Bringing home the sound

A distinct sound had lured him — the intoxicating pull of a 21-string calabash harp known as the kora.

Having heard it for the first time at an Ernest Ranglin concert in London, “I was completely mesmerized,” he remembers. “From the distance I was at, I couldn't see the strings because they were fishing line.”

After loading up on kora CDs, a few weeks later he was stepping off a plane in Brikama, Gambia, “staring at the man whose album I'd just bought.”

His name was Jali Dembo Konteh, hailing from a renowned griot clan — a Gambian family of musicians and storytellers (the title “Jali” meaning musician).

Over the next three weeks, his son, Jali Bakary Konteh, would become Pile's patient kora teacher as he learned his way around the massive instrument, navigating up and down the skinny, 5-foot African mahogany neck. By the time he left, he'd made friends for life.

Returning home to Eugene, Ore., Pile re-energized his fledgling career as an Americana folkie with a weakness for the blues. The National steel guitar was still his weapon of choice — perfect for amplifying slide guitar on street corners — but now myriad African melodies and poly-rhythms began to seep into his repertoire.

The Healdsburg High grad would eventually migrate to Austin, Texas, by way of Portland, Ore., “looking to take it to the next level” like so many twangy singer-songwriters before him. When he finally returned to his Sonoma County roots in 2006, he was still trading the occasional e-mail with his Gambian pen pal, even if their correspondence had waned over time.

By 2008, his guitar-weary fingers were itching for another kora lesson. Pile wanted to pick up where he'd left off and also record an album of Jali Bakary Konteh's music.

He knew he would need his own power source because Brikama had limited electricity and sporadic power failures. So, from his house in Healdsburg, he began looking for donations. He sent out an e-mail blast to his fanbase and contacts, also hitting up his guitar students and their parents. After a benefit show at Palette Cafe in Healdsburg, he had raised $2,500.

A few days after Pile returned to the bustling West African town of more than 60,000, a team from the Gambian company African Solar arrived to install solar panels on the roof of the Konteh family compound — a corrugated tin roof nailed to bare two-by-fours, rising from mud stucco walls.

Jali Bakary Konteh was looking forward to making a record, although he wasn't totally convinced it would see the light of day.

“He's had people come through before and record an album and go back to England and do nothing with it,” Pile said.

He was already familiar with many of the local customs, such as waking up to loudspeaker broadcasts of Muslim chanting every morning around 5. Or eating out of the same bowl with your hands — preferably your right hand because your left hand is used at the toilet.

At night, he slept on Konteh's bed — a dilapidated styrofoam pad — “because that's just the way it is. He wouldn't have it any other way.”

Armed with a laptop and a few microphones, Pile set out for the next six weeks to capture the essence of Konteh's music, working five to six hours a day. When the laptop hard drive crashed, he recorded part of the album on an iPod. When recording live in the Konteh compound wasn't working, he switched to multi-tracking, laying down independent takes of the kora, jembe and vocals.

Even though he likes to point out, “I'm just an amateur ethnomusicologist — totally amateur, make sure you put that in there, I don't have any credentials” — he was dead set to bring the music of his teacher to the world. Once pupil and mentor, now it was producer and musician.

“If there's a selfish aspect, I'm completely hungry for more West African music and Mandinkan music and African rhythms,” he says. “If I'm addicted to that, then being in Brikama is the perfect drug because you're constantly exposed to music. Every single day, when you hear those drums, it's either a marriage ceremony or a naming ceremony or circumcision or something.”

Returning to Sonoma County, over the past year he's devoted himself to producing “Konteh Kunda” (“House of Konteh”), which hits stores and iTunes on March 9 (although you can pick up a sneak-preview copy Thursday at a Hopmonk listening party). The release marks a joint distribution deal with Akwaaba Music, the eclectic African label based in Los Angeles.

In his maiden voyage as tireless producer of another musician's work, Pile played guitar, bass, keyboards and even drums while shaping the album over the past year. But it's the siren lure of Konte's dancing harp strings and driving rhythms that take center stage.

Standing out from the Mandinka traditionals, Konteh's original “Sayaa” is a haunting tribute to his best friend Buba — a perfect excuse for Pile to layer it with National steel guitar.

For the most radio-friendly, hybridized song — “Combination,” Pile enlisted longtime collaborator, Austin multi-instrumentalist Brad Houser (former New Bohemians bassist and co-founder of Critters Buggin'), to punch up the original recording with punctuated Afrobeat horns.

On the eve of the American release, the 29-year-old Konteh is overjoyed to finally achieve something several of his cousins already have scored — African radio play.

“He's ecstatic,” Pile said. “He's getting played on all the radio stations, like Radio Gambia, and he was saying that as of a few weeks ago he was getting like four to five spins a day.”

It's also a chance to revive African tribal music, exploring traditional songs more than 300 years old.

“People here want to hear their culture and to know more about their tradition, so when they hear me singing they feel so proud for themselves,” Konteh said by e-mail from Gambia.

“Lots of musicians here play modern music now, but this has changed me because it makes me more proud of my culture and tradition and it gives me the courage to do more.”

For Pile, a grass-roots musician who steadily has gained popularity in Sonoma County clubs over the past three years while still relying heavily on word of mouth, it's been a journey into the artist as selfless samaratan — one musician driven to promote another, halfway across the globe — a friend who made no more than $15 a month and had never heard his music on the radio.

“As a singer-songwriter you're constantly focused on your craft and your songs and expressing yourself and getting your music out there,” Pile said. “It can get to be really excruciating constantly focusing on yourself and your career — listen to me, listen to me.

“So it's really refreshing to focus on someone else's music, especially someone who doesn't have nearly the amount of resources I have to promote my career. The flip side is that I'm addicted to his music, and the more people I can get interested in it, the better.”

When Pile's new album, “Awake,” comes out later this spring, the West African influence will be effortless.

“I definitely pay more attention to poly-rhythms now and the way different rhythms interact and the way it flows as a whole,” he said. “It's got me focusing more on the cyclical nature of the song rather than a straight linear track.”

At the Hopmonk listening party Thursday, he'll break out the kora for his best Konteh impression. It's the next best thing to having his friend play live. Juggling finances and visa permits, Pile hopes to import his griot friend for a U.S. tour this summer, “but it's totally up in the air at this point.”

Proceeds from the album will raise money to build the Konteh Kunda School (see kontehkunda.org.) where Jali Bakary Konteh and relatives will teach music not only to native Gambians, but also musicians from around the world who come seeking to learn the kora.

“He's listed in the Lonely Planet guide as the guy to go study music with and yet when you go to study music with him, he gives up his bed and sleeps on the floor,” Pile said. “Now maybe he'll have a place for people to stay when they come to learn.”

As an added bonus, the Kontehs now have electric lights at night, enough juice to chill a small refrigerator, watch soccer on TV and listen to Radio Gambia, which now plays the songs of Jali Bakary Konteh.

“Now he refers to me as his brother — his big brother,” Pile said. “And he calls me Jali Steve.”

Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and follow on Twitter @becksay.