Béla Fleck is one of the greatest living banjo players in the world. He’s followed what many experience as this quintessential American roots instrument back to its roots in Africa, and he’s taken it where no banjo has gone before. Abigail Washburn is a celebrated banjo player and singer, both in English and Chinese. These two are partners in music and in life — recovering something ancient and deeply American all at once, bringing both beauty and meaning to what they play and how they live.
Béla Fleck has recorded over 40 albums, most famously with The Flecktones and New Grass Revival. His albums include Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, UFO Tofu, and Rocket Science. His first full album collaboration with Abigail Washburn, Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn, was awarded the 2016 Grammy for Best Folk Album. Their most recent album is Echo in the Valley.
Abigail Washburn is a clawhammer banjo player and singer. Her albums include Song of the Traveling Daughter, City of Refuge, and The Sparrow Quartet EP. She is a Carolina Performing Arts DisTil Fellow, former TED Fellow, and was the first U.S.-China Fellow at Vanderbilt University.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Pádraig Ó Tuama — Belonging Creates and Undoes Us
Mary Oliver — Listening to the World
Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman — Meeting Our Enemies and Our Suffering
John O'Donohue — The Inner Landscape of Beauty
Thich Nhat Hanh, Cheri Maples, and Larry Ward — Being Peace in a World of Trauma
Desmond Tutu — A God of Surprises
Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything
Mike Rose — The Intelligence in All Kinds of Work, and the Human Core of All Education that Matters
Luis Alberto Urrea — What Borders Are Really About, and What We Do With Them
Kevin Kling — The Losses and Laughter We Grow Into
Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach — Un-becoming
Esther Perel — The Erotic Is an Antidote to Death
Daniel Kahneman — Why We Contradict Ourselves and Confound Each Other
Layli Long Soldier — The Freedom of Real Apologies
The Vitality of Ordinary Things
Naomi Shihab Nye — Your Life Is a Poem
Alain de Botton — The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships
The Soul in Depression
Nikki Giovanni — Soul Food, Sex, and Space
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror
Just Dumb Enough Podcast
Stuff You Should Know
Timcast IRL