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Béla Fleck curated — and performed at — a stunning showcase of traditional and contemporary African music at the Boulder Theater last night. Photo by Nathan Rist.

Béla Fleck has mastered all sounds on his banjo. The other-worldly maestro can meld his twangy instrument with virtually every genre of music. So it makes perfect sense that the perpetually innovative master of the American banjo would eventually wander into Africa, where that percussive lute was born more than 2,000 years ago.

View a full photo gallery of this concert here.

Fleck has not only returned with new styles, techniques and sounds that earned him two Grammy awards last week. He’s brought the best of Africa back with him. Before a capacity crowd at the Boulder Theater last night, Fleck’s Africa Project shuttled a rapt audience deep into the rich musical landscapes of Africa.

Starting with a reflective, improvised display of his African aptitude, Fleck’s metallic banjo cast a dancing shimmer on the theater walls. He invited thumb piano player Anania Ngoliga and guitarist John Kitime to join him and soon, the room was awash in a lyrical Tanzanian dance.

Ngoliga, a multi-instrumental master of Tanzania’s Gogo music, is blind and he sits virtually motionless with his hands tucked inside a sort of acoustic bread box. His tinkling on the thumb piano harkens the bubbly sound of rain on a tin roof, or a particularly poppy steel drum. His virtuosity gives the modest instrument both a melodic and percussive role.

Coupled with the caressing backdrop of Kitime’s acoustic guitar, the duo was mesmerizing. Fleck joined the Tanzanian musicians for a couple songs, including Ngoliga’s high-pitched, comically clucking and clacking song “Kabibi.”

Fleck and his “Africa Project” entourage of a dozen musicians are touring 33 cities in support of Fleck’s self-released “Throw Down Your Heart: Africa Sessions Part 2.” Last year’s “Throw Down Your Heart” won Fleck his 12th and 13th Grammy Awards, for Best Contemporary World Music Album and Best Pop Instrumental Performance. Those awards also mark the 10th and 11th musical category for Fleck, a spectrum that includes classical crossover, spoken word and contemporary jazz. No one knows the banjo like Béla.

If Fleck does have a rival on banjo, it is Bassekou Kouyate, the captain of Malian sensation Ngoni Ba, the first ever all-ngoni band. The ngoni is a plucked chordophone that looks like a ukulele but sounds like a banjo. Kouyate, as a young man, was the first to ever sling the ngoni around his neck and play it standing up, defying tradition. Today, his band Ngoni Ba is pioneering a new generation of ngoni sound. Fleck introduced his Malian peer as the greatest to ever play the ngoni in the instrument’s 2,000 year history.

High praise from the American king and oh, what a sound. Backed by two gourd-slapping percussionists and a soulful, bellowing singer, the four ngoni players — all family members capable of Four Tops-style choreographed moves in formal African garb — delivered a decadently rich, nimble and haunting display. Kouyate, treading lightly on a wah-wah, conjured Frampton-esque moments between adroit plucking. When joined by Fleck, the two redefined forever — at least in my mind — the hillbilly notion of dueling banjos. That old school sound is a toddler’s shoving match. Fleck and Kouyate take the duel to World War level.

Fleck took a second spin with an improvised solo on his cello banjo, picking along the stem to create an exotic sound. He would turn the tuning pegs as he plucked, building a warm, hovering, wavelike tone that easily conjured some dusty African market, far from anything Western. Others would wander out and join Fleck for swimmingly intricate tunes. There was buoyant Tanzanian bluegrass, with Casey Driessen on fiddle. When Ngoliga jumped in with his thumb piano, the sound swerved into African-Caribbean-Zydeco bluegrass.

Kouyate and his crew arrived and Ngoliga led the stage in an African blues tune, his voice like Muddy Waters on the banks of the Nile. By the second encore, the band was deep into ambient “TanzMalican” grooves, with five banjos, a thumb pianist, a fiddler, an acoustic guitarist, two gourd drummers and an African singer. It was a musical moment that won’t be forgotten.

View a full photo gallery of this concert here.

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Jason Blevins is a strange dancer, but that has never stopped him.

Nathan Rist is a freelance photographer and a regular Reverb contributor. He hails from the mountains of Telluride, but he’s currently studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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