Béla Fleck has always made a point of educating his audience on the banjo’s African roots, never more so than in 2009 when he released The Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3: Africa Sessions. As its title implied, the recording, subtitled “Throw Down Your Heart,” documented Fleck’s trip to the African continent to seek out the banjo’s origins and collaborate with African players and vocalists, among them singers Oumou Sangare and Vusi Mahlasela, guitarist D’Gary and a xylophone group from Uganda. Fleck’s journey was also filmed and released as a DVD, and the venture was successful enough that it inspired a sequel in 2010. Now, that audio and video has been packaged, along with a new duo album that matches Fleck with Toumani Diabaté, the renowned Malian kora player. The expanded package has been given the title Throw Down Your Heart: The Complete Africa Sessions, and the collaboration with Diabaté, titled The Ripple Effect, has also been released on vinyl as a stand-alone 2-LP set. Whether taken as part of the overall experiment, or listened to on its own, the newly released music is thoroughly ethereal and intoxicating. The kora, a 21-stringed plucked instrument native to West Africa, although much grander in size and tone than the banjo is similar to the smaller instrument in some ways, and the two musicians have an innate feel for how their chosen tools can, and should, relate to each other. Most of the tracks, recorded live on tour, are simply given the names of the locations where the music was created: “Nashville,” “Bamako,” etc. It’s a hypnotic blend, and a fitting, unexpected coda to Fleck’s African adventure.