'Every time I pick up my banjo it seems like there's something new waiting there for me to figure out," says Bela Fleck.
Although he's best known for his work in bluegrass, with New Grass Revival and his own fusion group, the Flecktones, Fleck is a restless explorer. He's played jazz with pianist Chick Corea, composed classical concertos with bassist Edgar Meyer and Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, and released a version of "Jingle Bells" with Tuvan throat singers.
And that's just in the five years that have followed Fleck's three-month sojourn in Africa, exploring the origins of the banjo and collaborating with musicians from Mali, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, Senegal, and elsewhere.
That trip resulted in 2009's Grammy-winning Throw Down Your Heart: Africa Sessions and a companion film. Fleck just self-released a second volume of recordings from those sessions, and he brings a group of musicians from Mali and Tanzania to Wilmington's Grand Opera House on Wednesday.
By traveling to Africa, Fleck sought to challenge himself by learning to play in new contexts, to collaborate on African songs rather than on his own compositions. His banjo fits in easily with the trebly tones of instruments such as the kora (African harp), mbira (thumb piano), and n'goni (a Malian banjo).
"To go to a strange land and to try to get them to play your music seemed sort of - I mean, obviously it worked great for Paul Simon, and I love that record [Graceland] - but I couldn't see that with my music," Fleck says from a tour stop in Oxford, Miss.
"It was a test for myself to see if I could fit in with them. I wanted to do the heavy lifting and let them be themselves."
This is Fleck's fourth tour with African musicians, and this time he's brought Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba, mbira player and singer Anania Ngoliga, and guitarist John Kitime, in addition to bluegrass fiddler Casey Driessen. The show is structured as a fluctuating series of individual performances and collaborations.
"It's pretty spectacular, I've gotta say. I'm very high on this tour," he says, and praises Bassekou's "rockin' band" and the "chilling and just beautiful" singing of Anania.
"It's such a compelling project. I don't usually talk about my own projects this way, by the way. I'm only talking about it because of what it is, the people I'm working with, the people that I'm able to bring forth that listeners wouldn't get to hear otherwise," he says. "I think they'll be pretty thrilled with what they hear."
Fleck pauses, then adds with a laugh: "The only problem is that there's banjo on all of it."
Of course, that's not a problem at all.
Bela Fleck with Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba, plus Anania Ngoliga and John Kitime, play at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Grand Opera House, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington. Tickets: $33-$40. Information: 302-652-5577 or
www.grandopera.org
