Maybe it just seems that world music has grown exponentially in recent years.
Or maybe not. One of music's adventurers, American banjo player extraordinaire Bela Fleck has just released his second album of music from a sojourn to Africa, "Throw Down Your Heart, Africa Sessions Part 2," and will play with some of the musicians from the Grammy-winning original record Monday night at Miami University Hamilton.
One of the players will be Bassekou Kouyate, a master of the ngoni, the African ancestor of the banjo, and his band Ngoni Ba. Kouyate has just released his new album, "I Speak Fula," which he describes in press materials as "seamlessly melding contemporary jazz, blues, rock, bluegrass and pop influences with Afro-beat and the centuries-old musical traditions of the griots of Mali."
Paul Simon's "Graceland" it's not. "Fula's" tunes feature the mellifluous voice of Amy Sacko and a wide-ranging cast of players on African stringed instruments and percussion.
The Africa Project promises to show that the journey from Mali in West Africa to Hamilton in western Ohio might not be that far after all.
