My name is Sylvain Leroux, and I am a Québécois musician initially trained in classical flute and jazz. Years ago, in workshops at the Creative Music Studio in the Catskills, north of New York City, with luminary teachers Don Cherry, Leo Smith, Karl Berger, Anthony Braxton, and many more, I was confronted with new practices and concepts. Among them was the emerging idea of “world music,” which set up an atomic explosion in my head.

Back home in Montréal, I embarked on my musical career and worked with Malian percussionist Yaya Diallo (listen to Yaya’s Diallo album Nangape below) , who was leading his group, and eventually released an album, on which I played, titled “Nanga Pe”. One day, he said to me, “Listen to this!” and played a recording of Guinean Fula flutes. It was used as background music on an LP of revolutionary speeches by the fiery first President of newly independent Guinea, Sekou Touré. The sound was extraordinary. So evocative and powerful, it penetrated me deeply; it was like organic Coltrane! Although it would be another 15 years before I would study it, from that day on, the sound of the Fula flute infused my soul.

Eventually, I serendipitously found myself in the capital city of Conakry studying with master Fulani flutist Kikala Diakite, and for a month we spent 3 to 4 hours every day working, me trying to wrap my head around these strange sounds and phrasings that did not conform to any of my references, but I eventually overcame my analytic mind and began to play to my teacher’s satisfaction. 

When I returned home to New York, where, by then, I had been living for a dozen years, I was astonished to find that I was the only person around playing that instrument. I asked anyone and everyone, but I could not identify another player. I was left on my own to continue learning, but I kept at it, and occasionally took lessons from Mamady Mansare, the soloist from the Ballets Africains when they came to town. 

The Fula flute opened many doors for me; musicians liked the sound of it and wanted to include it in their projects. Timing was fortuitous; I found myself in the middle of a new wave of African music in New York City as immigrants from francophone West African countries–Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast–were arriving in numbers on our shores, including many musicians, and especially the hereditary traditional artists, the griots. 

One of them was balafon virtuoso (African xylophone) Naby “Coyah” Camara; another was the tremendous kora player, singer, and composer, Keba Bobo Cissoko, heir to the kora tradition of Guinea-Bissau. Along with them and Cameroonian bassist extraordinaire, the not-yet-world-famous Richard Bona, we performed a marvelously successful concert for the World Music Institute at Washington Square Church.

A few years later, I attended a presentation of the touring African opera “Waramba” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and to my surprise and delight, I found out, reading the program, that there was a Fula flutist among the musicians. 

After the show, I knew that I needed to meet this flutist, so I went backstage and waited for quite a while for him to emerge. When he finally did, I introduced myself to him. He was Bailo Bah, one of the greatest players of the Fula flute. He was friendly, and he told me that he would be staying in New York and gave me his contact information.

I reached out to him and took lessons, and eventually, I started arranging playing situations for us. We performed another wonderful concert for the World Music Institute, featuring him and me on Fula flutes, Keba Bobo Cissoko playing kora and singing, and griot Famoro Dioubaté on balafon. The audience was mesmerized. Thereafter, Bailo agreed to record with me, and a year or so later, we released the “Fula Flute” album.

That CD exploded! Bailo’s opening phrase on the first track knocked people’s socks off, and it turned many people on to the Fula flute. Some of them came from far to study with us, and others contacted me to obtain flutes, so I began to make them to order and shipped them around the globe. 

In the universe of flutes, the Fula flute is unusual; its configuration is unlike any other, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of models, from the Indian bansuri to the Andean quena, Arabic ney, Japanese shakuhachi, pan pipes, recorders, Native American flutes, and many others.

The Fula flute is a transverse (side-blown) flute made from rattan, stopped at one end with a piece of calabash. The player needs two hands to play three finger-holes producing an octave-and-a-half of the diatonic scale. Its most distinctive attribute is its larger-than-usual rectangular embouchure opening is framed on each side by little walls of beeswax, its purpose is to create a chamber that facilitates the production of strong multiphonics (more than one pitch sounded at once) and for the player’s voice to mix deeply with the flute sound to create the otherworldly vocal-flute effects for which the Fula flute is most renowned. 

Years went by, and one day, while away on vacation, I got inspired to modify a Fula flute. Because of its structure, Fula flutes (of varying lengths) can only play a limited number of scales, and I had been frustrated playing with balafonists because their instruments are most often in the key of C, which does not exist in Fula flutes. I thought that if I took an A-flat instrument and closed the bottom two holes and moved them up by a half-step, I would obtain the scale I sought. 

After moving those two holes and before closing the old ones, I realized that I now had a 5-hole flute that played a full chromatic scale minus the notes that would be provided by one more hole. So, after thinking about it for about 30 seconds, I opened a sixth hole, and there it was! A fully chromatic instrument that could play any melody. I subsequently patented it and christened it the “qromatica.” 

This gave me the idea that it could be used as the basis for a culturally appropriate way to teach young Guineans to read and write music, and with that in mind, I approached my contacts in Guinea to identify a group of children with whom I could try this, and I was recommended to the Centre Tyabala. 

Led by Momo Sylla and Veronique Lamah, activists on the Guinean arts scene, the Centre Tyabala is an alternative arts-in-education program teaching the traditional arts of the musical theatre to poor children whose parents cannot afford to send them to school. They were open to working with partners and allowed me to spend three weeks with their students, who strongly bonded with the flute.

Armed with this initial success, I raised a sum that made it possible to spend four more months pursuing that program. During that time, we worked very hard, and the kids’ love and commitment to the flute multiplied. At the end of the period, we presented a concert and recorded an album, “The Children of Tyabala” (released on EEG records). 

We had proven the concept that using the qromatica was a workable approach to achieving musical literacy; however, to fully reach that goal would require many years of sustained presence and a lot more funding, all of which I could not provide. In the meantime, the kids’ craving for the flute was left unfulfilled.

Serendipity intervened once more in the person of one Gary Zaremba, a benefactor who attended the album release in New York City. Moved by the presentation, he offered to subsidize a local teacher. I then reached out to Mamady Mansare, the veteran from the Ballets Africains. As he was reaching retirement age and was deploring the general decline in interest in his flute tradition, he saw this as a golden opportunity to pass on his knowledge to a new generation of young Guineans and readily accepted. 

So was born “l’école fula flute” where the kids receive training in traditional Guinean music and instruments, along with an elementary education and a modicum of music theory. The school had been operating on a small budget, receiving scant help from inside Guinea; its financing relies on what outside partners can provide. So, for a decade, with the help of fiscal conduits and many generous donors, I was able to provide for the major part of their needs. 

But now, in the hope of upping our game and with the involvement of other like-minded associates, we have founded the Friends of l’école fula flute, Inc., a new nonprofit organization whose mission is to help sustain the school. 

Many of the original students have graduated and are now tearing up the scene in Guinea. A few of them have performed abroad. Their skills on the Fula flute are particularly appreciated. You can read all about them and everything else on the Fula Flute website. 

It seems that through me, the Fula flute has found its way around the world back home. I am humbled to be its instrument.