Throw Down Your Heart: Tales from the Acoustic Planet Vol 3

When American banjo player Bela Fleck decided to investigate his instrument's origins in Africa, he set in motion a film and music project that was to take him to Mali, The Gambia, Tanzania and Uganda. It's hard to imagine that when he started out he thought he would find himself sharing intimate solos with Malian songstress Oumou Sangaré, funky tunes with Baaba Maal, and front-room jams with Malian ngoni bluesman Bassekou Kouyaté and Cameroonian jazzman Richard Bona. But he did, and along with a film of the same name comes this soundtrack, exploring the roots of the banjo.

It's an epic recording made up of snippets of moments that must have been wonderful to experience live and which mostly come off very well on disc. Opening the album is a call-and-response track with a group of Ugandan women – cooks for the film crew – with wonderful voices. A recording with a Tanzanian thumb piano player is instantly uplifting and most intriguing is the recording with the Jatta Family from The Gambia, with the akonting, thought to be the original banjo,

sparring with its modernised brother. Ah Ndiya’ is likely to stop you in your tracks, a duet with Oumou Sangaré and Bela in which the banjo, kamalengoni, sokou (one-stringed violin) and Toumani Diabaté's crystal kora chords dance around each other. Sangaré has never sounded more passionate, and the banjo has arguably never sounded so good.