Duelling banjos hit historic notes

World music

THE BLUES: BACK TO THE SOURCE Barbican LONDON *****

It was a double-header of a concert that returned the blues to its source in radically different ways, pairing Otis Taylor's Reclaiming the Banjo project with Bassekou Kouyate, who, with his group Ngoni Ba, took two world music awards a few weeks ago, including Album of the Year for his debut, Segu Blue.

Taylor, the African-American banjo player, has received a lot of attention for reclaiming the instrument's African heritage - Kouyate's ngoni is nothing less than its ancestor - and with a band including Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris, Don Vappie and Guy Davis, his album unstitched the fabric that has wrapped up the banjo in the traditions of white Americana.

Each band member is a soloist in his own right - Youngblood Hart incorporates mountain tunes with African picking techniques; Davis specialises in claw-hammer playing; Vappie plays in the New Orleans fashion of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, releasing in the process a Dixie style associated by many black Americans with minstrel shows and white oppression, not with the blues.

Ngoni Ba opened the first half of the concert. The last time I'd seen them was at the extremely close quarters of Momo's in the West End, with the band crammed on a stage not much bigger than a speaker cabinet. Here at the Barbican, Kouyate had the room to roam physically and musically, striding around the stage with his players, stopping for duets-cum-duels with each instrument in turn - bass ngoni, ngoni ba, calabash, talking drum.

Tonight's concert hall sound was vivid and multilayered, the band's four ngoni players spinning a lazy, bubbling groove on the opening "Ndjarro", topped by the incredible African soul voice of Kouyate's wife Amy Sacko. The second song "Ngoni Fola" was more urgent and percussive, with Kouyate playing himself out of any prescribed form and spinning a musical tour de force that demonstrated an audacious imagination. His solo playing was nothing less than breathtaking.

The group fell to a quartet for "Poyi", the deep flowing blues that had Kouyate playing phrases so delicate they felt like a play of light, and Davis from the Banjo project blew some great harp on the closing "Demiffenw", which kicked off on the bass ngoni as a killer R&B riff that Keith Richards would cherish.

Harris opened the second half, banjo on lap, with a solo reading of Skip James' "Special Rider", a number he took to Niafunke in Mali to cut with Ali Farka Toure for his Mississippi to Mali album project. Youngblood Hart followed, picking a more flowing drone of a riff on "Deep Blue Sea"; it was banjo music for sure, but not as we know it, and played here with a beautiful bluesy slur.

All the band bar Taylor settled in for "Les Ognons", an old New Orleans rag that has been part of the city for generations. The old- timey "Liza Jane" followed, the boys getting into their stride with the type of song where the blues meets Vaudeville and couples under the stage.

When band leader Taylor came on, he seemed restless, as if he had lost himself somewhere between a campfire hoedown and the concert platform, and he headed into the aisles, looking for some terrace- style audience participation around the phrase "How long, how long", and for a while you knew how he felt, because this vamping filled up about 10 minutes.

It all came right on the driving rhythm of "Ran So Hard"; there must be a word for the sound of five syncopating banjos playing together, but I haven't found it yet. Their version of "Hey Joe" worked better on stage than on record, with the song turned loose on itself like a wild dog, and on "Walk Right In", Kouyate and Sacko settled between the banjos, and Kouyate's ngoni shone at the centre of the closing "Live Your Life", with Sacko's amazing voice filling its heart. Back to the source indeed.

Copyright c 2008 Independent Newspapers UK Limited. All rights owned or operated by The Independent.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.