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When most people think of the banjo, Southern folk music and bands that include a washboard and a tin whistle usually come to mind. After all, the instrument is almost synonymous with the "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" from The Beverly Hillbillies.
In truth, the roots of the banjo trace back to Africa. Slaves in the South fashioned the banjo after instruments they were familiar with in Africa before crossing the Atlantic Ocean on slave ships.
When a music teacher told him about the banjo's African ties, accomplished Canadian composer Jayme Stone was compelled to travel to West Africa, specifically Sengal and Mila, to study the instrument and learn about its earliest forms and music.
"Somehow I sort of was curious what the music sounded like before it ever got here," Stone said in a recent interview with ec/dc. "That was the one thing that nobody was really exploring, which was what did African music sound like? The more I actually started to listen to African music, I thought "Wow, this on its own is such compelling, fascinating, beautiful music."
A few years prior to the trip, Stone was introduced to Mansa Sissoko, a griot singer and master-player of the kora (a 21-string African harp). Through his knowledge of the banjo's origins and his connection with Sissoko, Stone found himself wanting to record an album exploring African music. The trip to West Africa was the first step in that process.
"It was very much a trip to go there and prepare to make a record," Stone said. "I didn't know at that time exactly how the record was going to come about or exactly who was going to be on it. But I knew there was such potential in this whole project and that I wanted to get educated before I did it."
The record, Africa to Appalachia, was completed and released earlier this year and is a collaboration with Sissoko. The album, which also features Grant Gordy on guitar, Paul Mathew on bass and Nick Fraser on percussion, is described as a way to bring African and American music closer together by blurring the lines between the two while still letting the roots of the music shine.
"It's always hard to pull it apart because American music is so influenced by African music," Stone said. "You hear it in the blues and the jazz and old-time music and R&B and gospel. Americans who came on slave ships for hundreds of years brought their music and a lot of that know-how, so there's an immense amount of crossover."
Stone, who truly fell in love with the banjo after hearing Bela Fleck, made sure to explore as many different areas during his time in West Africa, from rural villages to big cities. What he found was a lot of musical diversity, much more so than here in the United States.
"Every region in Mali has its own kind of local musical dialect," he said. "They often sing in a different language. They use a different number of notes. They'll have different rhythms and dances that all go along with it. So each region has a particular style.
"There's just such a wealth. It's just so rich (in music) and we only have a handful of (those) things that have been recorded and distributed over here."
By Randy Shemanski 10/09/08 >> go there
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