Banjo extraordinaire Bela Fleck at work with traditional African musicians.

Another Land leads African music, film expedition with Bela Fleck

April 2005 - Nichole Smaglick, president and co-founder of Another Land, has just wrapped up a six-week film and music expedition with banjo playing extraordinaire, Bela Fleck. Smaglick led the Grammy award-winning musician, along with a production and film crew, through Uganda and Tanzania where he jammed and collaborated with traditional African musicians.

Fleck will eventually release a CD of selected recordings from the expedition with Sony Music. A short documentary about the journey and collaboration is also in post-production. 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.

Four years ago, Smaglick had originally inspired Fleck to travel to Africa as an offshoot of Another Land's cultural 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.