Kouyate appears on the title track of Fleck's double-Grammy-nominated "Throw Down Your Heart." This tour marks the first for Ngoni ba as a complete group.

The group's first CD, "I Speak Fula," was released in February. Their sounds blend ancient traditional music of their country and Afro-beat with jazz, blues, rock, bluegrass and pop (blues having its beginnings in Africa).

Kouyate popularized the ngoni, a small stringed instrument similar to a guitar, which was near extinction but is now played by kids throughout Africa.

Q: Are you still considered a griot?

A: Absolutely, and first of all by my family and myself. We are proud to be griots, and the spoken record goes back at least 800 years. My family name, like several others in West Africa, immediately tells everyone that we are griots.

Q: Is the ngoni a popular instrument in Africa? What kind of music was traditionally played on it?

A:The start of the ngoni was as a means for the griot to make life agreeable for his patron, but also to give him important messages about the policies he was promoting and what people thought about their leaders. The djeli ngoni, the one I play with Ngoni ba, can both play solo music and accompany vocalists or storytellers. And it continued like this in the private courtyards and rooms of our patrons' houses. But other people wanted to hear music, too, so they made their own kinds of ngoni for their own audiences, particularly the hunters and the young men in the villages.

At Independence, people began to take notice of traditional music and included the old instruments in orchestras, like the Super Rail Band where I used to play the ngoni, and we brought back traditional tunes with adapted lyrics.

Q: Besides playing it standing up and using the wah-wah pedal, how have you modernized or innovated the ngoni?

A: Like other ngoni players, I think I have taken part in modernization that means the ngoni can now play a part in major groups, occupying solo slots just like the kora, the guitar and other Western instruments. This was partly due to standing up to play instead of staying seated on the ground, below everyone's eye-line. But after drawing attention to the instrument, we had to follow up with more confident solo music.

Q: In your years playing, what has been your favorite onstage experience?

A:This is really difficult to answer because there have been so many. I really don't know what to choose: playing as a young man of 19 with Taj Mahal in Tennessee, with great Malian musicians like Ali Farka Tour? and Toumani Diabat?, producing an Ngoni orchestra with 20 instruments for a State Visit in Bamako, the first concerts with Ngoni ba at Festivals in Mali, and the amazing start of our first foreign tour in Portugal, and now the U.S. tour playing with Bel? Fleck who is so appreciative of our music and encourages us to join with his group. I have really been very lucky to have all this rich experience.

Q: How did the collaboration with Bela Fleck begin? How did you meet?

A: Bel? came to Mali and took advice about the musicians he should contact. Among people he consulted was Nick Gold of World Circuit who knows the Bamako music scene well. It was his idea that we should meet, and we have kept in touch since then. We got on extremely well from the start, began playing together, and even recorded in a studio in Bamako. Some of that music is included in the soundtrack of "Throw Down Your Heart."