In 2009 and 2010, banjoist
Bela Fleck released two separate volumes of recordings entitled
Throw Down Your Heart, Tales from the Acoustic Planet: Vol. 3, and
Throw Down Your Heart, African Sessions, Pt. 2: Unreleased Tracks, as soundtrack appendages to a documentary shot during the African expedition by director
Sascha Paladino. The film and music sought to trace the West African origins of the banjo itself. The original album won a pair of Grammys for Best Contemporary World Album and Best Pop Instrumental Performance. A decade on,
Craft Recordings with
Rounder issue a boxed collection that packages the
Throw Down Your Heart albums with the previously unissued
The Ripple Effect, an unreleased live duo album from
Fleck and kora master
Toumani Diabate. One reason the banjoist went to Mali in the first place was to search for the kora legend, but he was unavailable.
Diabate later added overdubs to a couple of tracks on the first album, but they never had the chance to play together in Mali. The pair did, however, begin working together in a 2008 workshop at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and continued with a 22-date duo tour in 2009. The latter's highlights comprise the ten recordings on this album. The interactive rapport between these men offers an instinctive level of communication that reflects friendship, intimacy, and goodwill. "Bamako" and "Nashville" trace intersections and differences in the musical cultures of both cities. The pair retain their individual identities even as they commingle in a new collective musicality. On "Elyne Road," they trace one another's in-the-moment improvisations then extend them with nuanced inversions of scale, time, and mode. On "Throw Down Your Heart," they channel Malian and American blues, swing,
Stephen Foster, the original songs of
Diabate's family, classical music, and Appalachian-cum-Malian folk. "Kauonding Sissoko" is a tour de force of entwined, cascading single lines and stacked, overlapping melodies that touch on "Oh Susanna" and
Flatt & Scruggs, as well as
Tunde Jegede and
Kasse Mady Diabate. After
Fleck offers "Katmandu," a modal Eastern blues played solo, the pair enter a call-and-response improvisation that evolves into a stomping, humorous, "Dueling Banjos."
The Ripple Effect is offered as a standalone purchase and is easily enjoyed as such given the high quality of the duo's interaction. ~ Thom Jurek
![The Best of Ladysmith Black Mambazo [Shanachie]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0016351439819_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "The Best of Ladysmith Black Mambazo [Shanachie]")
![Mogoya [180 Gram Vinyl] [White Vinyl]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/3700551782062_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "Mogoya [180 Gram Vinyl] [White Vinyl]")
![Azel [LP]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0720841213512_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Azel [LP]")
