... and the other 8 members of her band - came on and proceeded to do a series of traditional numbers from Mali.
Furthermore, she couldn’t speak English, so she introduced all the tracks either in Pigeon English or her native French.
Suddenly I’ve come a long way from American Jazz and Blues – albeit on a banjo – to full-on Tribal Music from Africa. Actually it was pretty enlightening, there were a couple of instruments I can’t even describe let alone name. I was, however, well out of my musical comfort zone.After the intermission, they all came back and Bela joined them – although he looked somewhat like the proverbial saw thumb. They promised a Banjo-fused-with-African set which IMHO completely didn’t work. It struck me that maybe trying to fuse Western music with African music fails because: the former is completely devoured by the latter – the latter gave birth to the former and is so much more powerful. One musical culture trumps the other.
For instance – Blur’s Damon Albarn also did a stint in Mali and it deeply affected him also. He too produced an album from that with a very similar outcome. Very worth listening to, fantastic African tunes, but very much 80-20 when it comes to the contribution he’s able to make. Anyway, on balance a great show but I forgot all about Mr Banjo, and ultimately so did Oumou Sangare. She went to a lot of trouble to spotlight all the other 8 members of her band but seemed to forget Bela was even there. I think I only heard a couple of Banjo riffs. Oh well, talk about lost in music! The sensational summer of sounds goes on...