It will probably still come as a surprise to a lot of bluegrass fans to learn that the five stringed instrument the guy up on stage is plucking away on, that they know as a banjo, came over with the slaves from West Africa in the 1600s. So while all the rednecks were condemning rock and roll in the fifties as "coloured" music or worse, they were busy listening to and playing music that featured an instrument more coloured than what they were putting down. Of course irony is usually lost on folk like that, so I really doubt they would have appreciated how funny it is that the Irish/Scottish folk tunes they'd heard played on banjo and other so called 'merican instruments, owed as much to their former slaves as the sounds of Satan.
Of course that's assuming they'd even believe you. Anybody with those types of attitudes aren't what you call open to new ideas, or interested in hearing anything that would run contrary to any of their deeply felt hatreds or that might force them to admit that they aren't the centre of the universe. Thankfully there are fewer and fewer of those types of people in the world and more and more like Jayme Stone. Jamye is a young Canadian musician with a passionate interest in the roots of music and the inspiration and energy to turn that into something special.
In the introductory notes to the CD Africa To Appalachia that he and Malian musician Mansa Sissoko created, due for release in the United States on September 9th, he recounts how his discovery of the banjo's origins led him on an odyssey through West Africa in search of the music that didn't come over with the slaves. In turn Mansa came across the Atlantic in the other direction, moving his family to Canada just in time for a Montreal Quebec winter, to begin a new life. Like a great many Malian musicians Mansa was steeped in the history of his people and their music as part of his apprenticeship, which meant that Jamye couldn't have found a more appropriate person to work with if he tried.
As the title of the disc, Africa To Appalachia, suggests the two, along with accompanying musicians from Africa and North America, have drawn upon the various traditions utilizing the banjo to create the music that appears on the CD. So you get the very odd sensation of listening to a song being sung in Malian sounding like a traditional reel from Quebec or a fiddle tune from the hill country of the Appalachians. Even stranger is how well it all works.
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