Banjo extraordinaire Bela Fleck works with local musician Haruna Walusimbi on the first song of the Grammy award-winning second album of "Throw Down Your Heart."

Another Land's project with Bela Fleck Wins Third Grammy

February 2011 - Nichole Smaglick, president and co-founder of Another Land, is pleased to announce that their 2005 project “Throw Down Your Heart” has won its third Grammy this week for the Best Contemporary World Music Album. Smaglick and Another Land’s Film Division led Grammy award-winning musician Bela Fleck, along with a production and film crew, through Uganda and Tanzania where he jammed and collaborated with traditional African musicians. The results of his travels are chronicled in “Throw Down Your Heart” which is comprised of two CDs and a movie.

Fleck released CDs of selected recordings from the expedition with Rounder Records. A short documentary about the journey and collaboration was also created. Fleck and company, who moved on to Senegal, Gambia, and Mali for the second leg of the expedition, called the recordings and his experience with Another Land outstanding successes.

In 2001, Smaglick had originally inspired Fleck to travel to Africa as an offshoot of Another Land’s cultural travel programs. From the interior villages of Uganda to the Swahili coastal town of Bagamoyo, Bela Fleck strummed his banjo alongside the African percussions, ennanga harp playing, and other traditional sounds of East Africa's great Gogo, Busoga, and Buganda artists. You can meet some of those very same traditional musicians and even learn how to play their instruments with one of Another Land’s village programs.