As a Canadian banjo player touring rural Mali, Jayme Stone didn't expect to find much that was familiar. Searching for precursors to his own instrument, Stone tracked down a young man who was purportedly the last player of a two-string wood and goat-skin instrument called the konou, and was shocked at the associations his playing evoked.

"He had never left his village before, he'd never heard the radio," Stone recalls. "But when I saw him play, his right-hand technique was exactly the same as Pete Seeger's clawhammer style. All of a sudden, all the theory and all the academic questioning were gone. It was just clear: This is the banjo."

The konou was one of two banjo ancestors unknown in the West that Stone came across during his seven-week African excursion. The other, an ancient one-string precursor to the more familiar ngoni called a juru keleni, was locked away deep in storage at the National Museum of Mali. But even more important than these archaeological finds for Stone were the experiences he had while in Mali, the aftereffects of which shine through on his new CD, Africa to Appalachia, a collaboration with Malian kora master Mansa Sissoko.

Stone initially became attracted to the banjo at 16, when he heard Béla Fleck (whom he later studied with) perform. Not having to cope with the "hillbilly stigma" that the banjo has in the States, Stone was soon studying the instrument intently. "One of the biggest attractions," Stone says, "was that there's so much music that had never been done on the banjo. It doesn't have thousands of years of common practice like many other instruments. Even bluegrass was only 50 years old. So it was exciting because it was easy to do something fresh and easy to find things that had never been discovered before."

While studying under banjo virtuoso Tony Trischka, Stone began assimilating his five-string axe into the Toronto jazz and improvised music scene. It was through a track on Trischka's 1993 album World Turning that Stone became aware of the banjo's African roots, at the same time he was independently discovering an affinity for the continent's music. He became particularly intrigued by the music of Mali, an interest reinforced when he was introduced to Sissoko.

The two musicians formed a fast bond and an immediate interest in collaborating, though it was several years before that came to fruition. "Before we made a record together," Stone explains, "I wanted to spend some time to gain my own experience of that music so I wasn't learning it all through him. I didn't want the music to be extracted from where it comes from. I could never replicate the experience of being a Malian, of course, but I wanted to spend time there and live with them."

He got his chance via a Chalmers Arts Fellowship grant, traveling the country, staying with locals rather than in hotels, making field recordings of songs that had never been heard in the West and learning the cultural context of the music.

"There was a communal storytelling aspect to the music that I really responded to," Stone says. "It was always really important for Mansa to tell me what these songs were about, where and for whom they would be sung 'This is a song for the merchants, this is a song for the blacksmiths, this is a song that we sing when we're cultivating rice, this is a song that we sing when it rains.' There was immediately this sense that the music has a larger context. It's not just about making sounds, it's about bringing people together, encouraging people, supporting people, keeping history alive. These elements were really attractive for someone who grew up in this part of the world, where music is largely for entertainment."

Through their travels and collaboration, Stone and Sissoko have found commonalities not just in their related instruments but in their cultures. Where Stone found traces of bluegrass in the "blurringly fast phrases and cool patterns" of Malian music; Sissoko delighted at hearing familiar rhythms in Earth, Wind and Fire songs. And on Africa to Appalachia, the miles between those seemingly disparate sounds are traversed with verve and agility, African folk songs smoothly segueing into old-timey Americana.

"More than anything," Stone says, "it's clear when we play together that music is universal. If you're an adaptable, open-eared musician you'll be able to find your way in all kinds of different music. It's a testament to the adaptability of music and musicians."
By Shaun Brady