Fleck Tells Extraordinary Banjo `Tales'

Bela Fleck

Warner Brother Records

The centerpiece of Bela Fleck's music is his banjo. Now, maybe your image of a banjo is something that sits on Granny Smith's lap while she strokes Flash the basset hound and waits for the Confederate boys to boot the Yankees out of Atlanta. There is still hope for redemption, even for those prejudiced few who've let their musical image of the banjo be perverted by Roscoe P. Coltrane and Boss Hog.

The music on Fleck's new CD, "Tales from the Acoustic Planet," is not simply to be defined as bluegrass, folk, jazz, blues, funk or classical. It sounds something like jazz, but it's scored like classical and played on a banjo. Fleck has sculpted an acoustically-based musical style that is like nothing this listener has ever heard before.

Fleck explores seemingly diverse musical traditions and integrates their various elements into a revolutionary style of music that moves comfortably from the elegant melodies of a string quartet to the rolling bluegrass lines of the banjo. Highlighting the album is a trio of distinguished musicians--Bruce Hornsby, Chick Corea, and Branford Marsalis--who add their respective talents to already enlightened compositions.

The third track, "The Great Circle Route," featuring Hornsby on piano, is among the best on the album. The song begins with Hornsby passionately stamping out a piano riff reminiscent of a Chopin piano sonata, then smoothly incorporates a complex jazz rhythm, further layering melodic fiddle and dobro movements over Fleck's subtle banjo punctuations. The climax of the song occurs as Hornsby and Fleck swap licks and playfully try to out-do each other.

Another musical collaboration on the album, "Backwoods Galaxy," the eighth track, pairs Fleck's banjo with Chick Corea's piano and Branford Marsalis' tenor saxophone. The three musicians establish the song's complicated tone by first hammering out a funky, amorphous wall of sound. The banjo then sets up a background for the improvised doodlings of Marsalis' smooth horn and Corea's tight piano solos.

The seventh track, "Arkansas Traveler," poignantly illustrates Fleck's impressive ability to integrate disparate musical instruments and styles. The song begins with Fleck picking a simple folk melody alone. After several bars, percussion and bass lines emerge, sounding like the rhythm section of an Oscar Peterson album. The interplay between the banjo's folk melody and the jazz rhythms established by the drums and acoustic bass is astoundingly coherent. The phrasing is completely jazz, but the sound remains folk.

Fleck has produced an album that is honestly original and revolutionary. "Tales from the Acoustic Planet" cannot be described adequately in the usual musical vocabulary. To do it justice, slip on your shoes and pick it up at your trusty, neighborhood record store. Maybe you can take the old basset hounds along. He needs to get out more often anyway.