text: Béla Fleck's Journey To Find Truth In Origins Of The Banjo | Iowa Public Radio
  Published January 25, 2021 at 11:20 AM CST
  "This instrument for me, it's in my veins," he says. "When I touch it, I think of the birth of ngoni right through until the present. It's like it's in my blood."
  "When he plays, it's unreal," Fleck says of Kouyate.
  "Then it had this resurgence in the South by white players such as Earl Scruggs, who sort of brought the banjo back from death's door," Fleck says. "I mean, it was really going away. And he brought this whole new way of playing the banjo."
  Together, Diabaté and Fleck recorded "The Ripple Effect," a record named after the "hypnotic, rippling, magical" sounds both a kora and a banjo produce, Fleck says.
  "When I made this film, it just wasn't as well understood by people that the banjo was from Africa. A lot of people thought I was crazy. I had arguments with people about where the banjo came from," he says. "And for me it was all about pointing the light back to the truth about the banjo."