Guitarist Loueke's path takes him from Africa to jazz star

NEW YORK -- Lionel Loueke's name could easily be overlooked among the jazz and pop stars on Herbie Hancock's "River: The Joni Letters," this year's Grammy winner for album of the year.

But when Hancock launches his "River of Possibilities" tour this summer, the spotlight will shine on the African-born guitarist whose unlikely transcontinental odyssey has made him not only an in-demand sideman but an emerging jazz star.

Loueke's Afro-jazz trio will be opening for Hancock at several major venues, including a JVC Jazz Festival concert at Carnegie Hall in June, performing selections from his recently released major label debut, "Karibu" (Blue Note), which takes its name from a Swahili word meaning "welcome."

The 35-year-old Loueke will also be doing double-duty as a member of the legendary jazz pianist's quintet. Hancock has found in Loueke that rare musician who can keep up with his own varied tastes -- whether it involves playing an old-style blues, straight-ahead acoustic jazz or cutting-edge electronic music -- and make clever musical choices similar to his most noteworthy partners, Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis.

"I haven't found anybody that's excited me this much in a long time," said Hancock in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home. "Lionel is a great talent who will be a strong positive influence on the continued evolution and vitality of jazz."

Loueke's musical journey mirrors the cultural mix that gave birth to jazz more than a century ago. He grew up in Benin, a former French colony, where he played in traditional voice-and-percussion groups. He also absorbed Brazilian influences from his mother's home town of Ouidah, a former Portuguese slave-trading port.

In the 1990s, he studied classical theory at the National Institute of Art in Ivory Coast, and later moved to Paris where he learned about jazz harmony at the American School of Modern Music founded by alumni of Boston's Berklee College of Music.

He finally put it all together when he came to the U.S. in 1999 on a scholarship to Berklee where he took his first formal jazz guitar lessons and first began playing with the members of his current trio -- Hungarian-born drummer Ferenc Nemeth, who introduced him to odd-metered Gypsy music, and Swedish-Italian bassist Massimo Biolcati, who boasts an extensive classical background.

At first Loueke had the notion that jazz was about swing and bebop, but he credits Hancock's focus on improvisation with enabling him to see more clearly the links between jazz and traditional African music.

"Now I hear jazz in a different way," said the shaven-headed Loueke, stretching his lanky 6-foot-2 frame into a chair in a conference room at Blue Note's Manhattan office. "The griots in Africa when they announced the king, they improvised ... I don't separate jazz from real traditional improvisational music from any culture, either Eastern Europe, India, or Africa. As long as it's improvised it has the jazz element already."

Loueke organically blends the African elements into "Karibu," with Hancock and fellow jazz legend, saxophonist Shorter, guest soloing on several tracks. He describes the CD as more "jazz-oriented" than his three previous albums for independent labels.

When performing, Loueke takes on multiple roles -- using his fingers to play notes and chords simultaneously, slapping his guitar like a drum, and accompanying himself by wordlessly scat singing or clicking his tongue to add percussive accents. Sometimes he weaves a slip of paper through his strings to create a sound resembling the kalimba, an African thumb piano.

He plays a nylon-stringed classical guitar with a built-in synthesizer and uses an array of electronic devices from pedals to a loop machine to create an orchestral range of sounds. That's far removed from the cheap French guitar he taught himself to play after he first picked up the instrument at age 17. He would soak the strings in vinegar to preserve them, and when they broke, replace them with bicycle brake cables, developing his own way of tuning.

Loueke soon joined a band of older musicians who played Afro-pop tunes by Fela Kuti and King Sonny Ade and traditional Beninese music at bars and restaurants in Cotonou, Benin's largest city. But at age 22, he had a revelation when an acquaintance returned from Paris with a copy of George Benson's album "Weekend In L.A." He didn't even realize that Benson was improvising.

"I was mesmerized by his way of playing. ... I never heard anything close to that in my life," said Loueke. "I didn't even understand what it was but it was clear in my mind that I wanted to play like that."

Loueke put half-dead batteries in his cassette recorder to slow down the tempo so he could pick out the notes, painstakingly transcribing each tune. He later did the same with recordings by earlier jazz guitarists -- Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt and Joe Pass.

His father, a mathematics professor, did not want him to become a musician. He briefly lived on the streets of Abidjan while studying in Ivory Coast when he couldn't come up with the rent money. He taught himself English so he could realize his dream of coming to the United States to play jazz.

Those hardships prepared Loueke for his breakthrough moment in 2001 when he auditioned for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a highly competitive postgraduate program, before a panel of judges that included Hancock, Shorter, and Terence Blanchard.

Loueke held nothing back as he scatted and picked his way through a long introduction that led into the first requested tune -- Shorter's standard "Footprints."

"I was tired and nervous ... but I took it home and made it my own," Loueke recalled. "Wayne was the first one to stand up ... and he said, 'I told you I'm from Africa. This is my brother.'"

Hancock was so impressed with the guitarist's inventiveness in playing percussively and using odd meters that he was ready to take Loueke on the road with him right away.

"I had never heard a guitar like that in my life," said Hancock. "He had so many new things to offer that he didn't have to resort to copying anyone ... His choices were from a broader palette than I'm used to hearing from pretty much any instrument."

Loueke began touring with Blanchard's sextet even before finishing the two-year Monk program, crediting the trumpeter with helping him find his voice as a composer on such albums as the 2005 "Flow," which featured three pieces by the guitarist, including "Benny's Tune" dedicated to his Beninese wife Benedicta, who lives with him and their two children in a newly purchased home in North Bergen, N.J.

The guitarist finally joined Hancock's band in 2005, and has no intention to leave anytime soon even as his own jazz star rises.

"He pushes you to go in different directions ... to the unknown," he said. "I just want to keep searching because one of the biggest things I learned with Herbie is not to be afraid to try new things. I don't feel there are any limits."