A powerful cross-cultural celebration took place Monday night at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, with American banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck as host and impresario.

The celebrated genre-breaking player's picture was on the concert's poster and ticket stubs, but he would be the first to admit that for all his instrumental prowess and fame in the jazz and bluegrass worlds, he was sharing the stage with formidable, charismatic African musicians with entrancing songs to share.

Fleck had collaborated with them on his album Throw Down Your Heart, which this year won two Grammy Awards.

At his Dominion-Chalmers concert, presented by the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, Fleck seemed filled with reverence and enthusiasm for the players he featured from East and West Africa.

The concert's 80-minute first set began quietly and intimately, but grew to be rousing and intense.

Fleck began the show with a five-minute solo piece that was filled with harmonics and dazzling harp-like runs, but was always tasteful and tuneful.

After that, Fleck played the role of emcee, introducing the duo of Anania Ngoliga, a blind thumb pianist and singer from Zanzibar, and Tanzanian guitarist/singer John Kitime.

They played two songs on their own, winning over the crowd with harmonized mellifluous singing and lots of soul. Ngoliga was a riveting figure, sitting stock still and singing while his hands elicited mesmerizing modal melodies from the box-like instrument on his lap.

Fleck then joined the East African musicians. On their final droning song, a piece of traditional Gogo music from Tanzania, Fleck and Ngoliga traded bits of melody, Fleck twanging brashly and Ngoliga creating musical cascades from the thumb piano.

When the Malian septet of Bassekou Kouyate and N'Goni Ba relieved the East Africans, the music grew more fierce and visceral.

The group included Kouyate and three other musicians who played various types of N'Goni -- African banjos, you could say -- and they gave a high-energy performance aided by two percussionists and a female singer.

Their West African Griot music was complex and compelling -- and entertaining too, with the musicians executing Four-Tops style choreography as they played.

Indeed, you could hear the prototypes of early rock and roll in their spirited playing.

Fleck joined the Malians for two roiling songs, jamming with Kouyate in a show of mutual admiration.

While the pairing of an American banjo master with African folkloric musicians might have seemed far-fetched on paper, the performance was a triumph of authentic, open-hearted music and even a common humanity on Dominion-Chalmers' stage.